The map of grief was carved in silence.
We stood at the outskirts of the city—no longer Vullum, not truly. Here, the fog turned from a veil to a shroud, clinging to every crumbling pillar like breath on a crypt's mouth. The air changed, too—sharper, older, as though memory itself had settled in the soil and refused to rot. Beneath our feet, the past murmured.
The path had taken us weeks to trace. The bodies. The glyphs. Each marked in a language too old for the Council to understand and too familiar for me to ignore. They formed no random sprawl. They traced a circle. And at the heart of that circle—at the exact, bleeding center—lay the grave I never visited.
My family's estate.
Or what remained of it.
The iron gate groaned in recognition as we pushed through. It was overgrown now, ivy clawing at the stone like it wanted to swallow every memory clean. I almost let it. The manor, or what was left, was little more than bones and breathless echoes: skeletal walls reaching toward a sun that never returned, gnarled wood bleached silver by time, stained-glass teeth shattered into the soil.
I felt Dorian watching me. He said nothing.
He'd learned, somehow—despite his sharp tongue, despite his need to fill silence with sarcasm—that when it came to this place, I needed the quiet more than I needed comfort.
I stepped over the threshold.
And the earth remembered me.
Glyphs sparked faintly beneath my boots—old, worn, faint like bruises healing—but still there. Still waiting.
The chapel sat behind the estate, underground. Always hidden. Always colder than it should be. When I was young, I used to call it the mouth of God, though I never said whose god it belonged to.
The stairs down had caved in places. Dorian helped me climb. His hand at my back was steady. He didn't ask why I trembled. He didn't ask why I kept looking over my shoulder, as if I expected the white-veiled figure to be standing there again.
Somehow, the door was open.
The chapel hadn't changed.
The air was thick with mildew and wax and something sourer—like iron, like blood. The stone walls were choked in ivy and symbols, many of which matched the ones carved into my arms and back. But some were new. Recently drawn. And not in ink.
The candles flickered in the gloom. Some had long been spent, curled into melted ghosts. Others were fresh, their flames greedy. They cast shadows that danced across the cracked pews and altar like things with too many limbs.
And on that altar… was the book.
Wrapped in red velvet. Bound with silver thread.
My breath caught.
I didn't want to move.
Dorian did it for me. He crossed the threshold as if it meant nothing, walked to the altar, unwrapped the book. I expected him to flinch. He didn't. He turned the cover like it was any other case file. But his silence changed. Tightened.
He read aloud, voice low.
"We begin again.
You and I.
As it should have been."
He turned the book toward me.
At the bottom of the page, written in slanted script I had once traced with my fingers, was a name.
Cassian.
I stared at it like a wound reopened. The room swam. I thought I might break.
But then Dorian said, quietly, "Do you want me to leave?"
I looked at him. His hair was unkempt, tangled from rain. His coat was damp at the cuffs. He looked tired. And beautiful. And real.
I shook my head.
And I did something I hadn't done since the ritual failed ten years ago.
I took off my glove.
The air kissed my palm. Cold. Alive.
I reached for his hand.
He hesitated only a moment—then offered it to me.
Skin to skin.
The touch was nothing like before.
No flood. No chaos. Just… warmth. Anchoring. Like our ghosts had been waiting on opposite sides of a cracked mirror, and now—just now—they reached through.
I didn't collapse.
I breathed.
And for the first time in what felt like centuries, I felt something other than shame.
He blinked, brow furrowed. "That's it?"
I laughed—soft and bitter.
"No," I whispered. "That's everything."
The moment passed, but something in its wake lingered. Not pain, not chaos—just stillness. I hadn't known my mind could hold still until now.
Dorian was the first to pull away, but not in a cruel way. More like a man who had just set down a relic too sacred to keep holding.
"I didn't see anything," he murmured, looking down at his fingers as if expecting them to glow. "No screams. No sorrow. Just... you."
His voice betrayed him. It was too steady.
"That's because I didn't show you," I said. "I could have. I didn't."
He nodded once, slowly, and closed the book between us.
"Cassian," he said, tone sharpening. "Who is he?"
I leaned against the stone wall behind me. The moss was damp, but I didn't care. "He was… a boy. When I was young. My only friend. My only... person."
"Is he the one who tried to stop the ritual?"
I hesitated.
The truth curled inside my ribs like a sleeping beast. "He's the one who interrupted it. It wasn't supposed to go wrong. I was meant to become a Heartbinder—whatever that really meant. I think my family hoped it would stabilize the gift. Seal the fractures."
"And he tried to save you."
"No," I said, voice dropping to a hush. "He tried to keep me."
Dorian's eyes flicked to mine, sharp and unreadable. "Explain."
I stepped toward the altar and unwrapped the velvet again, revealing the book's spine, cracked and lined with silver thread like veins. The script was still Cassian's, but messier than I remembered. Desperate.
