2025-08-26 16:37:29Lana didn’t sleep.
She sat curled on the velvet settee in her massive room, her knees drawn tight to her chest, the fire casting long, restless shadows across the walls. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the mirror. Not since she saw the girl. Not since she saw herself. But younger. Smaller. Almost translucent, like a figure from a dream pressed against the glass. And then—gone. She had checked the mirror again. Twice. Tapped the edges. Turned the lights on and off. Stared into her own reflection until her eyes burned. Nothing. Just herself now. But it wasn’t a hallucination. She knew what she saw. It wasn’t a trick of the light or a sliver of imagination running wild. That girl had looked exactly like her. Not just in appearance, but in the way her head tilted, the way her lips trembled like they were holding in a scream. She’d looked scared. Terrified. As if she were the ghost. Or Lana was. A sharp knock at the door jolted her. She stood quickly, but her feet felt numb. Heavy. She opened the door halfway—and there he was. Grey. Still wearing the same dark shirt, sleeves rolled at the wrist, a file clutched under one arm. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years. “You said you saw something,” he said. Not a question. Not alarmed. Just—calm. Controlled. Lana hesitated. “There was a girl. In the mirror.” “Describe her.” “Young. Same face as mine. Same eyes. She looked like…” She trailed off, swallowing hard. “Like me. But not me.” Grey’s expression didn’t change. Not visibly. But his grip on the folder in his arm tightened. “I’m not crazy,” she said defensively. “I never said you were.” “Then what’s happening?” Her voice rose. “Why am I seeing things? Who is she?” Grey walked in without waiting for permission and shut the door behind him. He crossed the room and laid the folder on the table beside the bed. “How old did she look?” “Six. Maybe seven.” He nodded slowly. “What does that mean?” she asked. “Why does any of this feel like… like a memory I’ve never had?” He opened the file. A single photo sat at the top. Lana leaned forward—and her breath caught in her throat. It was her. At least, it looked like her. A small girl with wide grey eyes, standing beside a boy who looked eerily like a young Grey. They were dressed in matching outfits, holding hands in front of a white columned house with ivy growing up the walls. “Where did you get this?” she whispered. “It was in the records the family keeps. You and I were—” he hesitated, “—we were photographed together as children.” “That’s not possible.” “No,” Grey said evenly. “It’s just buried.” She stared at the photo. A memory scratched at the back of her mind. A song. A soft voice. A laugh that wasn’t hers. “I don’t remember this.” “You’re not supposed to.” Lana looked up sharply. “What does that mean?” “They’ve done this before,” Grey said, his voice lower now. “Erased people. Changed names. Split families. For control. For inheritance. For reasons that probably made sense to monsters in suits a long time ago.” “So you think…” she faltered. “You think we’re related?” He didn’t answer. But his silence was louder than anything else in the room. “We’re supposed to be getting married,” she said. “Don’t you see how twisted that is?” Grey stared at the photo, jaw rigid. “I didn’t know when the letter came,” he finally said. “Not for sure. But when I saw you… I started remembering things I didn’t know I’d forgotten.” Lana stepped back, the fire behind her casting her shadow tall across the wall. “This can’t be real.” He looked at her then—really looked. “Do you remember a name?” “What?” “A name. A place. A song. Anything.” “I don’t—” She stopped. Her lips parted. A sound echoed in her head like an old lullaby, one she hadn’t thought about in years. It was quiet, rhythmic, the kind of melody a nursemaid might hum. One line drifted into her mind like fog. Alana Rose and Grey at play… Hide and seek and run away… She gasped. Her knees buckled slightly, and Grey stepped forward on instinct, catching her elbow. “Are you alright?” he asked, his voice gentler now. “I know that rhyme,” she whispered. “I used to hear it. In my dreams. I thought it was nothing. Just… nonsense.” His hand dropped slowly from her arm. “It’s not.” They stared at each other for a long moment, and the silence between them wasn’t empty anymore. It was full of broken memories. Ghosts. Names they weren’t meant to say aloud. Finally, Lana took a shaky breath and looked away. “If this is true… then why would they force us to marry?” “I don’t know yet,” Grey said. “But I’m going to find out.” He moved back toward the file, flipping to the final page. Her birth certificate. Redacted. Same as his. Lana stared at it. “They’ve erased everything.” “Not everything.” He tapped the bottom corner of the paper where faded ink scrawled something handwritten. She leaned closer. Only together will they remember. Her heart thudded. “What does that mean?” Grey didn’t answer right away. He simply stared at the paper like it held a map neither of them had the key to. Suddenly, the fire behind her flickered—no, flared, high and sharp, like a gust of wind had passed through the chimney. But the windows were shut. Grey looked up, alert. Lana turned, her pulse quickening. In the mirror across the room, something shifted again. A shadow. Small. Faint. And this time, there were two children. Standing side by side. Both with grey eyes. Both staring back. Lana spun around. The room was empty. She turned back to the mirror—but they were gone. Grey was already moving toward it, his expression darkening. “They’re not just memories anymore,” he muttered. Lana gripped the edge of the bed. “What are they?” Grey turned toward her, his eyes unreadable. “Warnings.”
