The taxi ride was silent. Nathaniel had his head pressed against the window, his eyes closed. Whether he was asleep or just avoiding the effort and energy of keeping them open was a question for philosophers.
Mabel watched the city blur past. The lack of weekend traffic was a small, weird mercy. For a moment, she was full of hope. But as the buildings grew grimmer and the streets narrower, that hopeful bubble began to leak.
She was mature for her age, perhaps unnaturally so, but the anguish sat in her chest, a cold, hard stone that no child should carry. Nathaniel had given the driver an address and then immediately abandoned the project of being awake. When the cab jerked to a halt, he stirred as if offended by the motion.
Outside stood a featureless concrete block of a building. It looked less like a place to live and more like a filling cabinet for people.
Nathaniel sighed, heaved himself out, and paid the driver with the dog-acquired cash. He then led her inside without a word. The lobby was a weird shade of beige. It seemed like the entire building was empty.
He didn't bother with the elevator and started climbing the stairs to the third floor, with slow, strong but deliberate steps of a man climbing a mountain. He stopped in front of the door 4F. He stared at the door for a few moments as if remembering the combination to a lock. Then he bent down, popped open the alarm box, and inside it was a key and a card.
"You just leave it there?" Mabel asked, her voice small in the dark, eerily quiet hallway.
"No, one looks for things in boring places, too much effort," he murmured, pushing the door open. "And there's nothing to steal inside."
He stepped inside. Mabel followed, her suitcase bumping against the doorframe.
And then she just stood there. Her hope deflates like, punctured tire.
The apartment was a white void. It wasn't just empty; it was antiseptic. A single white sofa faced a blank wall where a television should have been. In the kitchenette stood a cheap wooden table with a single chair. There were no curtains, no blinds—just the setting sun invading the room, waging a silent war of purple and gold across the walls. No pictures, no mail, no shoes. Nothing to suggest a human had lived here in the past century. The air was still, and it tasted like nothing.
"Home," Nathan said, his voice flat. He dropped himself onto the sofa, leaned his head back, and slowly closed his eyes.
Mabel started exploring, her footsteps echoing. She peeked in the kitchen. She opened the fridge; a sudden rush of cool air washed over her face. It was empty too. She then opened another cupboard. It had one bowl, one plate, and one mug.
The rest of the cupboard was empty too.
This wasn't a home. It was a hiding place. A place for a person with no intention of going anywhere.
"Where do I sleep?" Mabel asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"Second door," Nathaniel said without opening his eyes. "Might be a bit dusty."
The second door led to a small, square room. It was completely barren. No bed, no dresser, not even a rug on the bare wooden floor. A single, bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. The weight of it all pressed down on her—the silence, the emptiness, the sheer, utter lack of care. This was worse than the foster home. This was… nothing.
Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes. She kicked the leg of the invisible bed she'd hoped for, and her toe connected hard with a floorboard. A sharp pain shot up her foot. She hissed, hopping on one leg, and looked down. The board she'd kicked was loose, one end lifted as if it had been pried up and never properly nailed back down.
Grief and curiosity were a potent mix. She knelt, digging her fingers into the gap. With a creak of protest, the floorboard lifted.
Beneath it, in the dark, dusty space between the joists, sat a single object. A small, simple flower pot, the kind you get from a school project. It wasn't filled with soil, but with a fine, grey ash.
It was the only thing in the entire apartment that had been hidden.
Heart thumping, she carried it back into the living room. Nathaniel hadn't moved, a statue of pure indifference on the sofa.
"What's this?" she asked, holding the pot out.
He didn't move. "Dust."
"It was under the floor."
That got his attention. His head tilted forward, his golden eyes opening and focusing on the pot. All the casual sloth drained from his face. He didn't snatch it. He didn't even reach for it. He just went perfectly still, his gaze locked on it as if it were a ghost.
The air in the room grew heavy.
"What was that?" Mabel demanded, her voice shaking as she took a step back. Her eyes darted around the empty room. "I… I heard that. Who said that?"
Nathaniel's eyes slid shut. He looked pained. "You heard it?"
"It was in my head! What is it?"
She can hear it? The thought jolted through him, a silent, panicked strike. Can it talk to others?
He let out a breath, a slow, weary sound of surrender. "It's… me. A part of me I tried to bury. The part that remembers the oaths. The one that doesn't get to forget." He finally looked at her, and the shame in his gaze was a physical force. "It's my conscience. And it's not friendly."
The explanation was insane. But standing in this white void, the home of a slothful immortal, it was the most sane thing she'd heard all day.
"What is it?" Mabel pressed, her voice now trembling with a new kind of fear, gesturing with the pot.
"A responsibility," he said, his voice low and rough. "My last one."
"What kind of responsibility comes in a pot of ash?"
He finally moved, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling between them. He looked defeated.
"A phoenix," he said.
Mabel blinked. "A… what?"
Nathaniel's jaw tightened. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
"They're supposed to be immortal," he explained, his eyes never leaving the ash. "Cycle of death and rebirth. Eternal. But it's not automatic. It needs a spark. A caretaker. A… a reason to wake up." He let out a long, slow breath. "This one… it grew tired. I was supposed to… stoke its fire. Remind it of the point of it all."
He fell silent, the unspoken words hanging in the air, heavier than the pot in Mabel's hands.
"You forgot," she whispered, the truth dawning on her with horrifying clarity.
"It went to sleep," Nathaniel corrected softly, an empty correction. "And I was too tired to wake it up."
He finally looked up at her. "It's a hassle, keeping an eternal flame burning. You start to take it for granted. You think it will always be there." He let the silence finish the thought. It won't.
Mabel looked from the pot of cold, featureless ash to her uncle's face. The lazy uncle was a facade. This, the man hollowed out by a failure of cosmic neglect, was the reality. The foster mother's words echoed in her mind: "It's the spirit that often needs the most mending."
His spirit wasn't just wounded; it was buried right here, under a loose floorboard.
A cold knot tightened in her stomach. She wasn't just scared of the empty apartment anymore. She was terrified that she, too, was just another responsibility he might one day find too tedious, another flame he might let flicker and die, her memory reduced to a pot of ash hidden away in the dark.