Chapter 4 THE NAMELESS GRAVE.

The sky was a blanket of gray when we reached Ashthorne Cemetery. Wind pushed low fog along the gravestones, curling around the iron gates like it had a mind of its own. I stood just outside, staring past the rows of marble and decay, to the far side where the mausoleums stood-silent, crumbling, watching.

"That one," Jerry said, pointing. "Third from the left. No name. No date. Just a seal."

He was right. The mausoleum looked older than the rest, its stone face weathered and discolored, the entrance blocked with iron bars that had rusted together. Vines coiled across its surface like veins.

We made our way there in silence, boots crunching over wet leaves and gravel. Aunt Helena's warning echoed in my head: "That's where they bury what they don't want found".

I gripped Rowan's notebook tighter in my coat pocket.

A cracked stone path led to the mausoleum. As we approached, I noticed the same twin-flame symbol carved faintly into the lintel above the arch. Time had almost erased it - but not quite. The symbol stared back, as if mocking us for noticing.

Jerry reached into his satchel and pulled out a crowbar.

"You came prepared," I muttered.

He gave a wry smile. "I knew you'd come here with or without me."

It took several tries, but we managed to try open a narrow gap between the iron bars - just enough to slip through one at a time. Inside, the air was thick with dust and something else-something faintly sweet and rotten.

The walls were bare, no names, no plaques. Just six stone slots carved into the walls. Five were sealed.

One wasn't.

Jerry lifted his flashlight. The beam cut across the room to the open niche. There was a wooden box inside. Small. Weathered. Splintered along the edges.

I stepped forward. My breath echoed in the silence.

The moment my fingers touched the box, the air changed-grew colder, heavier. I opened it slowly.

Inside were artifacts-pieces of a story that refused to stay buried.

A girl's silver ring. A broken locket. A folded piece of fabric with scorch marks. And at the bottom, a sealed envelope addressed in looping scrip.

To the one who watches.

I opened it with trembling fingers.

If you have found this, then the fire did not silence you. My name is Lenora Vale. They think I died. They were wrong.

The Ember Circle is more than a cult. They are a legacy. An inheritance soaked in fire and silence. I watched them burn the truth, but truth has a way of crawling through the ashes.

You must go where the fire began. Beneath the archives. Beneath memory. That is where they built the heart of the Circle.

My heart pounded.

Lenora Vale-our grandmother. The woman we were told died decades ago.

I showed Jerry the letter. His face darkened.

"Your family was never just caught in this," he said. "They were at the center of it."We didn't speak as we left the cemetery. The fog had thickened, curling around our ankles like it wanted to hold us back.

Back at the house, I spread everything we'd found on the kitchen table: the flame pin, Rowan's notebook, Lenora's letter, the locket, the burnt cloth. Aunt Helena stood behind me, silent.

When she finally spoke, her voice cracked.

"I thought she was dead."

"You knew her?"

"She was my mother," Aunt Helena said. "Your grandmother. But I never saw that letter. I never knew what she was part of. She disappeared when I was sixteen. They said she died in a fire. Another one."

"Who said?" I asked.

Aunt Helena shook her head. "The town. The whispers. I didn't question it. I didn't know how."

I looked at the map Rowan had drawn-the one we'd dismissed at first as childhood fantasy. A series of tunnels. A star marked beneath the old archive building.

"She said that's where the heart of the Circle is," I murmured.

"The archive's been abandoned for years," Jerry said. "Condemned. The fire in 2001 ruined most of it."

"Exactly," I replied. "What if that fire wasn't just an accident either?"

Jerry leaned over the map. "If we go, we go carefully. If there's a heart to this thing, it'll be guarded. Even now."

Aunt Helena pulled a photo album from the shelf. Dust flew as she set it down. She flipped through the pages until she found one-an old black-and-white photo of a woman standing in front of the archive. Lenora.

"She always said history had teeth," Aunt Helena whispered. "I thought it was a metaphor."That night, I couldn't sleep. I sat in Rowan's old bedroom, the journal open beside me. I traced her words, imagined her voice, imagined her fear.

The Ember Circle didn't just kill her.

They tried to erase her.

But she'd left a trail.

And I was following.

Outside, the wind howled against the house. I went to the window. Across the field, at the edge of the woods, a figure stood watching.

Still. Unmoving.

I didn't look away.

This time, neither did they.

The watchers weren't just ghosts.

They were waiting.

We descended the steps slowly, flashlight bobbing ahead of us like a lighthouse in a storm. The basement was cluttered but dry.

A box. Wooden. Charred on one corner.

Aunt Helena opened the box and found a cassette.

"Play me" this was written on it.

She found an old tape deck and inserted the cassette.

It clicked. Then static.

Then a voice.

Distorted. Male. Familiar.

"You've started it again, Seraphine. Just like your mother. The fire never forgets."

Click.

Silence.

Aunt Helena turned to me. "What the hell was that?"

"I think," I said slowly, the chill of dread creeping into my bones, "that was Matthew."

"But he's... "

"Missing," I interrupted. "Not dead."

We stood in the basement, the tape still spinning in the machine, and the weight of the truth pressed down like smoke.

Somewhere, someone wanted me to find this. And they weren't finished yet.

And I wasn't done running.