Some memories are buried for a reason. Some gods are worshipped by accident.
Asher didn't sleep that night.
Couldn't.
Sleep demanded peace, and there was none left in him.
Not with the photograph burning a hole through the lining of his coat pocket, smoldering like an ember he couldn't put out.Not with the brand on his hand whispering to him, murmuring her name like a prayer he had forgotten the words to.Not with Lirieth, coiled deep inside his mind—purring, prowling—a lazy predator wandering a crumbling library of his traumas, knocking over memories just to watch them shatter.
"You're close now," she breathed against the inside of his skull, her voice velvet wrapped around broken glass. "Can't you feel it? Like acid in your lungs. Like hands pressing against your eyes from the inside."
The words slithered through him.
Asher lit a cigarette with shaking hands, even though he didn't smoke anymore.It wasn't about the smoke.
It was about the ritual.The cycle.
Smoke. Think. Regret. Repeat.
The ember flared weakly in the gloom of Quinn's apartment, the smoke curling toward the ceiling like the ghosts he refused to acknowledge.
Across from him, Quinn sat curled up in a battered armchair, the light from her datapad painting her face in flickering blues and greens. She pretended not to watch him, but every once in a while, her eyes would lift, full of questions she didn't know how—or didn't dare—to ask.
The silence stretched, raw and brittle.
Then, without warning, Quinn spoke.
She scrolled through the digital case files Asher had buried deep enough that even he had forgotten the passwords.
"Asha Blackwood," she read aloud, careful, like she was navigating a minefield. "Age sixteen. Missing for twelve years. Presumed dead after the Eden Street Orphanage fire."
The cigarette burned forgotten between Asher's fingers.
The name hit harder than a bullet.
His sister's name.That fire.
For years, he had tried to quarantine that night behind thick walls in his mind—pretending the memories were distorted, unreliable, unworthy of obsession.
But memory didn't care about permission.
The charred silhouette of Eden Street had lived inside him all this time, flickering at the edge of every nightmare.And in those dreams, she always smiled.
Not a cruel smile.Not an angry one.A sad, knowing smile.
"You really think this ties into the demon case?" Quinn asked, voice low.
Asher didn't move. Didn't blink. His world had narrowed to the water-stained photograph lying on the table between them.
"No," he said finally, the word scraping his throat raw. "I know it does."
Quinn hesitated, biting her bottom lip. Her fingers twitched—nervous. Guilty.
Slowly, she pulled something from inside her coat.A slim, battered envelope. The kind no one used anymore.
"I got this earlier," she said, not meeting his eyes. "Dropped off by an 'anonymous informant.' Thought it was a prank… until I saw what was scrawled on the back."
She handed it over like it weighed a hundred pounds.
Inside was a list.Old paper. Ink smudged and bleeding from sweat or rain or tears.Twenty-seven names.
Most of them were crossed out with savage, heavy lines.
All of them were women.
At the very bottom, one name gleamed untouched, cruel in its clarity:
Quinn Albrecht.
The world tilted slightly.
Lirieth stirred again, stretching luxuriously, her claws raking playfully through his thoughts.
"Oh goodie," she purred, her voice thick with a giddy kind of malice. "A death list. I love these."
Asher barely heard her. His mind was spinning.
Twenty-six crossed-out names.
One uncrossed.
And every instinct he had screamed the same thing:
This wasn't just a message. It was a countdown.
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Later That Night — Eden Street (The Ruins)
The ruins of the Eden Street Orphanage loomed out of the mist like the broken bones of a cathedral long abandoned by faith.
Twisted metal ribs clawed toward the sky.Charred brick wept black stains down crumbling walls.Nature had begun to reclaim the place—but unnaturally, as if the vines were growing inward, strangling the heart of the building from within.
Quinn's breath misted in the cold air as she flicked her flashlight on.
"Didn't this place get demolished years ago?" she whispered, stepping carefully over a rusted tricycle half-swallowed by moss.
"It did," Asher muttered, voice thick. "But sometimes…"He paused, the weight of memory dragging at him."…places like this don't care."
The air inside was different.
Wrong.
Thick with soot, yes—but also with something else.Something heavier.Something alive.
Walls flickered at the edges of vision. Floorboards creaked underfoot, even when they stood still.It wasn't just a place anymore.It was a wound.
And somewhere deep inside it, something was still bleeding.
They found the nursery room almost by accident.
Cartoon animals, faded and peeling, danced across the cracked walls.Tiny beds, burnt down to blackened frames, lined the room like the forgotten ribs of a corpse.
But at the far end, untouched by flame or time, was a mirror.
Clean.Perfect.Utterly out of place.
It sat like a trap laid bare, its silver surface gleaming under the beam of Quinn's flashlight.
Asher stepped closer, dread clawing at the inside of his chest.
And in the mirror—they weren't alone.
Their own reflections were gone.
In their place: dozens of children.Pale, hollow-eyed.Staring back without blinking.
Their faces were wrong—too still, too empty—but their pain poured out of the mirror like cold mist.
At the center of them all stood a girl.
White hair falling like dead leaves around her stitched mouth.
Asha.
His sister.
But not the way he remembered her.
Not alive.Not dead.Something in between.
Asher's knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground, hands clutching at the broken tiles.
The air grew thick and syrupy. His ears rang.
And then—
Her voice filled the room.
Not from the mirror.Not from outside.
From everywhere.
"You left me, Ash."
Soft.Accusing.Almost tender.
Like she didn't hate him for it.
Like she understood.
Which somehow made it worse.
The walls shuddered violently, breathing in and out.
The mirror cracked from corner to corner with a sound like bone snapping under too much pressure.
And from the ruptured glass—
A hand emerged.
Porcelain white.Fingers ending in glass-shard nails.Clawing its way into the world.
Lirieth's voice, usually so languid and mocking, sharpened into something cold and urgent:
"Careful, detective. You're not chasing shadows anymore.""You're about to become one."
[End Of Chapter 35]
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Next Chapter Preview:Chapter 36 – The Orphan's WakeReality bends and breaks inside Eden Street's rotting husk. Asher and Quinn are trapped in a labyrinth of their worst memories—forced to relive the night the fire consumed everything. But something hunts them through the ruins, something stitched together from grief, flame, and forgotten prayers. And it knows Asher's sins better than he does.