(Malcolm)
The morning after the festival, Raven Hollow smelled of rain and ash again. The kind of scent that lingers even after the fires are long gone. Malcolm stood outside the Velvet House with a cup of black coffee, watching the mist lift from the eaves.
Someone had left the paper lanterns up overnight. In the gray light they looked like ghosts of their former color—pale, trembling, spent.
He thought about the moment they'd turned blue, about the look on Eden's face when she saw it. The way she'd kept singing anyway. That was what stayed with him most: her calm in the middle of something no one could explain.
He finished his coffee, set the cup on the porch rail, and walked toward the old records building on Hollow Street.
Inside, the clerk—a narrow man with half-moon glasses—barely looked up from his ledger. "What are you looking for this time, Mr. Reed?"
"Fire reports," Malcolm said. "Back to the year of the Valentine blaze."
"That's going back a ways." The man sighed but stood anyway, leading him to a row of gray filing cabinets. "You never get tired of digging through old ghosts, do you?"
"Some ghosts don't rest easy," Malcolm said.
The clerk handed him a thin file marked 1947 – Residential, Valentine's Eve. "That's the one everyone talks about. Half the town burned that night. You'd think folks would remember who started it, but the record's incomplete."
Malcolm flipped the folder open. Most of the pages were water-damaged, but one detail caught his eye: Origin suspected near Hollow Lane property – ownership transferred after incident.
Hollow Lane. The Velvet House.
He felt the old tension knot between his shoulders. The Velvet House hadn't just survived the fire—it had witnessed it.
He photocopied the page, slid it into his jacket, and left.
(Eden)
The town looked different in daylight, like a stage after the curtain drops. She walked through the square, guitar case in hand, past the wilted flowers and the empty booths.
People nodded as she passed—kindly, curious. A few mentioned her song, how it reminded them of "the old days." One woman pressed a paper heart into her hand and said, "Keep singing. It keeps the light away."
Eeden smiled politely but didn't ask what she meant.
Back at the Velvet House, she found the piano uncovered. She didn't remember leaving it that way. The burned letter lay on the keys, unfolded.
Someone had written a second line beneath the first, in ink so faded she could barely read it:
"The fire was never meant to end us."
Her pulse quickened.
She picked up the letter and felt the faintest warmth against her palm—impossible, but there.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Eden?"
Malcolm's voice.
She hurried to let him in. He looked different—tense, focused, his eyes shadowed by whatever he'd found.
"I need to show you something," he said.
She handed him the letter instead. "I think I need to show you something first."
He read the new line, jaw tightening. "That wasn't there before."
"I know."
"Then someone's been in this house."
They stood in silence, listening to the rain start again, soft but steady.
(Malcolm)
He told her about the file, about the fire starting here on Hollow Lane. The name of the original owner was smudged beyond recognition, but one detail remained: Music teacher, female, late twenties.
Eeden's breath caught. "A singer."
He nodded. "And whoever she was, she was tied to someone who built this place."
She moved closer, voice low. "So the house belonged to them both."
He met her eyes. "Maybe it still does."
A flicker of light crossed the parlor window then—faint, blue, like the heartbeat of something trying to return.
Malcolm reached instinctively for her hand. She didn't pull away.
The air between them shifted—charged, almost humming. Not from fear, but recognition.
"We'll find out who they were," he said.
Eeden nodded. "And what they left behind."
(Eden)
That night, she couldn't sleep. The rain had eased, but the wind kept the trees whispering outside her window.
She sat at the piano with the burned letter beside her and began to play the same melody she'd sung at the festival. Slowly, almost without thought, her fingers changed the progression—minor, aching, unfinished.
She whispered the words written on the page.
"To my Valentine… forgive the promise I could not keep. The fire was never meant to end us."
The last note hung in the air like a question.
Behind her, the blue light flickered once along the mirror's edge, and for the briefest moment she thought she saw two shadows standing where she sat—one bent over the piano, the other leaning close, as if still listening