Chapter 2 - The Breath of the Dragon
The heat inside the mansion was unlike anything Elena had ever experienced;
it was a physical weight that pressed against her chest,
threatening to crush the very breath out of her lungs.
The grand staircase,
once a masterpiece of polished mahogany,
was now a ladder of tongues,
licking at the ceiling and raining down embers like a hailstorm of gold.
She tore off her flower-dusted apron and wrapped it around her face,
soaking it with the spilled water from a fallen vase in the hallway.
"Nathaniel!"
she screamed,
but the sound was swallowed by the groaning of the structural beams and the shattering of the stained-glass windows.
She knew the layout of the house better than anyone,
having spent three years memorizing every corner,
every creak in the floorboards,
and every secret shadow.
She pushed through the heavy oak doors of the gallery,
her skin screaming as the temperature rose,
feeling the hair on her arms singe as she darted past a burning tapestry.
The smoke was a thick,
black curtain that blinded her,
forcing her to drop to her hands and knees,
crawling along the floor where the air was marginally cooler.
She remembered the study was at the end of the long corridor,
past the library where he had once told her that her humming was the only thing that felt alive.
Her fingers touched something cold and metallic—a fallen brass lamp—and she used it to guide her way,
her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
Finally,
she reached the study door,
but it was jammed,
the frame warped by the intense heat of the surrounding fire.
She threw her shoulder against the wood,
ignoring the sharp pain that shot through her arm,
crying out his name until her voice was nothing more than a rasp.
Inside,
she could hear a heavy thud,
the sound of a man struggling to breathe,
struggling to fight a battle that he was clearly losing.
With a final,
desperate surge of strength,
she kicked the door until the lock gave way,
stumbling into a room filled with a thick,
swirling mist of ash and terror.
Nathaniel was slumped over his desk,
his hand still clutching the old photograph he touched every morning,
his face pale and covered in a fine layer of gray soot.
He had been overcome by the carbon monoxide,
his body giving up even as his spirit tried to hold onto the only memory that mattered.
Elena grabbed him by the shoulders,
pulling his dead weight onto the floor,
her vision blurring as the smoke began to claim her as well.
"Not yet,"
she whispered,
pressing her damp apron against his mouth,
"you are not allowed to leave this world in the dark."
She began to drag him,
inch by agonizing inch,
May you like
back toward the hallway,
while the ceiling above them began to moan in a way that signaled the end of the Ashford legacy.
