All Chapters of Beneath the Ashes, He Rose: Chapter 201
- Chapter 210
400 chapters
Chapter 201: Runway Child
With a soft sigh rather than a loud crash, the world vanished. The jet's engines purred with the promise of freedom as Tatiana's hand was firmly and warmly encircling her daughter. The next, like sand through fingers, the warmth drained away. A hologram losing power, Mira's form flickering, her grip becoming insubstantial. Grainy static seeped into the glossy mahogany and white leather of the opulent cabin walls. "Mom?" Mira's voice reverberated down the lengthy tube. Her eyes met Tatiana's, wide with an unexpected, ancient comprehension. Not dread, but a deep, tired apologies. "Oh. The count is still ongoing. Tatiana lunged, but her hands went through her daughter's shoulders. "Mira?" she asked. She was preserving memory and light. As her picture vanished into a shower of gold particles swirling in a sunbeam from the window, Mira muttered, "The ticket." Simply put, it was a better chapter. Not a conclusion. I apologise. I desired For you, I wanted to be honest. The motes pressed
Chapter 202: Shoe Petal
The Greyhound station was a temple of cheap disinfection and muffled sadness. According to Tatiana, it was technically true that she moved through it like a ghost. She was a carbon copy of a world that had been wiped, a relic without an original. The broken vinyl seats, the faded travel posters of locations no one was going, and the weary features of the passengers waiting were all bleached of colour by the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Nobody gave her a glance. Here, she lacked aura. Absence of gravity. Her eyes were focused on a middle distance that contained nothing but private destruction, and she was just another woman in tattered clothes with a rucksack draped over her shoulder. She blended in perfectly. She purchased a cheap duffel bag from a vending machine that also offered phone chargers and neck pillows using the five crumpled twenty dollars—a merciful, useful anomaly—and the remaining actual currency she had discovered in the backpack. She loaded it up with necess
Chapter 203: Driver Ghost
A dark ribbon of highway hypnosis, the miles unwound. In a silent vigil for a ghost, Tatiana maintained her gaze on the back of Grayson's head. Without the deadly elegance that had been his trademark, every shoulder movement and casual hand movement on the steering wheel was a meticulous imitation of the guy she remembered. Rather than using special troops, this Grayson moved with the cost-effectiveness of a long-distance trucker. She committed the worthless information on the placard next to his head to memory:"Safety First, Driver: M. GRAYSON!" The middle initial was a twist of a knife. Who was Marcus, "M"? Michael? A moniker for a modest existence. She wrenched her eyes away, forcing them to the outside world to prevent herself from shouting. Next, inside the bus. The old couple's heads were tilted together as they fell asleep. The pupil was typing frantically. A woman sat alone on the opposite side of the aisle, a few rows ahead. She had a gentle, round face and a tired but cal
Chapter 204: Bleeding Future
In the encroaching dusk, the service plaza was a bubble of fluorescent light and artificial happiness. The pregnant woman's naive laughter was still echoing in Tatiana's ears as she walked through it like a machine.Isn't that silly? There was nothing ridiculous. Everything was a sign pointing toward a precipice, written in a language only she could understand. In order to feel the heat against her palms and have a tactile connection to the present, she purchased a bitter, scorching coffee from a kiosk. She watched Grayson through the plate glass window, away from the other travellers smoking by the doors. A picture of ordinary ennui, he was leaning against the bus's side and checking his phone. His eyes wandered aimlessly across the parking lot as he took a long sip from a travel mug. It didn't ever look for her. You are unknown to him. You don't own him. The idea made her stomach turn to stone. She had lost Mira to the story, Alexander to time, and now Grayson to... normalcy. In
Chapter 205: Empty Swing
The park was extremely quiet, a bubble that had engulfed the far-off hum of the freeway. Around the white tree, the other travellers milled like bewildered sheep, their whispers thin and lost in the broad, chilly air. They pointed and took pictures, but they stayed away from the swings. They were impeded by an innate barrier; this was not their show. Tatiana felt the black hole's gravitational pull as the empty swing called to her. The ropes were thick and braided, and the seat was made of only weathered wood. As its siblings continued their creaky, phantom dance, it hung still. It was a request. A throne. A gallows. She was aware of the guidelines. Four hundred times, she had lived them. With each push, the motion eliminates one loop. A game for kids that has cosmic stakes. Her hair would turn from grey to black. Time, memory, and the very content of her lived suffering would be her price. Every push would result in a removal. She thought she had fled after taking a stride down th
