In the heart of a lavish penthouse adorned with sparkling chandeliers and marble floors, Selene lived her half-life. A legendary beauty, her name was whispered in awe and envy across high-society circles. But what they didn’t know was the price she paid for her ethereal allure—she existed in a liminal state between life and death.

Her room was a cavern of perpetual twilight, the curtains perpetually drawn, shielding her from the sunlight that she had not felt on her skin for what seemed like an eternity. The little nourishment she received was carefully measured, a minimalistic regimen designed to sustain her existence but not enrich it. To look at her plate of food was to gaze upon a barren landscape—minimalistic, almost skeletal.

Mirrors framed with gold leaf adorned her walls, but they were more like windows into a soul that was slowly crumbling away. Her eyes, once bright and full of life, now carried the heavy weight of an unspoken sorrow. They were beautiful, yes, but they were the eyes of someone who knew that her beauty was both her triumph and her tragedy.

In her world, beauty wasn’t a thing to be celebrated—it was a currency, a bargaining chip in a high-stakes game that she couldn’t afford to lose. And the price of such staggering beauty? A life drained of its essence, vitality converted into aesthetic perfection. Her beauty was a carefully constructed façade, a work of art crafted from deprivation and sacrifice.

The society that adored her, that thrust her into the spotlight and onto the covers of magazines, had no idea of the solitude she lived in. They did not see the agony in her perfection, the hollowness behind her smile, the years of life she had traded away for a few moments in the spotlight.

It was a paradox—her life was a monument to beauty, yet a tomb for everything that makes life worth living. And so she existed, not fully alive but not entirely dead, a celebrity goddess in a gilded cage, a beauty forever teetering on the brink of oblivion.

To be beautiful, she realized, was to be almost dead—a shell of magnificence hiding a core of emptiness. And as another day passed without sunlight, without joy, without the essence of life, she couldn’t help but wonder: was it worth it?