Six months later.
The land where Ashmere Hill once stood was now a blackened scar, surrounded by frostbitten trees and overgrown weeds. Locals said nothing would grow there — not grass, not even moss — as if the ground itself refused to forget.
Luke parked at the edge of the property, engine idling. The world was gray and still. He hadn't been back since that night. Since her.
He stepped out slowly, boots crunching against the frozen soil. The air smelled faintly of rain and smoke — the ghost of a memory that refused to fade.
A small cluster of mirror shards lay half-buried in the dirt. He knelt, brushing the frost away. When he tilted one toward the light, his own reflection stared back — older, hollow-eyed — and behind it, for the briefest moment, her.
Emma's reflection smiled faintly, the same warmth she'd always had, threaded with something deeper — calm, endless, and knowing.
Luke swallowed hard. "I still feel you," he whispered. "Every night, I see the fire. I see you walking through it."
The reflection's lips moved, soundless. Then the faintest voice carried through the cold:
The fire doesn't end. It transforms.
Luke blinked — and the reflection was gone. Only the gray sky remained.
He stayed there for a long time, until dusk crept across the hills. Then, quietly, he placed the mirror shard in his coat pocket and stood. "If you're still watching," he said softly, "I'll find a way to make it right. I promise."
As he turned to leave, a flicker of warmth brushed his cheek — the kind of gentle heat that shouldn't exist on a freezing night. He looked back once.
At the center of the ruins, a single candle burned. No wind could touch it. Its flame was small but steady — golden at the edges, crimson at the core.
And in its light, if one looked closely enough, two shadows moved together — hand in hand.
The house was gone.
But the memory lived.
And the fire waited.