"He wanted to rewrite it even back then. Said the original rite was cruel, that binding me to power was just another way of keeping me in chains. But his version..." I trailed off, flipping to a page marked with a sliver of dried lily. "His version wasn't a release. It was possession."
Dorian's brow furrowed. "What's the purpose of this ritual, really?"
I traced the symbol etched into the page. It matched the one burned beneath my left shoulder blade.
"Heartbinders don't just read emotion," I said. "They become conduits. Between the living and the dead. Between memory and intention. That's why my family kept the rite secret—too many ways to twist it. With the right blood, the right glyphs, and enough grief, you could use it to reshape a person's very soul."
"And you think Cassian is trying to... what? Re-bind you? Make you a weapon?"
"No," I said. "I think he wants to finish what we started. But not to help me. He wants to tether us. Soul to soul. No walls. No boundaries."
Dorian exhaled slowly, watching me. "And the murders?"
I flipped to another page, this one fresh, ink still glistening like oil in candlelight. "Each one follows the structure of a cleansing rite. Emotions made into offerings. Grief. Devotion. Shame. It's not just random. He's building toward something. And it's centered around me."
Dorian turned away, his face unreadable in the low light.
"You should have told me sooner," he said.
"You would have run."
He didn't deny it.
Silence fell between us again. Not empty—but full of things we didn't know how to say.
Finally, Dorian stepped forward. His voice was quieter now, less barbed. "What happens if he finishes the rite?"
I looked down at my bare hand. "Then I won't be Lenora anymore. I'll be... us."
His jaw tensed.
"No," he said. "No, we're not going to let that happen."
I raised an eyebrow. "We?"
He gave me a look. "Don't get used to it."
I smiled faintly. "Wouldn't dream of it."
He turned back to the chapel, to the candles, to the echoing silence that pressed in like a storm.
"Let's find out what else he left behind," he said.
So we stayed. And searched. And for the first time, we were no longer just haunted things drifting toward each other in the dark.
We were something else now.
We were choosing not to be alone.
We returned under cover of fog, the night pressing in with a breathless quiet that felt too deliberate. Vullum always breathed like something asleep and rotting—but this time, it watched.
The streets were emptier than usual, even for a city built on ghosts. No open shutters. No night vendors. Just the slow drip of rain off rusted gutters and the hiss of carriage wheels that kept to shadows.
It wasn't until we reached Deadlight Square that I noticed the lilies.
They were tucked into shutters, laid at doorsteps, even braided into the gate of my apothecary. Spider lilies. Too many of them. Their color more violent than beautiful—red like something torn open.
"Charming," Dorian muttered, eyeing the nearest bouquet as if it might bite.
"They weren't here when we left," I said softly, brushing a finger over one bloom. Its petals trembled. "Someone wanted me to see this."
Dorian scanned the rooftops, his jaw set like stone. "A threat?"
I shook my head. "A welcome."
We entered the shop in silence. It smelled of dried herbs and rose vinegar, but under that was something else—burnt wax. I moved instinctively toward the shelf near the counter. One candle was missing. A black one, infused with elder bark and sage root.
I never sold it. Never lit it. It was a relic from the ritual days. A signal flame.
Dorian followed my gaze. "What was it for?"
"Summoning," I said. "Or warning."
"Lovely."
I exhaled through the cloth of my mask, peeling off my gloves. "We'll need to lay low. The Council won't wait much longer to act. We've stayed one step ahead, but we're nearly out of steps."
Dorian leaned against the edge of my counter, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"You've done all this before," he said.
I froze, fingers hovering over a jar of lavender.
"What?"
He didn't blink. "The way you talk. The way you move. Like someone who's already lost the fight once."
"I have."
My voice was smaller than I intended. And truer.
Before he could respond, a knock echoed from the door. Not sharp. Not urgent. A slow, deliberate tap. Once. Then again. Then silence.
Dorian's hand went to the small blade hidden in his coat.
"I'll get it," I said.
He moved with me anyway.
I opened the door.
No one stood there.
Only a lily. Fresh. Red. And beneath it—tucked carefully into a fold of gauze—a sliver of white porcelain.
A piece of a mask.
Mouthless.
The breath of the chapel hung in the air, still and damp. The moment their fingers touched had passed—quietly, impossibly—but neither of them moved yet.
My glove dangled from my wrist like shed skin.
Dorian's hand stayed in mine, rougher than I expected, warmer too. He hadn't pulled away. I hadn't collapsed. The silence between us deepened, heavy with meaning neither of us knew how to name.
But it didn't last.
"Lenora," Dorian said, eyes flicking to the altar. "There's more."
I followed his gaze.
The velvet-bound book—the one with Cassian's maddening handwriting—rested open, pages fluttering in a breeze that didn't exist. But behind the altar, something else glinted faintly: a sigil carved into the stone itself. Fresh. Still damp around the edges.
