Chapter 19: The Aftermath

"In ashes, in silence, in bloom."

The morning after Lucian died, the sun rose red.

I watched it from the cliffside, barefoot, my hands still stained with dirt and petals. The villa loomed behind me, a skeleton of what once was—a monument to madness and beauty.

I didn't look back at it.

Not once.

I let the waves crash below.

Let the salt sting my eyes.

Let the ghosts whisper from the walls.

But I didn't go back inside.

I lit the match at exactly 6:17 a.m.

That was the time he'd first whispered my name in the dark—months ago, in the villa basement, arranging lilies around a corpse like it was a lover.

The match hissed.

The fire caught on the curtains, then the floorboards, then the bed.

Everything we'd built—every painting, every flower, every memory—went up in smoke.

I didn't cry.

Not this time.

I walked away as the flames reached the glass ceiling, shattering it with a sound like thunder.

By the time I reached the edge of the forest, the villa was just a glow on the horizon.

A dying star.

The last echo of a twisted constellation we created together.

The city didn't notice I was gone.

No headlines. No missing reports. No questions.

The world kept turning, indifferent and blind.

Just the way I needed it to.

I checked into a nameless motel by the edge of the highway. Paid in cash. Gave a fake name.

I stared at the ceiling that night, the walls pressing in around me like the past. And still—I didn't sleep.

But I didn't dream, either.

There was just silence.

And silence, finally, felt like peace.

Lucian's book disappeared from shelves a week later.

Pulled. Burned. Forgotten.

But not erased.

Because I still had one copy.

The pages are filled with his photographs.

But between them, I began to see something else:

Me.

My reflection.

My legacy.

My warning.

Now, when I walk the streets, I don't look like a detective.

I don't look like a killer.

I look like someone you'd pass without a second glance.

That's how I want it.

Because monsters don't always hide in the shadows.

Sometimes, they hide in plain sight.

Sometimes, they look like me.

I keep one thing with me now.

Pressed between the pages of his book:

A single black rose.

It's not real.

It never was.

But it reminds me of him. Of what I lost.

Of what I was always afraid to become.

Of what I became anyway.