For three days, the house didn't move.
It didn't creak.
Didn't groan.
Didn't whisper.
It just… waited.
Like something sleeping. Digesting.
---
Clara didn't speak much after the spiral burned out.
She moved through the rooms like she'd always lived there — like the dust had never settled, like the walls knew her name.
She ate when she needed. Slept in the attic.
And every night, she lit a candle by the fireplace and set the book beside it, unopened.
Never once did she touch it again.
But I think it still spoke to her.
Because she sometimes murmured things in her sleep.
Not English.
Not anything human.
---
I stayed downstairs.
My voice had returned.
But I didn't use it.
Not because I couldn't…
But because I didn't know if it was still mine.
---
On the fourth night, I found her outside.
Sitting in the garden.
Staring at something I didn't want to see.
---
The Ashroot was growing again.
Just a sprout.
Green. Harmless.
But it was growing fast.
By morning, it had doubled in height.
And there was something hanging from its thin branch.
A ribbon.
Tied into a perfect bow.
Black with red stitching.
The same kind Noah used to wear on his backpack.
---
I walked to it slowly.
The air around the sprout was… warm.
Wrong.
Like the temperature inside a closed mouth.
I reached toward the ribbon—and the ground pulsed.
Just once.
Like a heartbeat in soil.
---
> "Don't touch it," Clara said behind me.
> "Why not?"
> "Because it remembers."
---
She knelt beside the sprout.
Brushed a finger along its bark.
> "This isn't the same Ashroot."
> "Then what is it?"
> "The next one."
She stood.
> "And it wants to be different."
---
I didn't ask what that meant.
Because deep down… I already knew.
The book had said the mouth must close.
But it never said what would speak next.
---
That night, I had the dream.
No. Not a dream.
A memory.
But not mine.
---
I was standing in the original Ashroot chamber.
Before the fire. Before the collapse.
But it wasn't Eleanor performing the ritual.
It was a boy.
Jonas.
Younger than I'd ever imagined him.
Maybe thirteen. Maybe less.
He was holding a page.
Crying.
Reading it aloud while roots curled around his legs, waiting.
His voice cracked with each word.
> "My blood is not my own.
My name belongs to the fire.
I am the end of her voice."
And then—
From the shadows:
> "Do you accept?"
And he said:
> "I do."
---
I woke gasping.
Fingers bleeding.
I had been writing in my sleep.
On the wall.
Spirals. Dozens of them.
And beneath one, in sharp red:
> "The name has not stopped burning."
---
I went to the book.
Clara was asleep upstairs.
I sat before the fireplace, opened the cover—
And found new pages inside.
Pages I didn't remember.
Pages I hadn't seen before.
---
They were blank when I opened them.
But as I turned each one, a sentence bled through.
Written in red.
In my handwriting.
---
> "Clara will forget her name."
> "You will remember it for her."
> "When the fire returns, only one voice must speak."
> "The one who was buried."
---
A single name appeared at the bottom of the page.
Not Eleanor.
Not Clara.
Not me.
Just…
"Noah."
---
I dropped the book.
Because I suddenly understood.
---
We hadn't stopped the root.
We had only given it time.
It needed silence, yes.
But not forever.
Just long enough for someone new to speak.
For a voice strong enough to survive the spiral.
And the book…
It had chosen.
Again.
---
In the backyard, the sprout had grown taller.
It was now the size of a boy.
And the ribbon was gone.