Chapter four and five

Chapter four: Ashes beneath the skin

The days that followed blurred into a strange dance of secrecy and shadow. Isabelle could not return to her old life. Not after the locket. Not after the passage beneath the clocktower. Something inside her had shifted—like a hidden lever finally pulled.

She spent hours tracing family letters, searching her father’s journals, piecing together fragments of history long buried. In one brittle ledger, tucked behind estate finances and grain tariffs, she found it: a list of names. All women. All bearing the Montrose bloodline. Each marked with a year—and a symbol in red ink.

The last on the list: E. Montrose – 1842

Then, a blank line.

No name. No year. Just an unfinished thread. Waiting.

Isabelle closed the book with trembling fingers. She was the next name that should have been written.

Alexander Vale had begun appearing with the regularity of a storm. Never announced. Always just before twilight. Sometimes with books, sometimes with secrets.

This evening, he arrived carrying a worn folio sealed in black wax.

“From the Library of the Hollow Circle,” he said. “Took some doing to get it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The Hollow Circle?”

“A forbidden archive beneath the university,” he replied. “Scholars who ask the wrong questions get locked out. Or worse.”

Isabelle opened the folio slowly. Inside: faded illustrations of rituals, firelit gatherings, a sigil that matched the locket’s flame-and-thorn motif.

She looked up. “The Keeper of Ashes is a society of women… but this—this is something older.”

He nodded. “The Keepers weren’t just guardians. They were conduits. Protectors of something ancient. Something the city tried to erase.”

She stared at the last page.

A prophecy.

“When the embers stir in a daughter’s veins,

The flame shall wake, and Duskmoor burn again.”

Alexander’s voice was low. “Isabelle… whatever this is, you were born into it.”

That night, as the moon broke through the fog, Isabelle stood before her mirror and touched the locket. A faint warmth pulsed beneath her skin.

She was beginning to feel it.

The ember.

Alive.

CHAPTER FIVE: Letters in smoke

Two weeks passed.

The city buzzed with preparations for the Midwinter Masque—a lavish, centuries-old ball hosted at the Ministry Hall. Nobles wore veils and masks. Secrets passed like perfume through the ballroom. And for the Montrose family, attendance was tradition. Even when secrets burned beneath silk gloves.

Isabelle did not intend to go.

Until she received the letter.

It was unmarked, sealed in crimson wax, slipped beneath her door. The seal bore the same flame-thorn insignia. Inside, just one line:

“Midnight. The masque. Come veiled. The ashes remember you.”

She stared at the script. A woman’s hand—firm, elegant.

She made her decision.

Ministry Hall loomed like a cathedral of secrets that evening, its gothic arches swathed in velvet and gold. Lanterns floated in air perfumed by lilacs and candle smoke. Every guest wore a mask. And yet somehow, Isabelle felt bare beneath hers.

She searched the crowd with sharp eyes, her gown a deep indigo that shimmered like dusk itself. Alexander appeared by the marble staircase, dressed in black, wearing a fox-shaped mask edged in gold.

“You came,” he said.

“So did you.”

He offered his arm. “Shall we dance? Or are we hunting ghosts tonight?”

Isabelle smiled, but her heart was pounding.

They danced once—twice then slipped from the floor, ascending to the upper gallery where the noise faded into murmurs.

There, beneath an old oil painting of Duskmoor burning, stood a woman in silver.

Tall. Masked. Her hair the color of smoke.

“I thought you might come,” she said softly. “Your blood remembers.”

“Who are you?” Isabelle asked.

“I am what remains,” the woman said. “Of the Keepers. Of your family’s promise.”

She handed Isabelle a folded letter.

“Read it before the fire. Then choose. The ashes are listening.”

And she vanished into a servant’s hallway, swallowed by shadow.

That night, alone, Isabelle read the letter by her hearth. The paper blackened at the edges, revealing words only when kissed by flame:

“Isabelle, if you’ve found this, the city is not what you believe. We bound the fire once, with our blood. But now the seal weakens.

If you do not rekindle the flame with knowledge and will, it will burn uncontrolled. Duskmoor is a tomb built atop embers.

The Vale boy knows more than he says. But he is not your enemy.

He was bound to you, long before you were born.

—E. Montrose”