Ink and Ashes
London, 1887.
It was the kind of morning that clung to the skin—fog rolling thick off the Thames, the scent of coal smoke heavy in the air, and the ever-present chill of something older than cold. Gas lamps flickered in the gloom, glowing like half-remembered memories. To most, it was just another grey dawn in a city that never truly slept. But to Cassian Grey, it was a song—a ghostly lullaby sung by the bones of London’s underbelly.
Cassian stood outside the offices of The Herald & Oracle, coat collar turned up against the damp, cigarette dangling from his lips, ink-stained fingers curled around a leather-bound notebook. He’d been up all night again, chasing phantoms across the East End, coaxing stories out of drunks and graveyard keepers. His boots were still crusted with cemetery mud.
Thirty-two years old, with the bone structure of a romantic poet and the attitude of a man born thirty years too late for his own era, Cassian carried himself like he had nothing to prove. Sharp cheekbones, a straight nose, strong jaw—his features had an elegance to them, though always framed by the unruly fall of dark hair that never quite did what it was told. His eyes, the color of stormy seawater, missed nothing. People called them wolfish, or worse, haunted.
He liked that.
He flicked ash into the street and pushed through the door of the newspaper’s headquarters.
Inside, the world hummed with the chaos of industry. Linotype machines clattered. Editors shouted. Copyboys darted like frantic mice. Cassian cut through it all like a blade, ignoring everyone until he reached his corner desk in the dimmest part of the newsroom, tucked between the archives and the janitor’s closet.
“Vale!”
His editor’s voice—a nasal bark from across the floor. Cassian waved a dismissive hand without turning.
“You’re late.”
“By a paupers standards, I’m early,” Cassian muttered.
He sat, lit another cigarette, and pulled a sheet of paper from his satchel. The title, already written in bold ink:
THE VEIL THINS: THE ALDWYCH SPECTER RETURNS?
Cassian wrote about things no one else would. Things most editors laughed at until they realized the sales numbers. Ghosts. Curses. The inexplicable flicker in the corner of the eye. The Herald & Oracle had given him a column, mostly as a joke. He turned it into the most-read feature in three boroughs.
He typed with the ease of a man who knew his voice. Every word was crafted, elegant but biting. Beneath the wit and dramatic flair, there was a keen mind—a scholar of the arcane masquerading as a columnist.
“Another ghost story?” someone asked over his shoulder.
Cassian didn’t look up. “Ghosts are reliable. Unlike politics.”
The article took him an hour. It would take readers four minutes to consume and two days to debate. He liked that ratio.
By noon, he was back on the streets, wandering the city like it belonged to him.
Cassian had been fascinated by the unnatural since childhood.
He’d grown up the son of a failed theologian and a consumptive mother who read tarot between coughing fits. Books raised him more than people did. He found comfort in dusty libraries, catacombs of words and secrets. By twenty, he’d published a pamphlet titled Apparitions of the Industrial Age. By twenty-five, he’d been laughed out of academia for suggesting the supernatural deserved serious study.
So he made himself a home among the skeptics and scoundrels. He interviewed cultists, broke into mausoleums, spent nights with fortune-tellers and thieves. Every story had a grain of truth. Every myth had teeth.
The paranormal column wasn’t just a job. It was a mission.
London was old. Too old not to have ghosts.
That evening, after his article had gone to print, Cassian returned to his flat—a cramped third-story apartment above a cobbler’s shop in Whitechapel. It smelled perpetually of leather and smoke. He liked it. The windows overlooked a narrow alley where cats fought and lovers argued in the dark.
He lit candles. The glow softened the sharp lines of the room—books stacked haphazardly, maps pinned to the walls, a typewriter perched like a sleeping animal on his writing desk. He poured himself a brandy and sat in his armchair by the fire.
The paper arrived late.
He unfolded it eagerly, flipping to his column. The typeset looked clean. The edits minimal. Good.
He read it aloud, savoring his own words, pretending an audience sat at his feet.
“And so the specter of Aldwych returns again—sighted by a night watchman at two past three, gliding over the cobbles in a gown of moth-eaten lace. She leaves no footprints. No sound. Only a scent—lilies and something older, something rotten.”
He smiled to himself.
Then—
A sound at the window.
He paused.
The glass shivered, though there was no wind. The candles flickered once—twice—and then steadied. Cassian stood slowly, brandy in hand, and crossed the room.
There, on the outer sill, sat an envelope. Black as ink. No seal.
He opened the window and snatched it up, heart hammering. Looked both ways—empty alley. No footprints. No laughter. Nothing.
He unfolded the paper inside.
“You see more than you should. I think I’d like to meet you.”
There was no name. No address. Just the words—deliberate, sharp, teasing.
Cassian turned toward the window again.
And that was when he saw her.
She was standing at the end of the alley, where the shadows were deepest. Unmoving. Watching.
Pale as frost, draped in shadowed silks. Crimson lips. A figure of impossible elegance—unreal in the candlelight.
She didn’t speak. She only smiled.
And then, gracefully, she lifted one gloved hand and crooked a finger—beckoning.
Cassian’s breath caught.
Without thought, he grabbed his coat and dashed down the stairs, out into the damp night.
But when he reached the alley, she was already walking away, disappearing into the fog, her silhouette like a dream just out of reach.
Cassian stood in the mist, heart racing, letter still in hand.
He did not know her name. He only knew that she had found him.
And that she wanted to be found again.
