Page 5 of Memory of Ashes

“This is from the mine?” He prodded the raised sections of the frontal bone, his fingers resting on the sharp stumps.

“Yes, and there were more just like this. Hundreds, if not thousands of them.”

He stared at her, his brow furrowed. “What? How could there be so many that we don’t know about? We only have reports of a few. I’ll check the records to see who inspected the site.”

“What do you think they were? They don’t look natural—almost as if they aren’t human.”

“Well, of course they’re human,” he said. “I don’t know what else they could be.”

His certainty disappointed her.

“But just look at the size of this femur.” She pulled the bone from her bag and held it against his arm for comparison.

“Perhaps they belonged to an unknown ancient human species. Let’s keep this quiet until we’ve done some more research. There’s no need to worry the public. People will take one look at those stumps and think ‘demon’.”

The word made her tense. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was wrong. The skulls were so unusual, yet there was something familiar about them. They couldn’t be human.

He went to the bookshelves beside his desk and pulled out one of the largest record books, bound in dark leather. The pages rustled as he turned them. “Ah, here it is, but it’s an incredibly vague account. Part of it is marked as unrecordable.”

Missing records disturbed her more than damaged ones.

“Who wrote it?”

He looked up at her sharply. “It was your father.”

“Oh.”

Why would her father have left so much out? Why had he never told her? What was he concealing?

“It was unlike him to leave such a disordered account,” Emin said, echoing her thoughts.

“I saw more of those symbols down there too, Emin. They looked just like the ones I saw at Ryjul. Is there any mention of them?”

He scanned the pages. “I can’t find any mention of them either. Perhaps his full report was misplaced?”

“I need to go back to the mountains,” she said. “They could be linked.”

“They won’t assign another team to investigate it. You’ve only just returned.”

“Then I’ll go on my own.”

“It’s not safe for you to go exploring on your own without a team,” Emin said.

“I’ve done it plenty of times,” Amelia replied. “Sir,” she added as an afterthought.

“You sound just like your father.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

She packed her satchel and left within the hour.

*

Emin’s warning lingered bitterly in her mind. Everything was dark. Cold seeped into her bones from the ground.

How long had she been there?