Embers in Dying Flames

Prologue

A hooded figure slipped through the cracked open window of a small, dim room; the only light was a flickering flame on top of a lavender candle settled on the wooden corner desk to the right of the opening where the figure balanced on the sill of a window. Even the low lighting couldn't hide the horrid scene which lay before them.

Everything in the room was in shambles.

The corner desk had papers scattered with the parchments either torn, crumpled, or covered in ink from the overturned, spilled inkwells. The residual ink not absorbed by the destroyed parchments was dripping slowly on the floor and chair joining more dark fluids encompassing the hardwood. Feather pens mixed into the liquids alongside pillow feathers. 

Clothes were strewn about as though tossed haphazardly from an emptied chest between a once lovely full-sized bed and the desk. On the floor joining the plain clothing of a middle-class lady, were two torn pillows leaking some of the feathers and soaking up ink and other substances from the floorboards. 

The blanket was a rumpled mess across the room from the bed underneath a broken painting of a King of Old, next to a dresser of the same wooden make as the desk. The bed was missing its sheets and the frame was collapsed atop the mattress. 

The chamber pot to the right of the bed was flipped entirely over. Next to it was another window sealed shut with the sill missing a few chunks collapsed directly below, and pieces of wood from the bed frame joining. More paintings with cracked frames and ripped art lain forgotten on the floor.

This little room would have been seen as more of a destroyed mess if not for the body dressed for display next to the door and shattered vanity. 

Her arms were tied at the wrists with what looked to be strips of the missing bedsheets; however, it seemed unnecessary to tie her wrists when her hands were nailed at the center of both palms with thick rods sticking through them into the wall. 

She was dressed in a plain nightgown that was once a lovely forest green, but now was drenched in blood. Her ankles were bound, and the bottoms of her feet had thin gashes etched in as though someone whipped her feet. Her eyes stared forward with a light glaze. Her brown hair stuck to her, and was wet, but no blood reached above her neck outside of the mirror shard stuck deep within her throat.

The figure inched down off the sill and hopped around the room, careful not to disturb anything; evidently, it would not have made a difference if they were to have disturbed anything. Nonetheless, they moved through the room as gracefully as humanly possible until the figure was directly in front of the body. They stood for a few moments just staring at the corpse. Finally, they made a move.

A hesitant step forward was turned into a full step as the figure moved to kneel before the tormented corpse of the poor woman. Their calculating eyes noticed a simple, sapphire pendant swinging from her neck. There was no message to be seen with the naked eye, but a message was received. Gripping the sapphire necklace tightly in their palm, the figure yanked it swiftly from her neck and stared down at it. The pendant would have been a lovely gift if not for the blood on the silver chain. They moved to stand but hesitated again. 

The figure wasted more time doing nothing but staring at her. As though they were memorizing the dead woman's every feature. Eventually, they leaned in to press a chaste kiss with pursed lips to her forehead and left through the same way as entered across the room. A soundless thud is all that remained as the window fell shut. 

The room was silent from that point on and there was no sign that a third party had ever set foot in the dark room with a small, flickering candle dancing shadows through the air illuminating a dirty deed to be discovered on the morrow with the rising sun of morning.