The Deremont Estate now bore her name, but Ayla didn't feel victorious.
She stood alone in the once-haunted great hall, dust motes floating through fractured moonlight. The cracked mirror at the back wall loomed silently. It had quieted, yes—but it had not forgotten. Neither had she.
"Seven gates," she whispered. "And this was only one."
Behind her, Corren Vale lingered in ghost-form, leaning on the frame of a shattered bookshelf. His expression was unusually grave, and Ayla didn't miss the way his eyes flicked back to the mirror as if expecting it to shatter anew.
"You did well," Corren said finally. "But you realize now what this means."
Ayla nodded. "They're waking up."
"Not just them," Corren said. "The ones who watch the mirrors… they've felt you."
She turned to face him. "The Glass Monarch?"
"No." Corren's voice dropped. "Worse. His hunters. Spiritbound creatures loyal only to him. Trained to seek out Serin bloodlines and crush them before they mature."
Ayla felt her jaw tense. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"Because you were still a child when I first found you. And now? Now you're not running anymore. You're building."
He gestured around them, to the estate she'd just claimed. "This house will act like a flare in the underworld. It'll call out to anything tied to mirror energy. That's how it works—claim one, and the others notice."
Ayla walked to the edge of the cracked mirror. A fine mist clung to the glass now, cold to the touch. Her breath showed in the air.
She whispered, "What did you see, Mother?"
For a moment, the mirror flickered—not a reflection, not a ghost—but a glimmer of movement. Ayla saw a woman's outline—familiar, long-haired, regal—then it vanished.
She didn't flinch.
Instead, she turned back to Corren. "Tell me about the hunters."
Corren sighed and folded his arms. "They're part mirror, part flesh. Born from shattered gates. They're not like the creature we banished. They don't haunt. They track. They can slip through places where the veil thins. And they don't kill outright. They erase."
"Erase?"
"Memories. Names. Even bloodlines. There are spirits who don't even remember they once had families because of them."
Ayla felt her stomach turn.
"And they're coming for me?"
He nodded. "You've already been marked."
Outside, thunder cracked. Ayla's phone buzzed in her coat pocket.
She didn't answer it.
She was already walking—out of the Deremont Estate, through the rusted gates, into the city that no longer felt like it belonged to anyone else.
The next morning, Ayla stood before the Cassian Holdings board in a blood-red dress that fell like fire over her black boots.
Across from her sat Riven Sol, the man whose stare could unsettle wolves and court judges alike. He was watching her with the calm of someone who'd known far worse things than boardrooms and lawsuits.
"We're buying the Deremont Estate," Ayla said flatly.
The room fell silent.
An older board member blinked. "Excuse me, Miss Serin? That property is considered cursed—"
"Exactly," she interrupted. "Which means it's cheap. And now it's mine."
Cassian smirked from the side. "You bought it already?"
"I cleansed it," Ayla said, her gaze cutting to Riven's. "And if anyone here had the courage to step inside it last night, you'd know it too."
Riven didn't blink. But a small shift crossed his features. Amusement? Respect? Ayla couldn't tell.
He tapped a pen against the table. "And what will you do with it?"
"Convert it," Ayla said. "Half will be preserved as a historical sanctuary. The other half will serve as our central archive for properties with high-activity cases."
The room rustled.
"High-activity cases?" another voice asked. "You mean… hauntings?"
Ayla leaned forward. "I mean the buildings the police can't explain. The ones your insurance claims label as 'unfortunate accidents.' The ones you want to demolish but can't because the land bites back. Those."
Riven stared at her. Then, very slowly, he nodded.
"You've got vision," he said, voice like oil and velvet. "I admire that."
Ayla ignored the warmth that stirred in her chest.
"Just don't get in my way," she said.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
That night, Ayla returned to her downtown penthouse and stood alone in her rooftop garden, looking out over the city. Rain glossed the glass towers. The Deremont Estate stood far beyond, invisible from this height but no less felt.
The charm ring still sat on her finger. She turned it slowly.
What had Evelyne said? "Riven Sol is drawn to the broken."
She wasn't broken. Not anymore.
Not since the night she saw her mother die. Not since the ghost children asked her for help in the alley when she was seven. Not since the rich widow found her sleeping beside the temple gate and took her home, offering her a name in exchange for a memory she never shared.
Ayla was made of broken things. But she had forged them into a crown.
She heard a whisper.
Not from the wind.
From her mirror.
Inside her penthouse, the full-length mirror across the bedroom was fogged—on the inside.
She stepped toward it, slow.
On the surface, words etched themselves backward in silver breath:
"Five more gates. One is waking."
Ayla touched the mirror and whispered, "Where?"
No answer came.
But she knew what to do.
She walked to her desk, took out the map of the old city, and circled the five marked buildings she had long since suspected were more than just cursed.
Tomorrow, she would visit one.
And if it called to her, she would answer.
Meanwhile, far beneath the city, in the sunken ruin of the old cathedral known only to those who trafficked in the shadows, a door groaned open.
A figure in silver-threaded robes walked silently into a chamber lined with shattered mirrors.
Each one showed nothing but smoke.
But one shimmered.
It flickered, revealing Ayla's face.
The figure bowed its head.
"She's awakening."
From the dark, a voice deeper than earth and older than breath replied:
"Let her. The Queen of Ghosts must rise before we silence her name."
End of Chapter 9