Chapter 25: Beneath the Ashes
The old town hadn’t changed much since Ela last saw it, yet everything felt different.
The buildings were still lined with fading signs and weather-beaten paint. The same crooked lamppost on Main Street leaned slightly toward the sidewalk, as if time itself had bent it. Even the air smelled the same—a mix of pine, soil, and distant smoke from chimneys burning into early autumn.
But it wasn’t the place that was different.
It was Ela.
She had returned not as a confused child but as a woman determined to uncover truths long buried.
She stood beside Stuart outside the gates of what remained of her childhood home—a blackened shell of a house, now nothing more than crumbled brick, soot, and overgrown weeds.
A yellowed “No Trespassing” sign hung loosely from t
