THE ASHES OF LUCIANA

THE ASHES OF LUCIANA


POV: Valentina (fragmented, dream-state)

The fire crackled around her like it had a voice of its own—low, hissing, hungry. It didn’t rage like most fires; it whispered, beckoned, murmured things that made her bones tremble. Its golden light licked the blackened walls, casting monstrous shadows that danced along the edges of her vision. The floor beneath her bare feet glowed with searing heat, but she didn’t flinch. Couldn’t. The pain was absent. Or maybe too familiar to register anymore.

She stood still in the center of the inferno, arms at her sides, every strand of hair haloed by heat and smoke. Smoke that didn’t rise like a curtain but twisted downward, coiling around her body like silk scarves dipped in ash. It seeped into her lungs with every breath she didn’t take, wrapping her chest in a slow, suffocating embrace.

And then she saw her.

Luciana.

She stood ahead, suspended in the flames but untouched—untouched by heat, untouched by time. Her skin was luminous, smooth as porcelain, framed by a red velvet gown that shimmered with impossible elegance. The same gown. The one she wore the night she vanished.

Only now it looked like it had grown out of her. Like it had been stitched from blood and secrets.

Luciana’s eyes met hers across the fire. Wild. Too wide. Bright with a knowing that chilled more than the heat could ever burn. There was soot streaked down her cheeks like war paint. And beneath it… something older than grief. Something colder than rage.

“You came late, little sister,” Luciana said. Her voice wasn’t angry—it was sing-song, sweet, mournful. It carried through the smoke like the last note of a lullaby. “Too late to save anyone.”

Valentina tried to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t open. Ash crusted her lips, sealing her words behind a wall of soot and fear. She raised a hand to her face, but it moved slowly, like it was underwater—or like it belonged to someone else.

Still, her body moved forward. Not because she chose to, but because the fire pushed her. Each step dragged her deeper into the inferno. The smoke thickened, curling into letters she couldn’t read. The walls around them groaned—a haunting, creaking sound, as if the house itself remembered everything that had been lost within its bones.

Luciana didn’t move.

She just watched.

A goddess at the center of the blaze.

A ghost queen in her coronation pyre.

Then she extended her hand.

Valentina’s instinct screamed to retreat. To run. To scream.

But her own arm lifted like it belonged to a marionette, strings pulled by invisible hands. Her fingertips met Luciana’s with a strange finality, like a lock snapping shut.

The moment their skin touched, the fire exploded.

It surged upward, surrounding them in a dome of gold and red. Embers flew like shards of memory, spinning faster, cutting the air like blades. The heat was no longer gentle. It was furious now. Wrathful. A beast awakened.

Luciana stepped closer, pulling Valentina into the fire’s heart.

“It was always going to be one of us,” she whispered, her voice like splintered glass. “You know that.”

Valentina shook her head violently, but the dream wouldn’t crack. The air hissed around them. Time warped. Her skin began to glow—not from heat, but from the memory etched into her bones.

Luciana leaned in until their foreheads almost touched.

“One of us had to burn.”

Valentina’s heart beat once. Hard.

Then the ceiling groaned above them. The flames screamed. And with a sound like the sky breaking open, the floor beneath them gave way.

Wood splintered. Stone shattered. Light vanished.

They fell.

Fell through smoke and shadow. Through memory and madness. Through the quiet that follows fire.

And somewhere far below, in the darkness waiting at the end of the fall, a voice whispered:

“I am not her.”

She woke to blood.

Sticky. Warm. On her fingers. On the polished edge of her vanity.

Valentina gasped and jerked back. Her breath came in harsh, broken pants as she stared at the words carved into the wood in front of her:

I AM NOT HER

Her hands trembled. Her fingertips were red, skin torn from her own nails where she had scratched the letters raw into the wood.

Her heart thundered.

The dream. The fire. Luciana’s eyes.

She stumbled away from the vanity and collapsed against the wall, burying her face in her palms. “No, no, no…” she whispered.

The door creaked.

She looked up.

The psychiatrist.

Dr. Selene Voss. Cool, composed, wrapped in pale silk and calm menace. She didn’t knock. She didn’t blink.

Her gaze swept the room.

Then the vanity.

Then Valentina.

And something in her face hardened.

Dr. Voss stepped forward. “Miss De Luca, have you harmed yourself?”

Valentina’s lips parted, but her throat locked. “It was a dream. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know I was—”

Dr. Voss knelt near the vanity, inspecting the message carved into it. "This appears quite intentional."

Valentina’s pulse raced. “It’s not what you think.”

Dr. Voss turned to her, clinical. Detached. “What do I think, then?”

“I’m not her,” Valentina whispered. “I’m not Luciana. I’m not…”

“Seeing her?” the doctor asked carefully. “Hearing her?”

Valentina hesitated.

The fire was still in her head.

The scent of roses burned black.

The voice in the mirror.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” she said quietly.

Dr. Voss scribbled something in her small leather journal. “That’s useful to know.”

The door opened again.

Reina entered, sharp-eyed, lips pressed into a line. She saw the scene and moved fast.

“What happened?”

Dr. Voss didn’t look up. “She injured herself while in a dissociative state. Possibly another episode.”

Reina shot a warning glance at Valentina, her voice crisp. “You need to be more careful. The house is filled with ghosts right now.”

Valentina closed her eyes.

She could still feel the heat.

Still hear Luciana’s voice.

One of us had to burn.

And she wasn’t sure anymore which of them had.

\---

Later, after Reina ushered Dr. Voss out of the room with a promise to keep Valentina under observation, she returned and shut the door firmly behind her.

Valentina sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a dark robe, hands bandaged. Her eyes were vacant.

“You have to hold it together,” Reina said, not unkindly. “They’re watching you now. Every move. Every twitch.”

Valentina said nothing.

Reina pulled up a chair, sat beside her. “That doctor? She was planted. Marco wants a report. He wants a reason.”

“A reason to take everything,” Valentina whispered.

Reina nodded. “Don’t give it to him.”

Valentina looked at her bandaged hands. “I didn’t even know I was doing it. It just… it felt like Luciana was here. In the room.”

Reina’s voice softened. “That’s because she is. In every mirror. Every corridor. This whole estate is her mausoleum. But if you let her madness become yours, you lose.”

Valentina’s voice broke. “What if it already is mine?”

Reina leaned in. “Then bury her. And rise.”

Valentina looked up at her, eyes bu
rning.
She didn’t answer.

But inside, something shifted.

The flames didn’t scare her anymore.

They called her.

And this time… she might just walk through them awake.