Chapter Fourteen: Ash Beneath the Lily
Part One: The Path Between Graves
The path had no name.
It didn't need one.
Old maps had burned with the estate. Roads twisted out of memory. What remained was a trail of instinct, buried deep in my bones, like a thread left taut between ribs and ritual. The deeper we walked, the less the world resembled Vullum—less stone and spire, more root and ruin.
The trees were different here. Taller. Hungrier.
Ironwood bent inward, as if watching. The trunks bled sap the color of rust, and when the wind pushed through, it sounded like breath—long and hoarse.
I kept behind Dorian. It was easier that way.
He didn't talk much. Not since the chapel.
He just watched me—quietly, carefully. Like I might break, or vanish. He didn't say it, but I knew. He'd felt something too, when I touched him. A flicker. A warmth that hadn't burned him.
It terrified both of us.
"This place," he murmured as we passed a collapsed fence overtaken by fungus, "it doesn't want us here."
"No," I whispered. "It never did."
We stepped past it anyway.
The air grew colder the closer we came to the marsh edge. Water pooled beneath the roots like dark mirrors, reflecting nothing but spider lilies—those same cursed flowers blooming in places no light had touched.
A dead signpost leaned sideways, half-swallowed by moss. One word remained legible, etched in rotted iron:
Caligrex.
My mother's name.
Or at least, the name she used when she still claimed one.
Dorian stopped beside it. He looked to me, jaw set. "Family always leaves the nicest inheritance."
I almost smiled. Almost.
But then I saw it.
Near the base of the signpost, wrapped in thornvine, was a ribbon. Deep crimson, stained darker by rot and rain. It hadn't been there long.
Someone else had come this way.
Recently.
Cassian.
Or someone who knew how to trace his steps.
Part Two: The House That Waited
The path narrowed until even the fog hesitated to follow. Trees arched inward, their limbs braided with spider silk and ribbons of red thread—symbols once used in mourning rites, now frayed with age. The silence pressed against us like a cathedral sealed in shadow.
We crested a hill, and there it was.
The Caligrex estate.
What remained of it.
The once-great manor stood like a carcass gnawed hollow. Gothic arches fractured under the weight of black ivy. Shattered stained glass formed jagged mosaics in the dirt—seraphs crying ash. One wing had collapsed entirely, devoured by time and rot, but the central tower still clawed at the sky like it remembered how to pray.
I stopped.
My breath fogged against the silk of my mask. My hands shook inside my gloves.
Dorian stepped beside me. "This is where it happened."
I nodded.
"Where you were… bound?"
"I don't know if I was ever unbound."
The wind moaned through the ruins, and the scent of lilies grew stronger.
Dorian drew his blade—more for comfort than defense. He didn't look at me as he spoke, but his voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it.
"Do you want to go in alone?"
"No," I said.
I didn't want to be alone again.
Not here.
Not now.
The doors groaned open on rusted hinges, sighing like they remembered the screams.
The foyer was choked with vines and broken stone, but the layout still whispered familiarity beneath the decay. A grand staircase split in two directions, leading nowhere. Portraits hung askew—faces clawed out, names unreadable. Only one remained intact.
My mother.
Painted in golds and blood, her crimson eyes colder than mine had ever been. I stepped closer. Dorian held back, giving me the space I hadn't asked for.
The frame was cracked. Beneath the painting, etched into the wall in a child's hand:
"Forgive the gift, or forget the girl."
My knees nearly buckled.
I knew that handwriting.
My own.
"This way," I said hoarsely.
We moved through the corridors like ghosts retracing our own graves. Every step deeper into the estate felt like a breath drawn underwater. The wallpaper peeled in veins. The floors wept mildew. The house wasn't just ruined.
It was waiting.
For me.
And at the back of the hall, beneath the remnants of a chapel dome, we found the entrance to the crypt.
Still sealed.
Until now.
The lock had been broken. The air that spilled from within was colder than death, laced with rot and candlewax.
We descended.
Part Three: Below the Breath of Prayer
The steps spiraled downward into silence.
Dorian went first, torch held high. The flame flickered erratically—more from the pull of unseen drafts than wind. I followed with one hand brushing the wall. Not for balance. For memory.
The stones were familiar. Cold, damp, weeping with mildew. Each step echoed like a question.
And then the stairwell opened, and we were standing beneath the broken earth—inside the heart of the chapel that had been carved directly into the roots of the estate.
It hadn't crumbled.
It had changed.
Candles burned in uneven circles, melted deep into the stone. Some were fresh—still flickering with breath. Others had melted into dried rivulets, long abandoned. Symbols—glyphs I knew and some I didn't—lined the walls like veins. Some were painted. Some carved. Others traced in something that shimmered too red to be ink.
Dorian exhaled beside me. "This is recent."
"Someone's rewriting the rite," I whispered.
He stepped toward the altar.
A book rested on it, bound in velvet. Familiar. Unchanged. But this time, I wasn't afraid to open it.
Inside, the writing was elegant, deliberate. Each line of the ritual had been rewritten. Modernized. The language sharper, clearer. A second hand had scribbled notes in the margins.
We begin again.
You and I. As it should have been.
–Cassian
I closed the book slowly. My gloved hands trembled.
Dorian didn't speak. Not until he was close enough that I could feel the heat of him beside me.
"Do you want me to leave?"
I didn't answer.
Instead, I removed my glove.
And reached for his hand.
When our skin met, I braced for the flood—the searing echo of someone else's soul.
But it didn't come.
No pain. No scream. Only warmth.
I breathed.
And he didn't pull away.
In the hush of the chapel, the world tilted.
I wasn't alone inside myself.
For the first time in years, I felt someone—and it didn't hurt.
He exhaled like something heavy had broken in him. "Lenora…"
I looked up.
And in the candlelight, I realized something else.
The rite was never meant to be finished without me.
And Cassian wasn't waiting.
He was calling.