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??What Was Buried Beneath Her Name

Ember

We pulled up to the house I used to call home, and for a moment, it felt like the air itself held its breath, like even the ghosts were waiting for me to knock.

The trees still rose like skeletal fingers against a gray sky. The wind still carried that faint, sour-sweet scent of rotting apples and earth. But the moment I stepped onto the property, my chest tightened.

It wasn’t nostalgia. It was something heavier. Like a memory lodged in the ribs, pulsing with old magic.

I hadn’t been back since the night I lost her.

My mother.

After the funeral, I was placed with a distant cousin I barely knew, strict, cold, and more interested in rules than grief.

I bounced between foster homes after that, never staying long, always running when things got too quiet.

Fifteen years of moving, hiding, surviving… Trying to forget the blood-soaked memory that never really let me go

And now, I was here to tear open the grave she’d tried to leave behind.

Dorian walked beside me, silent but solid. He hadn’t touched me since we arrived. He didn’t need to. His presence was enough. And right now, I needed that tether more than I cared to admit.

Because this wasn’t just about the past. This was about who I was becoming.

The house rose from the fog like a wound. The white siding was gray now, chipped and cracked. The front porch groaned under my step. When I reached for the door, it opened without resistance.

Like it knew I was coming home.

Inside, everything was dust and silence.

I passed the couch where I curled up with storybooks, the hallway where I used to chase shadows pretending they were monsters. Now, I knew better.

They were never pretend.

And the monsters were real.

I stopped at the basement door. I could feel it, The Hollow Orchard.

How could I not have known it was here? All this time, buried beneath the place where my life began… and ended.

It was sealed shut, not with locks, but with runes. Bloody-red ones etched into the wood. They pulsed when I placed my palm against them.

“She said only blood,” I whispered, almost to myself.

Dorian stepped forward. “Yours.”

I nodded, and with a shaky breath, I pressed my finger to the edge of a broken nail and dragged it across my palm. The pain was sharp, bright.

The moment my blood touched the wood, the runes ignited, then burned away in a flare of crimson light.

The door groaned open. Cold air rushed up the stairs. And then I remembered, this wasn’t just a house. It was her sanctuary.

Her shield.

Her secret.

I descended slowly. Each step was its own heartbeat.

At the bottom, the air shifted. The basement was no longer just cement and boxes. It’s alive with magic. There were candles, unlit, and a massive circle carved into the stone floor. Glyphs surrounded it.

My mother’s handwriting.

And in the center… a mirror. Shrouded in black cloth.

I stepped toward it, fingers trembling. Something inside me began to hum. A vibration in my chest, my bones, my blood.

I peeled the cloth back.

And I saw her.

Not a reflection. Not me.

Her.

My mother. Young. Alive. Dressed in her Watcher robes. Her eyes locked onto mine, sharp, knowing.

“Ember,” her voice said, not a recording. Not static. A spell. “If you’ve found this… then the Veil has begun to tear. And you are no longer just my daughter.”

The image flickered.

“You are the bridge. The flame. The judgment they feared.”

I staggered back, the mirror pulsing.

Flashes flooded through me, too fast to hold. Too sharp to forget.

Me, standing in a ring of fire, power pouring from my fingertips. Me, screaming as the sky tore open and shadow spilled through. Me, kneeling beside a dying Dorian, my hands covered in blood and light.

I choked on air.

“She locked your birth behind a sigil,” Dorian said softly. “To hide what you were. And what you still are.”

“What am I?” I breathed.

He stepped beside me, his voice reverent. “You’re not just a Watcher.” He reached out, placing my hand over the glyph at the mirror’s base. “You’re the Watcher of the Veil . You keep the balance between both worlds.”

The second my palm touched it, the circle flared. The mirror cracked, not violently, but with purpose. The glyphs on the floor spun, and the room began to shake.

Power, my power, awakened in my blood like a rising tide.

I dropped to my knees, gasping. I could feel it blooming in me, tearing through the walls I didn’t know were there.

And then… I heard her again.

“You must choose, Ember. What comes through. What is kept out. And what must burn.”

The vision faded. But something inside me didn’t.

I rose slowly, every part of me buzzing, alive, aware. I turned to Dorian, my voice steady for the first time in days. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

He looked at me like I’d become something holy. Something terrifying. Something real . “I know,” he said. “You finally see what I’ve seen all along.”

And in that moment, I understood.

I wasn’t meant to follow a path.

I was meant to forge it.