Lucien

🖤 Story: “The Dollmaker’s Lament” In the forgotten halls of a crumbling Gothic manor, a reclusive artisan known only as The Dollmaker once tried to capture the perfect soul in porcelain. His magnum opus was Lucien, a life-sized doll of breathtaking beauty — made to preserve the memory of his deceased son. But the night the Dollmaker finished Lucien, lightning struck the manor’s clock tower. The doll’s glass eyes flickered with reflected firelight, and for a brief moment, he breathed. Since then, Lucien has stood motionless by candlelight, his cracked porcelain skin whispering faint echoes of sorrow. Some say he wakes at midnight, wandering the hall in silence, touching the relics of a life that was never his. Others claim his eyes weep tears of resin — tears that dry before dawn. He is both creation and ghost — the Dollmaker’s perfection and regret immortalized.