The cassette tape's final click echoed like a verdict, the sound slicing through the quiet chapel where Raphael and Elara had taken refuge. Dust hung in the air, disturbed only by the rise and fall of their breath.
Elara sat rigid, the weight of the words from the recording pressing against her spine like cold iron.
"She was mine even then," the voice had whispered. "Through fire. Through ash. And she will be again."
Her fingers trembled slightly, but her voice—when it came—was steel. "He remembers everything."
Raphael didn't speak at first. He sat beside her, elbows resting on his knees, the shadows hiding most of his face.
"You were a child," he said finally, his tone low and tight. "What he's doing—what he's become—isn't your fault."
"No," she whispered. "But I survived when I shouldn't have. He thinks that means something. That I was meant for him."
She stood abruptly, crossing to the broken stained-glass window, the morning light fractured across her face like prophecy.
"He's not just hunting," she said. "He's… remembering. Rebuilding something twisted."
Raphael followed her, pausing just behind.
"Elara," he murmured. "You're not his. You never were."
But the silence that followed seemed to challenge that truth.
Later that afternoon, a package arrived at the edge of the chapel grounds—no courier, no note. Just a small velvet box resting atop the moss-covered stones like a gift from the dead.
Elara hesitated before opening it.
Inside was a silver locket.
Her fingers moved on instinct, opening the delicate hinge.
Two photos stared back at her.
One of herself—barely ten years old, soot on her cheeks, eyes wide with terror.
And the other?
A man's face, grainy and cold. The same man who stood beyond the flames in her nightmares.
Ashriel Blackthorne.
On the back of the locket, engraved in brutal cursive:
"Together, always."
Raphael's fists clenched at the sight.
"He's not sending threats anymore," he growled. "He's sending promises."
Elara's voice was a whisper. "He thinks this is a love story."
"It's an obsession," Raphael snapped. "And I won't let it touch you again."
For a moment, her hand found his—quietly, firmly. "Then we end this. Before he writes the ending for us."
That night, neither of them slept.
Elara sat beside the fire, staring into the flickering light, the locket clutched in her palm.
"I remember him," she said quietly. "The night my parents died. I was hiding under the staircase, watching the house burn. He stood there… watching it too. Smiling."
Raphael sat down beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed.
"You were his firebird," he murmured. "And he's been trying to trap you in the ashes ever since."
She looked up at him, something sharp and sorrowful in her gaze. "Maybe I never left the flames."
"You did," he said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "And I'll keep pulling you further from them. Even if I have to burn myself."
At dawn, they packed what little they had.
The chapel was no longer safe. Not with Ashriel watching. Not with the past clawing its way into the present.
As they drove into the mist-covered roads, the locket sat between them, unopened now. Like a curse that hadn't yet run its course.
"We find him," Elara said, eyes on the horizon. "We make him stop."
Raphael didn't hesitate. "And if he won't?"
She turned, the fire in her chest matching the sky's first glow.
"Then we end him."
Far behind them, half-hidden in the chapel ruins, a man watched from the shadows.
A smile tugged at his lips.
"So close, little dove," he whispered. "Come find me."
The engine hummed quietly beneath them, its rhythm barely cutting through the silence that had settled between Elara and Raphael. The morning fog swirled around the car like specters, clinging to the windshield as if trying to peer inside.
Elara stared ahead, her fingers tapping lightly against the door, the locket still resting between them like a buried sin.
"Do you think he's watching now?" she asked, voice low. "That he's following?"
Raphael didn't look at her. "He doesn't have to follow. He's always one step ahead."
She turned toward him. "Then why hasn't he taken me yet?"
A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Because he doesn't want to take you, Elara. He wants you to walk to him willingly."
She didn't reply, but her throat tightened.
Ashriel Blackthorne wasn't a man chasing revenge.
He was chasing devotion.
And the thought of that chilled her deeper than the nightmares ever could.
They stopped at a roadside motel two towns over. Cheap, forgotten, and quiet enough to hide in.
Inside the room, Elara paced.
"He left that locket for me," she said. "He knew we'd be at the chapel. He knows everything."
"We need to find out how," Raphael muttered, pulling out his laptop. "And fast."
But Elara's gaze flicked toward the locket again. She picked it up, tracing its edges.
"Maybe the answer is in this."
Before he could stop her, she pried the back plate open further.
A folded scrap of paper was tucked inside.
She unfolded it slowly.
A map. Hand-drawn. Crude. But familiar.
She recognized the sharp turn in the river, the clearing beyond the woods. It was where her childhood home once stood—now a charred skeleton of memory.
Below the map, one word written in blood-red ink:
"Come."
Later, as the sky dimmed to blue-grey and the hum of insects filled the silence, Elara stood outside, arms folded, watching the treetops sway.
"He wants us to go back," she said without turning. "To where it started."
Raphael stood behind her. "That's exactly why we shouldn't."
"But it's the only way we finish this."
"You don't have to do this, Elara."
She turned, her expression raw and resolute.
"I do. Because if I don't, I'll always be running. Always waiting for him to show up with another message, another relic of the past."
Raphael's voice softened. "And if it's a trap?"
Her voice broke, just slightly. "Then I'll walk in with my eyes open."
He stepped closer, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Then I'm walking in with you."
That night, Raphael stayed awake, watching Elara sleep for the first time in days. Her brow still creased in unconscious tension, fingers still curled around the chain of the locket even in rest.
She hadn't escaped the flames.
Not really.
And maybe neither had he.
He didn't know what waited for them at the ruins.
But he knew this much:
If Ashriel thought he'd take her again, he'd have to walk through Raphael's ashes to do it.
Back at the chapel, the wind blew open a door that had remained sealed for years.
And in the cold light of early morning, a fire began to bloom across the floorboards.
Ashriel stood outside the ruins, his coat sweeping in the wind, the embers of memory catching fire behind his eyes.
"They're coming," he said to no one.
Then, almost tenderly, he smiled.
"At last."