Ashes of the Damned  

Prologue

A butterfly drifted through the late autumn air, its wings dulled by dust, veins like cracks in porcelain. It fluttered above a bed of dry leaves, brittle things that rustled as the wind began to stir. The breeze was strange today, not cold, but purposeful, like something unseen exhaling through the trees.

The butterfly dipped low as the leaves were pulled into motion, swirling reluctantly, scraping against one another like bones shifting in shallow soil. Twigs reached upward like crooked fingers. A root split open from the earth like a scar, and the butterfly passed just above it, weaving through the mess of limbs and old rot.

It hesitated in its flight, pausing briefly above an ant dragging something pale, a sliver of bone, worn smooth and long-abandoned. Nearby, a small carcass lay beneath a thorn bush. Hollow eyes, ribs like twisted iron bars. Long dead, and yet, something lingered.

The wind moved again. This time, not in circles, but forward. Into the woods. Deeper.

The butterfly followed.

> "Hell is not beneath us. It is remembered. It is fed."

Book of the Whispering Flame

In the year 1863, the village of Darnhelm rested quiet at the edge of England’s forgotten woods, too far from any city to be mapped properly, and too cloaked in myth to be spoken of often. The land was uneven. The air, colder than it should have been. Time moved differently here, the seasons arriving late and lingering longer than they should.

Stone cottages leaned into one another, ivy clinging to their sides like veins. Children played in narrow lanes when the fog allowed it. Men rose before the sun and returned to their homes in silence. Smoke curled from crooked chimneys. Old women blessed the doors with salt and ash. The chapel bell rang every Sunday, but only once.

Even in daylight, there was a hush to the village, as though the land itself held its breath. Darnhelm was not without joy, but even laughter here felt borrowed.

On the far side of the woods, beyond where the birch trees turned black and the moss grew thick with mold, stood the ruins.

Ashes of the Damned, they called it.

No path led to it. No map marked it. And yet, everyone knew exactly where it was.

They said the house once breathed. That it stood long before the village, older than its records, older than the chapel’s foundation. They said it was a mausoleum, not a home, built not to shelter life, but to hold back something that should never be released.

Fires had consumed it decades ago. Or so the stories went. Some claimed it burned from within, its own rage setting the walls alight. Others whispered that the fire was summoned, not accidental. A ritual meant to cleanse what had been summoned too carelessly.

No one went near.

And yet sometimes, on still nights, when the fog hung thick and the air turned strange, the villagers swore they could smell ash. Not wood. Not firewood or hearth or pipe, but bone. Burnt. Ancient. Reminding them that the land remembered.

That the house remembered

Brunel Hyphen Law Scholarship – International Human Rights Law LLM

In collaboration with alumna Eniola Aluko MBE and Hyphen Sports, offers the Brunel Hyphen Law Scholarship. This scholarship supports outstanding students who wish to pursue the International Human Rights Law LLM programme at Brunel Law School.
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Amount: £4,500 tuition fee waiver
Available Awards: 3 scholarships
Programme: International Human Rights Law LLM (one-year, full-time)
Eligible Entry: September 2024 and January 2025
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To be considered, applicants must:
1. Apply for the International Human Rights Law LLM here:
2. Hold an offer of admission for the programme starting in January 2025.
3. Complete the Hyphen Scholarship application form here:
Deadline for January 2025 entry:
📅 Thursday, 19 December 2024 at 12 pm (UK time).
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Open to UK and international students (including EU).
Scholarships are not available for deferred entry or students enrolled at Brunel Pathway College (BPC) or Brunel Language Centre (BLC).
Applicants must commit to full-time study.
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The award is applied as a tuition fee waiver for the first year of study.
Awardees will still need to pay the standard £5,000 deposit (for international students).
Winners may serve as Brunel Ambassadors, representing the Law School and Hyphen at events.
Scholarships cannot be combined with certain other fee waivers (with limited exceptions such as Graduate Discount).
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Applications will be assessed by the Hyphen scholarship allocation panel against set criteria.
Selection includes reviewing the applicant’s written statement.
Final decisions by the panel are binding and cannot be appealed.
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(Ashes of the Damned)

CHAPTER 1: The House That Waited

 “There are places where the dead are not buried but stored… places the earth has tried to forget.”
Some houses are not built they are remembered into being. And some memories burn.”
 
The moon sat cold and bloated in the sky, veiled by shivering clouds that drifted like torn veils across its face. Beneath that pallid glow, the forest watched.
 
A thin road cut through the trees, winding like a scar into the belly of Hollow End. The wind blew low here not with force, but with intention, curling through the branches like a whisper that had learned the name of every dead thing beneath the soil. Leaves, dry and curled, chased each other across the gravel like insects fleeing from something unseen.
 
Time stood still.
 
No crickets. No wolves. Only the occasional call of a night bird, sharp and solitary, piercing the silence like a thorn through flesh.
 
Then came the creak of wheels.
 