Chapter 206: Masked Drawing
The fragrance of crayon wax was a time machine. It took Tatiana back to the safehouse in Georgetown, to cold cereal and candles, to the hallowed, awful silence of a child making up worlds on paper as the actual one fell apart outside. The paper twisted at the edges and was pulpy and inexpensive. Bold and resolute, the lines were a child's attempt to bring order to chaos. Using a stubby black crayon as a protective symbol, the masked father stood valiantly with his cape blazing. Daddy, ghost. The words pierced her ribcage like a spear. The recollection of a memory, not a memory itself. An echo within an echo. Back then, it had been a childlike incantation against the dark, a plea. Now it was a verdict in her fingers as the bus rolled silently toward an unnamed town. Evidence that the narrative residue was there in the collective psyche of the world it had left behind, not only in white trees or bleeding sonograms. The narrative was seeping into children's artwork. The Phantom was bec
Chapter 207: Airplane Seed
Colorado's Havenfall was not a town. The postcard has deteriorated due to exposure to sunlight. There was a hardware store, a cafe named "The Sourdough," a movie theatre that had been closed, and a bar with a neon trout that buzzed erratically along one main street that was bordered with false-fronted buildings. Beautiful and uncaring, snow-capped mountains created a ragged background. The air was cold, thin, and tinged with woodsmoke and pine. People went there either to forget or to be forgotten. Tatiana was the last person to get off the bus. Without looking into her eyes, Grayson handed her duffle down from the luggage bay. With the hollow politeness of a man who had already forgotten her the moment she got off his bus, he murmured, "You take care now." The Greyhound hissed and backed away as she stood on the cracked sidewalk, taking the ghost of her past with it as its red taillights vanished around a corner. A thick and terrible silence fell. The seed was in her possession. A
Chapter 208: Blank Smile
Mira's eyes were blank, which was a physical blow. It was worse than her disappearance, worse than her breaking up on the plane. This was an unacknowledged presence. Her kid had just gazed through her as though she were a park bench, a lamppost, or a ghost—who was complete, alive, and breathing the same chilly mountain air. As the queue of kids rebuilt, Tatiana stood still, and Mira was now fluently conversing with a girl with red hair. Her laugh was crisp, high, and quite normal. A void was created in Tatiana's chest by the sound. Every slide the other kids showed felt like a transgression. They were deleting her suffering and her tale, but they were also erasing the proof that she and Mira had ever been important. They were transforming Tatiana from a tragic heroine into a non-being by transforming epic tragedy into a kid's game. Sand and laughter were erasing a woman's greatest losses and loves. The universe was shown mercy on the slide. It was annihilation to her. The pressure
Chapter 209: Carved Swing
There was a whisper, not a creak, when the swing swung back. The air provided little resistance, and the chains were silent. As though the laws of physics had been loosened for this one instant, this realisation, Tatiana easily pumped her legs to raise the swing. With each climb, the surroundings—the park, the town of Havenfall, the mountains, and the world below—became more transparent rather than faster. With the colours fading into a pearly, diffuse light, it turned into a faded watercolour painting. The grotesque swing set vanished into the misty background, along with its 193 other vacant seats. Now she was swinging in the dark. There was simply light and the sensation of movement, no sky or earth. She floated weightless for a brief while as the swing reached the top of its arc. The light in front of her resolved into a picture in that instant. It wasn't the same as looking at a screen. It felt as if you were there, an intangible, unseen ghost by the window. A shoreline. A so
Chapter 210: Snow Landing
The cold was a thing. It penetrated Tatiana rather than merely encircling her. With each weak, startled breath, it crystallised the moisture in her nostrils and quickly soaked through her jumper and jeans, needling her skin. After the swing's vision's psychological roar, there was a bodily strain to the complete silence. Her boots crunched on a floor of compacted ice and rubble as she staggered to her feet. With the help of the dim, grey light that came in through the tall, dirty windows, her breath rose in spectral clouds. The extent of the neglect was astounding. This wasn’t just a closed facility; it was a tomb. Like cracked eggs, bank after bank of shattered glass incubation vats lay with their fluid long frozen into weird, opaque sculptures. At hideous angles, twisted metal skeletons of conveyor belts and gantries protruded from the ice. Chairs were overturned and frozen in place, while computers were lumps of ice-crusted rubbish. This was the origin. the cancer's origin. It sh