I stepped toward it slowly, every movement deliberate.
It was a heart—but not like any I'd seen in medical texts. Stylized. Twisting vines emerging from its veins, spider lilies blooming from the aorta. Around it, a spiral of glyphs too old to be Council-approved. Some I recognized from my own skin. Others… others felt like the memory of pain.
"It's a mirror," I whispered.
Dorian joined me, squinting at the symbols. "You mean the design?"
"No," I said. "It's meant to reflect me. My rite. But this is… wrong. It's inverted."
"Inverted how?"
"Mine was meant to bind—to stabilize. This is made to… break open."
Dorian's expression shifted. "You think Cassian is trying to unbind you?"
"I think he already has." My voice trembled, and I hated it. "Piece by piece."
Behind us, the candles flared.
Dorian turned instinctively, stepping in front of me.
A gust of air swept through the chapel—no wind, no breath. Just movement. The candles sputtered, some dying, some relighting in bursts of violet-blue flame.
And the book slammed shut on the altar.
We both froze.
A hush settled. Deeper than silence. As if the stone itself were holding its breath.
"Don't," I whispered, when Dorian stepped forward again. "Not yet."
He looked at me over his shoulder. "Then when?"
"When we're sure we're not waking something."
He exhaled through his nose, running a hand through his hair.
"We need to take the book," he said. "We'll study it, translate it—"
"No," I said sharply. "It stays."
"Lenora—"
"It stays, Dorian." I turned toward him, chest tight. "If it's tied to the rite, moving it might finish what Cassian started. Or worse—let him finish it from afar."
The look in his eyes flickered. Annoyance, yes—but under that: worry. For me.
"I hate how much sense that makes," he muttered.
I allowed myself a breath. "We'll photograph what we can. Then leave."
He nodded, reaching for the camera in his coat. As he clicked the shutter, the flash lit the chapel in stark white light.
And for one instant—less than a second—I saw a shape standing in the farthest corner.
Pale. Shrouded.
Watching.
Then the light was gone.
I blinked. The corner was empty.
But the scent that lingered chilled me: crushed lilies, and burnt wax.
I couldn't look away from the corner. Even when Dorian moved closer to the altar again, mumbling about shutter speed and exposure, I kept my eyes fixed on the place where the figure had been.
No footprints. No sound. But the smell still lingered.
Lilies and burnt wax.
"What's wrong?" Dorian asked, lowering the camera. He didn't have to follow my gaze. He already knew.
"Something was here," I whispered.
His shoulders tensed. "Here… or watching?"
I didn't answer.
Because something inside me had shifted. Not just fear. Something else. A pulse beneath the glyphs on my arms—like ink heating under skin.
"I don't like this place," I said. "I know it's mine, I know it's family, but it feels…"
"Borrowed," Dorian offered. "Like someone else has claimed it?"
I nodded.
I turned from the corner, letting instinct lead my steps behind the altar and around to the crumbled side wall. My fingers traced the edge of the stone—worn smooth, but one brick didn't feel right. Too cold. Too smooth.
I pressed it.
A soft click.
And then—stone grinding against stone.
Dorian stepped back as part of the wall slid away, revealing a narrow passage descending even deeper. The air that rose from it was colder, wet with earth and rot.
"Nope," he said. "Absolutely not."
I looked at him.
He sighed. "You're going in first, aren't you?"
"Unless you want to hold the flashlight."
He swore under his breath but followed me anyway, the light trembling slightly in his hand as we moved into the passage.
The corridor narrowed the deeper we went. Carvings along the walls grew more erratic—scratches, not etched glyphs. Desperate. Clawed.
At the end of the tunnel, we emerged into a small chamber.
It was circular. Vaulted. The ceiling carved with a spider lily that took up the entire dome—petals stained crimson with what I hoped wasn't blood.
In the center: a stone plinth. Empty.
"No book?" Dorian said.
"No body," I added. "This was meant to hold something sacred."
"Or dangerous."
He shined the light along the wall. It caught on something—painted text, half-washed away by time. But one line remained.
In the old tongue.
I stepped closer. Reading it aloud felt like inhaling ice.
"The Heart remembers even when the body burns."
A silence followed. Neither of us spoke.
Then Dorian said, "Lenora… your estate didn't just burn, did it?"
"No," I whispered. "It was cleansed."
We stood in that chamber for a long moment, breathing in the air of secrets and ash.
Then Dorian reached into his coat and took something out—a folded piece of paper. A Council message.
"I didn't want to show you this yet," he said. "They've posted a new watchlist."
"And?"
He handed it to me.
My name was at the top.
And next to it—an image sketched in charcoal.
Not of me.
Of the Mourner in White.
"Someone's playing a very old game," Dorian said. "And I think it's just starting."
I looked up at the spider lily carved into the ceiling.
And I felt it bloom inside me.