A single horse-drawn carriage emerged from the trees, lanterns swaying gently at its sides, painting flickers of light across the bark of nearby oaks. Moss glistened like sweat on those trunks. Beneath the horse’s hooves, the forest floor was uneven and wet, a mix of black mud, dead roots, and bone-pale stones that had not seen sun in years.
 
Inside the carriage sat Gareth Vale once a scholar, now a man hollowed by grief and exiled by his own art. His face, pale as candle wax, wore the sleeplessness of months. Black coat, collar high, hair wind-tossed and streaked with early grey. His eyes were sharp, not with life, but with what life had taken.
 
A black magician not the kind children whispered about, but a true practitioner of forbidden craft. Ink still stained the pads of his fingers. A satchel at his side held books bound in skin and thread, and inside the folds of his coat was a locket a single picture, his wife, drowned months ago in a tragedy he dared not speak aloud.
 
The carriage halted.
 
Before him stood the gate.
 
Old iron, twisted into shapes that time had tried and failed to forget. Its surface bloomed with orange rust and black veins, like dried blood spilled over decades. Symbols were etched faintly into the bars circles inside thorns, jagged loops like mouths without teeth. Even the wind paused before touching them.
 
Gareth stepped down.
 
The air felt cold against his face, sharp as broken glass. His boots sank into the soft earth, brushing aside yellowed leaves and faded feathers that had no business being there. Overhead, the branches stirred, and the moonlight struggled through.
 
He ran his fingers over the gate’s lock. It was not locked.
Gareth stood before the rusted gate.
It rose before him like the jaws of some forgotten deity. Iron wrought with twisted, near-forgotten glyphs sigils half-devoured by time, but still sharp enough to sting the eye. The gate was no more than twelve feet tall, yet it loomed like a cathedral doorway. There was an unnatural symmetry to it. It wasn’t merely rust that marked it,it was corrosion of a darker kind. Blood once touched it. Repeatedly. The scent had long faded, but the memory… the memory clung.
 
Above the gate, welded into a sharp arch, was a single Latin inscription:
 
“Non Moriar Sed Vivam.”
I shall not die, but live.
 
The words held no comfort.
 
Gareth reached out. His gloved hand hesitated, just for a moment, as if the metal were waiting for skin. The cold was unnatural. The kind that travels up the bone before touching the flesh. And then he pushed.
 
The gates opened, not with a creak, but a moan. A low, drawn-out exhalation from something old and restless.
 
The driveway stretched beyond like the vertebrae of a giant serpent, winding its way toward the house nestled between gnarled trees. Their roots split the path like claws, and their branches reached down, not up as though ashamed of what they’d seen.
 
He didn’t mind.
 
Gareth was used to silence. Used to dread. He had traded warmth for knowledge, and love for power. But even power had not saved Eleanor. His wife. His rose. She had bled out in his arms beneath a full moon, chanting his name between gasps.
 
And still… no spell had brought her back.
 
Nothing worked.
 
Not the incantations from the Ars Goetia. Not the invocations etched into the leather of his grimoire. Not even the stolen passage from the Book of Enoch the one that swore it could “call down the spirit of the perished.” It had only brought silence.
 
And Gareth hated silence.
 
It never had been.
 
It opened with a low metallic groan, the sound dragging through the night like a reluctant breath. Beyond the gate, the house waited.
 
A two-storey duplex, not grand, not sprawling but tired. A thing that looked like it had slouched too long under the weight of something it was never meant to hold. The windows were dull with dust, teeth of cracked glass lining the upper floor. The wooden porch sagged like a frown. Vines clung to the outer walls like veins to dead flesh.
 
Above it all, the roof leaned not broken, but bent, as if the house had bowed to something once… and never stood straight again.
 
Gareth didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward.
 
The forest behind him exhaled, and a gust of wind rustled the dry canopy. Dust lifted from the path in little spirals, rising like the smoke of something burning below. The leaves scraped along the stone in retreat.
 
Even the moon seemed to pull back behind the clouds.
 
The door opened by itself.
 
Not wide just enough to invite, or dare.
 
He stepped inside.
 
The air in the foyer was stagnant, thick with the smell of wet stone, old wood, and sealed rot. The house bore no welcome. No warmth. But it did not threaten him either.
 
It simply… waited.
 
The hallway was narrow, walls lined with ancient wallpaper the color of wilted lilies. A shattered mirror hung sideways, catching Gareth’s reflection and splitting his face in two. Dust floated through the air like ash from an unseen fire.
 
And somewhere deep within the walls he heard it.
 
Not a voice. Not yet.
 
But the faint sound of breathing.
The door groaned behind Gareth as it shut itself. The sound echoed like a tomb’s final breath, sealing away the world outside.
 
The hallway before him was narrow too narrow, as if the house had constricted over the years, tightening around its own secrets. The walls leaned inward, paneled in dark wood warped by damp and time. The air was thick, metallic, clinging to his skin like sweat not his own.
 
Gareth stood still for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness. He hadn’t lit a lantern yet, but the moon’s silver haze filtered faintly through broken slats and grimy windows, casting long shadows across the floorboards like skeletal limbs reaching inward.
 
The scent grew stronger.
 
