The Pyre of Memory
Chapter 3: The Pyre of Memory
The wind carried the acrid scent of ash and something deeper—
a bitter perfume of ruin—
as Reyna stepped through the crumbling gates of Virell Manor.
Once her sanctuary.
Now a skeleton.
Burned beams jutted skyward like broken ribs.
Stone scorched black.
The walls still wept soot.
The vibrant garden she once tended with laughter and lazy mornings…
had withered into twisted stems.
The soil beneath them cracked and smoldering.
Every step crunched beneath her boots—
shattered glass,
fragments of bone,
and brittle shards of memory.
She stopped at the front steps.
Something in the soot caught her eye.
Color.
A charred family portrait.
Cracked.
Half-buried.
Last Christmas.
Callan's steady smile.
Lyra in her red holiday dress, frosting on her cheeks.
And Reyna—
radiant, laughing, blind to the coming storm.
She knelt slowly.
Her fingers brushed the ash from the frame, trembling.
The heat from the fire still seemed to pulse from the picture.
Then—
with a sharp breath—
she let it fall.
Glass.
Shattered.
Silence.
Screamed.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
The nursery was a grave.
A warped crib hunched in the corner.
Bars twisted like a broken cage.
A melted wooden horse slumped to the side.
And beside it—
Lyra's stuffed bear.
Half-burned.
Fur gritty with soot.
Reyna picked it up.
It was warm.
Not from fire—
but memory.
The bear's head lolled.
One button eye gone.
The other stared into an empty future.
She held it.
Just for a moment.
Then set it down.
Gently.
No tears came.
Her eyes, dry and burning,
had nothing left to give.
Grief had calcified into something harder.
Sharper.
There was no room now for the soft grace of sorrow.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
The master bedroom.
A skeletal outline of intimacy.
She sat on the edge of the burned bedframe.
Ash soaked through her clothes.
Her fingers curled into what was left of the scorched blanket.
Her breath trembled.
> "If anything happens, Rey…
There's a vault beneath the floorboards.
Our future... it's there."
Callan's voice.
A ghost.
Whispering through dust.
She dropped to her knees.
Tore at the floorboards with bleeding hands.
Splinters sliced her palms.
Wood groaned beneath her fury.
Finally—
it gave.
An iron lockbox.
Dark. Solid.
Etched with the Virell crest.
Still whole.
She opened it.
Air escaped—
stale, metallic, old.
Inside:
• Gold coins, still gleaming
• Letters of passage, thick with wax and promise
• Maps—ancient, detailed
• Deeds to lost properties
• A journal—Callan's handwriting. Steady. Familiar. Quietly alive.
And at the bottom…
wrapped in dark cloth:
His saber.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
She unwrapped it slowly.
The blade caught the dim light.
Untouched.
Untarnished.
Alive.
She lifted it.
The hilt molded to her grip—
like it remembered her.
Callan never said where it came from.
Only that it was special.
And now,
it was hers.
She stood.
The weight of it—
reassuring.
Steady.
A new spine for her grief.
She looked into the polished steel…
and saw a stranger:
Eyes hollow but burning.
Hair matted with ash.
Face carved by grief.
But unbroken.
> "I'll rise," she whispered to the woman in the blade.
"I'll burn the world if I must.
I'll find her.
I'll make them pay."
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
Everything would go.
The Virell name.
The rings.
The silverware.
The titles.
She would sell it all.
All but the blade.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
By dusk, she stood on the cliffs above Port Damaya.
Behind her—
Virell Manor burned.
This time,
by her hand.
Not a tragedy.
A funeral pyre.
For everything she had loved.
For the woman who once believed the world could be kind.
The flames devoured her past,
casting long, hungry shadows over the sea.
> "Callan... Lyra…"
She whispered their names.
A final spell.
A goodbye.
Then turned her back to the blaze.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
At dawn, she walked barefoot down the cliff road.
Her clothes—singed.
Her hands—bled.
But she was alive.
And reborn.
Not Lady Virell.
Not a widow.
Not a victim.
Reyna Amara Delacruz.
And soon…
the world would remember her name.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───