Chapter 5
I ripped off the court-ordered seals and shoved the heavy doors open. The air was thick with the acrid stench of char and decades-old mildew. I didn't bother with the lights. Relying on this impossible night vision, I made a beeline for the massive stone fireplace in the center of the ground-floor hall.
The ashes in the hearth still radiated a faint warmth from this morning. Dropping to my knees amid the wreckage, I pulled out a silver letter opener I’d swiped from the master suite and started digging like a madwoman. "The proof... it has to be down here..." I muttered, my fingers scraping against rough stones. Blood mixed with black soot, packing deep under my fingernails.
It was less than three hours until the 6:00 AM sweep. Less than five hours until I lost Lily. I couldn't lose. I absolutely refused to hand my daughter over to a cheating, lying, underworld-tied psychopath!
At about two feet down, my movements suddenly slowed. Not from exhaustion, but from an indescribable... resonance. My heart began to hammer out of control, each beat sounding like a war drum in my chest. My core temperature spiked, my silk blouse soaking through with sweat and clinging tight to my spine.
Then, the scent hit me. It wasn't the acrid reek of ash. It was an aggressive, intoxicating blend of cedarwood and the metallic tang of blood. It was the exact same scent that clung to Richard's overcoat!
"Hallucinations... it's just the psych-med withdrawal..." I gritted my teeth, forcing my hands to keep digging. But it felt too real. It was as if an invisible pair of hands was reaching up from deep underground, wrapping around mine with a gentleness that was utterly commanding. And then, that absurd vision flashed through my mind again.
*The snowfield. The bonfire. His calloused thumb stroking my wrist.* *"Eve, memorize this pulse..."*
"Get out of my head!" I snarled, driving the letter opener violently into the hardened, scorched earth. *Clink.* The silver blade struck something solid.
My pulse spiked. I tossed the blade aside and clawed at the surrounding ash with my bare hands. A half-charred wooden box emerged. Wait, no. Not wood. I leaned in, my pupils contracting sharply.
It was a cluster of animal ribs, half-carbonized and masterfully polished, bound together with dark crimson sinew to form an ancient vessel. And beneath the bone fragments lay several sheets of scorched, blood-bound vellum.
I carefully slid the vellum out. There was no modern print, no handwritten English. Instead, it was covered in dense, bizarre symbols painted in a dark crimson pigment. In the dim light, the symbols seemed alive, writhing and twisting in a way that made my eyes ache.
"Richard... what the hell are you into?" I slumped back onto the floor, gasping for air. My brain went into overdrive, desperately trying to rationalize the sheer absurdity in front of me.
Proof of an affair? No. This was psychological warfare! Yes, it had to be. Richard knew I was hunting for his dirt, so he deliberately buried these occult props in the fireplace. He’d paid top dollar to have these bones and blood-bound vellum custom-made, probably laced them with hallucinogens, just to gaslight me into thinking I was losing my mind! If I took this to family court, the judge would instantly declare me mentally unfit and award sole custody of Lily to him!
"Dirty tricks... that is so below the belt..." I trembled, tears spilling over again. "You're using dirty tricks like this, hitting below the belt just to drive me insane and win!" I clutched the vellum so tightly my nails nearly pierced my palms.
No, I couldn't give up. There had to be something else inside the bone vessel. A flash drive, microfilm, or even a receipt for the props! If I could just find one tangible, modern item, I could blow his little mind game wide open.
I threw myself back into the hearth, my hands moving like steel shovels through the scorched earth. My strength was terrifying; I was tearing through solid stones and brick rubble as if they were wet cardboard. I didn't have the bandwidth to question where this superhuman strength was coming from. My eyes were locked on the bottomless pit. "Come out... give it to me!"
The hole grew deeper, hitting the bedrock beneath the hearth. The scent of cedar and blood was now so thick it was drowning me. My heart pounded faster, and a low, beast-like panting seemed to echo right in my ears.
"It's right down here..." I whispered, grabbing a stiff-bristled brush nearby to gently sweep away the final thick layer of ash. As the bristles cleared the dirt, a flash of stark white was exposed. Not a wall safe. Not a flash drive. A single, charred finger bone.
My breath hitched. My hands shook as I sped up, brushing away the ash. The dirt flaked off, and a complete skeleton, curled in a bizarre, tightly coiled posture, slowly emerged from the earth.
The skeleton was massive—even hunched over, it radiated a suffocating, oppressive aura. Its skull was bowed low, as if fiercely guarding whatever was clutched to its chest. And hanging from its cervical vertebra was an unburnt, dark-gold pendant. I leaned in. It was a crest featuring a wolf howling at the sky, its eyes inlaid with two fine ruby shards.
The Sterling family crest! "No... impossible..." I scrambled backward, my back slamming hard against the stone wall of the fireplace. Richard had hidden a corpse wearing his own family crest under the floorboards of the old manor? This was murder! He wasn't just cheating; he was a killer!
Fighting the violent churning in my stomach, I forced myself to lean back in. The skeleton's right hand was tightly clutching something. Taking a deep breath, I reached out with trembling fingers and gently pried apart the carbonized bones.
*Clack.* A black stone tablet—neither metal nor jade—dropped into my palm. Carved into the stone was a single line of ancient text, painted in dried blood. I had never studied that language in my life, yet the moment my eyes hit it, my brain automatically translated the meaning.
*By my blood, I bind my soul. I love Evelia, until death parts us.*
Evelia. That wasn't my name. But deep in my soul, a voice was screaming: *That’s you! That is you!*