Damp parchment. Burned herbs. And beneath it all mildew and decay.
 
He walked slowly, his boots creaking against the floor with each step. To his left, a parlor opened up, the doorway slightly slanted as though the house itself had forgotten symmetry. Inside, furniture draped in moth-eaten sheets slumped like corpses awaiting burial. A piano stood crooked in the far corner, its lid half-open as if caught mid-scream.
 
He stepped in.
 
Dust shifted underfoot like sand, stirred by the breeze that had no clear source. Gareth peeled back a sheet,slowly ,and revealed a crimson velvet chair beneath, threadbare and stained in ways he didn’t care to study. The fireplace was choked with ashes, but someone had once tried to scrub the soot away from the stone around it. The outline of a sigil remained faintly etched beneath the grime, circular, complex, unfinished.
 
His eyes narrowed.
 
"You're hiding your teeth, aren't you?" Gareth muttered softly to the house.
 
Then came a creak, not behind him, but above.
 
A single step. Then nothing.
 
He didn’t flinch. Just raised his head, eyes tracing the ceiling where black water stains bloomed like rot. Somewhere, the bones of the house were settling ,or remembering.
 
He returned to the hall, ascending the stairs with deliberate slowness. The wood here was soft in places, spongy from time and forgotten rain. The railing bore scratches, long and deliberate, running parallel to one another,as though someone had been dragged down it with resistance.
 
Upstairs, the hallway narrowed. Doors on both sides, some ajar, some sealed shut with rusted locks and swollen hinges.
 
At the end of the hall stood the room he had chosen to make his own: a modest chamber with a writing desk, a bookcase warped by moisture, and a narrow window facing the backwoods.
 
He stepped in.
 
Set his satchel down.
 
The moonlight cut across the floor like a blade.
 
The room had been prepared, though by whom he could not say. A bed stood made ,not freshly, but not ruined either. The desk had been dusted. On top of it, laid carefully beside a cold oil lamp, was a journal. Its cover was black leather, etched with faint silverwork that had faded to tarnish. No name, no title. Just a single bookmark made of braided hair.
 
He did not touch it. Not yet.
 
Instead, Gareth walked to the window. The forest behind the house stood in absolute stillness, not lifeless, just listening. The trees there leaned slightly inward, as if gathered around something ancient and unspoken in their midst. The branches did not sway.
 
There was no wind anymore.
 
A whisper ran through his thoughts.
 
“You brought her here…”
 
He turned sharply. The room was empty. Silent.
 
He lit the oil lamp.
 
Its glow painted the walls in gold and shadow, and suddenly, the journal seemed alive, as though it had been waiting for light to be seen properly.
 
With a breath drawn deep from grief and iron resolve, Gareth sat at the desk. He opened the first page.
 
There, written in a hand not his own:
 
“This house was not abandoned. It was sealed.”
 
And beneath that, in faded ink:
 
“The dead do not rest in Hollow End. They remember.”
 
A knock echoed from downstairs.
 
Not loud. Just three steady taps.
 
Gareth did not move.
 
Not yet.
 
A grand mirror stood at the far end of the hallway, veiled in cloth , but not completely. The sheet had slipped, revealing half a reflection: his face, split down the middle. One half Gareth. The other... something else. Shadows dragged longer behind him in the glass than they did in the real hallway. Something blinked where his eyes should have been.
 
He turned away, heart knocking once, twice.
 
To his right, a door stood ajar, and from within came the faint sound of a ticking clock. Not the crisp tock of a well-kept pendulum, but something wet. Like teeth clicking inside a throat.
 
He didn’t go there.
 
Not yet.
 
Instead, he followed the hallway as it curved deeper into the belly of the house. Each step stirred the floorboards beneath his boots, not creaking, but sighing, as if the house recognized him and welcomed his weight.
 
Cobwebs crowned the ceiling like lace stitched by mourning widows. A chandelier, skeletal and half-collapsed, hung by a chain that twisted slightly, though there was no draft. Beneath it, an antique table, dusty but intact, held a dried bouquet in a cracked glass vase. The flowers had blackened. Something squirmed in the water at the bottom not dead, not yet.
 
He found himself staring at a portrait one he didn’t remember being there before. It hung crooked above the fireplace.
 
A family of five.
 
All dressed in mourning black, skin pale as smoke, eyes painted too dark. The father’s face had been scratched out, gouged deep enough to tear canvas and wood beneath. The mother’s smile was crooked, lips stained with something brown. One child stood behind her, too tall for her age. Too thin. Her eyes were mirrors. Gareth leaned closer.
 
The girl was looking at him.
 
Not painted. 
The light flickered.
The hallway behind him clicked with footsteps.
 
He turned
 
But nothing stood there.
 
Just the long dark, pulsing gently. Breathing.
 
Gareth forced himself forward.
At the end of the corridor, the walls opened into a great hall. Two staircases twisted upward in opposite directions, curving like ribs toward the unseen attic. Between them, a large circular rug lay sprawled on the floor woven with a pattern of bones and branches, symmetrical and hypnotic.