Beneath the Ashes
Isabella's point of view
The room held its breath, thick with the scent of aged wood and something else—something faint, metallic, lingering in the air like a whisper from the past. The figure in the doorway didn't move, didn't speak, didn't even breathe loud enough for me to hear, but their presence swallowed the space, bending reality into something unrecognizable.
My fingers dug into the desk, the polished wood cold and unyielding beneath my grip, grounding me in the moment, forcing me to stay still when every nerve screamed at me to run. The shape before me wasn't a ghost, wasn't a figment of grief-stricken imagination, wasn't a cruel trick played by the dim lighting. They were real. Flesh and bone.
But they couldn't be.
Not when I had seen the fire.
Not when I had smelled the burning flesh, when I had stood among the embers, when I had heard the silence where their heartbeat should have been.
Not when I had buried them myself.
A step forward.