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Chapter Eighty — What Remains of Us
By morning, the rain had thinned to a mist that clung to the trees like breath. The world outside the cabin was a blur of gray and green, silent except for the dripping of water through leaves. Grey hadn’t slept. Lana could tell by the way he stood at the window, shoulders rigid, eyes fixed on the fog. The torn page from Seraphine’s letter lay on the table between them — five words that had rearranged everything they thought they knew. You’re looking in the wrong fire. Lana rose quietly, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “You’ve been standing there for hours,” she said. Grey didn’t look away. “I keep thinking about the timeline. If Seraphine’s right — if there was another fire — then the one that killed my mother might’ve been staged. Everything since might’ve been built on that lie.” “She’s baiting you,” Lana said softly. “Or warning you. I can’t tell which.” He finally turned, eyes shadowed but alert. “There’s an old Thompson site north of here — a textile property. It b
Chapter Seventy Nine – The Warning
By morning, the storm had drained itself into a gray, exhausted drizzle. Grey was already dressed when Lana opened her eyes. The ledger lay closed on the table, wrapped once more in its oilcloth, as if putting it away could undo what it had revealed. “I need to go back,” he said simply. “There’s someone who might know more. My uncle’s assistant — Harlan. He handled Foundation correspondence.” Lana sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You think he’ll tell you the truth?” “I think he’ll slip up trying not to.” He left before she could argue, leaving only the faint smell of rain on his coat and the soft creak of the door. For hours, the cabin held its silence. Lana made tea that went cold before she ever tasted it. The ledger tempted her like a wound — impossible not to reopen. She turned the pages again, tracing the names. Some entries were marked lost in incident. Others had no endings at all. One entry, written in rushed ink, simply read: Subject relocated – location
Chapter Seventy Eight - The Ledger
The lamp had gone out sometime after midnight, leaving the hut soaked in blue-black quiet. Lana lay awake, eyes open to the faint glow leaking through the window slats. Every creak of timber felt amplified, every breath heavy with thought. Grey hadn’t moved for nearly an hour. But she knew he wasn’t asleep. He never was, not when his mind was circling the past like a wolf around a wound. She turned her head toward him. “Do you ever think,” she murmured, “that some things survive just to haunt us?” Grey’s answer was low, rasped, almost lost to the dark. “Every day.” It wasn’t a confession. It was a truth scraped raw. Silence stretched — long, heavy, pulsing with the echo of the stranger’s warning still alive in her skull: Don’t trust him fully. It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have sounded so believable. Finally, Grey pushed himself upright. His outline cut against the faint glow of the dying embers. “There’s something you should see,” he said quietly. He rose, cross
Chapter Seventy-Seven — The Night Watch
The sound of Lana’s breathing steadied before it softened. Grey waited a while longer to be sure.The lamp had gone out completely now, leaving only the dim light of the moon spilling through the window — a thin, colorless wash across the floorboards. He sat where he was, on the low chair near the hearth, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, listening to the quiet.Outside, the wind had eased. A faint drip of melting snow ticked against the eaves. The kind of silence that came after long violence — too still to be trusted.He should have slept. He knew that. But his body had long forgotten how.He turned his gaze toward her — the narrow rise and fall of her shoulders under the blanket, the faint line of her jaw in the half-dark. Even in sleep, she looked tense, her fingers curled into the fabric as though bracing for something.He exhaled slowly.Don’t trust him fully.The words had hit her hard. He’d seen it in her eyes — the flash of fear, the betrayal she tried to hide. He c
Chapter Seventy-Six – Ash Between Us
The wind had died down by the time Grey shut the door, but the cold clung to the seams of the little hut. The paper bag he’d brought—bread, two tins, and a thermos—sat forgotten on the table between them.Lana hadn’t moved since he came in. The card still lay near her, charred around the edges, the faint trace of smoke curling from it as though reluctant to leave.Grey crouched beside her, studying the floorboards, the shadows, the corners. He didn’t touch her. “Whoever it was,” he said quietly, “they knew how to get this close without leaving a sound.”Lana nodded numbly. Her hands were stiff, her knuckles white against her knees. “He didn’t break in. He just… stood there. Like he knew I’d wake.”Grey’s gaze flicked to her. “He?”She hesitated. “I think so. His voice was low, soft. He said…” Her throat closed. The words still felt too heavy, too strange. Don’t trust him fully.Grey didn’t push. He stood slowly, arms folded, his profile sharp against the flicker of lamplight. “And the
Chapter Seventy-Five: Shadows Don’t Burn
The silence after the storm had its own kind of violence.Grey set the paper bag down on the counter — a simple, ordinary thing, the smell of coffee and bread spilling into the cold air. But nothing about the moment felt ordinary anymore.Lana was still standing by the table, the edges of the burned card singeing her palm. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I didn’t see his face,” she said softly. “He was gone before I could—”Grey was already moving toward the window, scanning the treeline beyond the frost-glazed glass. “How long ago?”“Minutes,” she murmured. “Maybe less.”He turned back to her, his expression sharpening into that unreadable calm he wore when danger brushed too close. It wasn’t fear she saw in him — it was calculation.“He left this?” Grey asked, nodding toward the card in her hand.Lana hesitated before holding it out. The words were nearly gone, the ink burned at the edges. Grey’s fingers brushed hers as he took it — a small contact that sent her nerves sting
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