Where a House Fell, A War Begins
The dawn is cruelly gentle.Where Holloway Manor once loomed all poison secrets and piano screams now lies nothing but smoldering ruin. Wild grass curls in the ash, braving the steam rising from broken brick.
Lila stands barefoot at the heart of the ruin, a tattered shawl clinging to her shoulders. Rain still drips from her hair. Her lips taste like salt and soot.
She presses a hand to the earth where the piano once anchored every lie.
Beneath her palm, she imagines she can still feel Theo's heartbeat not ghost-pale, but living, defiant, flawed.
"Never again," she whispers into the ruin's smolder.Not to the house the house is dead.To herself.
2️⃣ The Grave with No Stone
A mile from the ruin lies an old orchard, neglected but untouched by the Collector's rot. Here, under a crooked pear tree, she buries what's left of him: not bones there were none, not anymore but scraps of sheet music scorched at the edges, the final keys she pried from the collapsed piano.
She kneels in the wet soil until her skirts cling to her knees.
Above her, clouds clot the sky. Thunder rumbles like a curse spat too late.
"Everyone thinks you were just a boy who loved music too much," she says to the fresh mound of earth."But I know the truth, Theo. You were a god among insects. And they feasted on you."
Her hands tremble. She digs her nails into the dirt until blood wells under each nail.
"They will not sleep, Theo. Not while I breathe."
3️⃣ Gathering Her Scattered Self
She staggers back to what shelter remains: a toolshed half-rotted under ivy at the orchard's edge.
Inside, she finds rags, old lanterns, a cracked mirror. She lights the lantern and sits cross-legged before the glass.
For the first time, she sees herself without the house's illusions:
Her eyes, ringed in shadow but sharp as knives.
Her ink-stained fingers no longer a victim's mark, but a witch's brand.
Her lips, chapped but curled in something almost like a snarl.
She whispers to her reflection, tasting the word for the first time:
"Vengeance."
She tests it again, louder:"Vengeance."
The orchard wind rattles the shed's boards in approval.
4️⃣ A Map of Names
When the storm quiets, she ransacks the manor's debris for anything unburned.
By dawn, she has a hoard:
Ledgers marked with secret payments.
Letters between wealthy patrons and the Collector's human agents.
Promises scribbled by other desperate artists musicians, painters, poets who thought they were signing a muse's kiss and instead sold their blood.
She spreads them on the dirt floor of the shed like a general drafting battle plans.
Theo's name appears over and over, like a refrain too stubborn to die.
She drags her fingers through the ink until it stains her palms black.
"They will know you were worth more than their applause," she says.
5️⃣ A Visitor at Dusk
On the third night, Vincent finds her there.
He stands at the shed door, hair plastered to his forehead, boots caked in ruin-mud.
"You should run far from here, Lila," he says. His voice is that of a man who has killed his brother and spent too many nights begging God not to dream it again.
She doesn't look up from her maps.
"Why?"
"They'll come for you now. The next patrons. The other devils. You think the Collector was the only serpent in this garden?"
She smiles a thin cut across her face.
"Let them come. I am done hiding in corridors and time loops."
Vincent's sigh rattles his ribs. He steps inside, sits beside her, and for a moment is only her co-conspirator, not the man who pulled the trigger that doomed everything.
"Then at least let me stand with you," he says.
She shakes her head. "You already paid your debt, Vincent. Go and live. Far away."
He hesitates. Then he kisses her temple not a lover's kiss, but an absolution he can give no one else, not even himself.
6️⃣ Preparing the New Mask
Days bleed into weeks.
She cuts her hair short so no one will call her the tragic muse anymore.
She trades the last of the Holloway jewelry for passage on a carriage to the city. In her bag:
Her sketchbook, blank but for Theo's name on the first page.
The ledgers with names worth more than kingdoms.
A vial of ink she brewed from the ashes of the last piano key.
In her mind: a list of those who profited off suffering. Critics who bribed. Patrons who silenced. Dealers who signed souls away for golden curtain calls.
Each a new piano key to break.
7️⃣ One More Night with the Dead
Before she leaves, she sits once more at Theo's unmarked grave.
She hums his unfinished song. No piano. No ghostly echo. Just her voice raw and cracked and hers alone.
"I will find them all," she promises him. "I will unmask them, ruin them, bury them where no greedy chorus can resurrect them."
A gust of orchard wind lifts her hair from her neck. She swears she feels his fingertips brush the crown of her head.
She does not cry. Grief is behind her now.Only war remains.
8️⃣ The First Step
When she climbs into the carriage, dawn breaks bruised and cold.
She doesn't look back at Holloway Hill.
She carries the ruin with her each heartbeat a drum, each thought a blade.
And somewhere, in the shadows between car wheels and city gates, the devils who once toasted to Theo Holloway's final encore do not yet know it
....... but the muse they thought they buried is coming for them.