Chapter 49

FLORA POV

No one ever checks the places that feel forgotten.

The west wing was closed off long before I learned to walk these halls. They said it was cursed.

That a fire once ate through its walls and left only silence in its place. They boarded it up, sealed

it shut with rusted nails and cowardice, and told stories about how nothing could survive what burned here.

But people always fear the wrong thing.

It was never the flames they should have feared. It was what survived them.

I move barefoot across the cold stone floor, the dust clinging to my toes like breath from a long-dead ghost. The air here is thicker. Still, but not silent. Something moves beneath it. Something that never left.

Ash still lines the edges of the walls, smudged like fingerprints, like soot that remembers. The

warmth that lingers in the floor isn’t natural, it's not from firewood or ember. It’s from memory. This place hums with what it used to be. With what it still is.

I lower myself to my knees, the stone b