The fog always thickened the most right before midnight.
I stood on the battlements of the western tower, where the stone gargoyles still gaze downward as if waiting for someone who will never come.
The castle had been silent for centuries—except for one hour.
When the great hall clock struck twelve, something changed.
First a faint rustle, like silk gowns gliding across the floors.
Then distant, muffled notes of a lute, a harp, and a very low cello that came from no instrument I had ever seen.
It was them playing.
The ones who had once been princesses, countesses, ladies of the court.
The ones who did not leave when flames devoured the chambers, when the drawbridge crashed into the moat, when the last king closed his eyes forever.
They did not depart—they became part of the walls.
You can still see their faces if you know where to look:
in the veins of marble on the staircases,
in the streaks of dampness across the vaults,
in the shadows cast by torches that extinguish themselves at three in the morning.
At midnight they play their music.
Not for us—for themselves.
It is their only hour of freedom: they dance, they spin, they laugh softly, and their laughter sounds like tiny bells carried on the wind.
Gowns of brocade and velvet rustle, though no one wears them anymore.
Fingers that once held goblets and rose bouquets now brush strings of air.
I stood there last night.
I did not run when the first notes began to rise through the stone beneath my feet.
I sat on the cold windowsill and listened.
At one moment one of them—the clearest one, the one with amber hair woven from morning mist—looked straight at me.
Not with eyes.
I simply felt that she was looking.
And then I understood.
They are not waiting to be saved.
They are waiting for someone to choose to stay.
Because the music sounds more beautiful when there is one more soul in the choir.
The clock struck one.
The music fell silent.
I was alone.
But tomorrow night I will return.
And the night after that.
Until my own gown begins to rustle at midnight,
until my face emerges in the marble vein on the staircase,
until someone new hears me among them.
Because the castle does not take.
The castle receives.
And it keeps playing.
Forever.
All my recordings and links to music on other websites are on the website, where you can also find free wallpapers and ringtones for your phone: www.Biel.Style
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