The Ember Room E-Book

Miles Everett Blake

• Herausgeber: Twist & Tether Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

When grieving father Daniel arrives at a remote Icelandic retreat known only as The Ember Room, he seeks release from the guilt that has haunted him since the tragic fire that claimed his daughter’s life. Among the frostbitten pines and volcanic ashlands, five other guests gather—each bearing their own losses, each tasked with crafting effigies to be offered to the fire.
But this isn’t just grief therapy. Something ancient burns beneath the surface. The rituals feel too precise. The silence too loaded. The fire doesn’t just consume—it remembers.
As Daniel begins to unravel the secrets hidden within the spirals carved into stone and the voices rising from the flames, he questions not only what happened that night... but what he was made to forget.
The Ember Room feeds on memory and guilt. And it gives back in forms no one expects.
Can grief ever be left behind—or does it reshape us into something else entirely?

Leseprobe

The Ember Room

The Ritual Burned More Than Ash

Ash Thread: Horror in A24’s Shadow

Miles Everett Blake

Copyright © 2025 by Miles Everett Blake

All rights reserved. This book, including all individual stories and original content, is protected under international copyright law. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the author, except for brief excerpts used in reviews or academic commentary, which must be properly credited.

Fiction Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

Cover Image Notice:

The cover artwork for this book was created using licensed generative AI tools under commercial-use terms. It is an original, symbolic composition created specifically for this title. Any characters depicted are fictional and do not represent real individuals.

AI Tools Acknowledgement:

The cover image and/or illustrations were created using generative AI technology under appropriate commercial-use licensing. All visual elements are original compositions intended solely for this publication.

Thank you for reading this special collection. I hope you enjoy every story inside.

Table of Contents

The Ember Room

Description

Chapter 1: Arrival in the Frost

Chapter 2: Smoke and Symbols

Chapter 3: The Fire Remembers

Chapter 4: Echoes of Her Voice

Chapter 5: Daughter of Flame

Chapter 6: Vessel of Ash

Chapter 7: Ashes Remember Everything

The Ember Room

Description

When grieving father Daniel arrives at a remote Icelandic retreat known only as The Ember Room, he seeks release from the guilt that has haunted him since the tragic fire that claimed his daughter’s life. Among the frostbitten pines and volcanic ashlands, five other guests gather—each bearing their own losses, each tasked with crafting effigies to be offered to the fire.

But this isn’t just grief therapy. Something ancient burns beneath the surface. The rituals feel too precise. The silence too loaded. The fire doesn’t just consume—it remembers.

As Daniel begins to unravel the secrets hidden within the spirals carved into stone and the voices rising from the flames, he questions not only what happened that night... but what he was made to forget.

The Ember Room feeds on memory and guilt. And it gives back in forms no one expects.

Can grief ever be left behind—or does it reshape us into something else entirely?

Chapter 1: Arrival in the Frost

The plane’s engine hummed into silence behind him as Daniel stepped onto the frozen tarmac. A wind rolled off the distant lava fields—brittle, sharp—seeping through the seams of his coat. He didn’t shiver. Not really. His body acknowledged the cold the way it acknowledged most things now—with the empty formality of routine.

The van that waited by the chain-link fence was matte black and half-buried in snow, as if it had been waiting there for centuries. A woman stood beside it, tall, wrapped in layers of fur-lined gray. She didn’t wave, only nodded once as Daniel approached, dragging his small suitcase.

“You’re Daniel,” she said.

“Yeah.” He didn’t offer more.

“I’m Thora. Driver. Guide. Listener.”

She opened the side door. Inside, five others were seated in silence, heads turned toward the windows or bowed into scarves. No names were exchanged. Daniel took the last seat near the back, next to a man with hollow eyes and nicotine fingers.

As the van pulled away from the airstrip, the world outside dissolved into white. It wasn’t just snow—it was absence. No houses. No birds. Just endless frost stretching toward black ridges and volcanic rock.

Thora didn’t speak again until they crossed an old wooden bridge, half-covered in frost.

“This is the beginning of the Ashlands,” she said. “You’ll feel them before you understand them.”

The man beside Daniel shifted. His voice was low, and his breath smelled faintly of vodka. “Is that where the fire is?”

Thora looked at him through the rearview mirror. “The fire has always been here. We’ve simply built around it.”

They drove in silence for another half hour, climbing slowly toward a distant ring of stone towers. The retreat was nothing like Daniel had imagined—if he had imagined anything at all. He had come for absence. A place to pour his grief into and let it disappear.

But the Ember Room stood defiantly. Not modern, not ancient. A circle of dark wooden cabins like watchful eyes around a larger central lodge with a pointed roof and smoke threading lazily from its chimney.

Inside, the air was thick with cedar and something fainter—charred, metallic. The kind of smell that hides in hair and fabric, refusing to let go.

Each guest was handed a key. Room numbers burned into driftwood tags. No introductions. No icebreakers.

Daniel's cabin—Number 6—faced the east, toward a ridge lined with petrified trees. Inside: a bed, a narrow desk, a ceramic basin. No mirror. A thin woolen blanket folded at the foot of the mattress.

He placed the suitcase on the bed but didn’t open it. Instead, he sat. The silence roared. He looked down at the object he had carried in his coat pocket the whole flight—a blackened, warped music box. It no longer played.

I shouldn’t have brought it.

But he had. And that was its own kind of answer.

***

That evening, Thora gathered them in the central lodge, beneath beams blackened from old smoke. A fire crackled in the stone hearth, its flames throwing flickering shadows on the walls.

Daniel sat between the vodka-breathed man and a woman whose hands trembled when she held her tea. Across from him, a younger couple sat close but didn’t touch. The last guest, an older woman with sharp cheekbones, stared openly at everyone, as if memorizing the details of their despair.

“I’ll speak only once,” Thora said. “After that, the fire speaks.”

She stood behind the hearth like a priestess, hands folded.

“This place was chosen because the land remembers. Beneath this floor is the deepest cut of ancient flame in all of Iceland. You are not here to forget your grief. You are here to give it form. Then burn it.”

A pause.

“Each night, one of you will bring something of your loss to the fire. An effigy. A memory. A wound. No one else will speak while the fire burns. That moment belongs to the flame.”

Daniel wanted to laugh. He had tried everything else. Therapy. Meds. Silence. Nothing had worked. But somehow, he was here. Sitting like a penitent with his box of ashes.

Thora turned to the fire. “Tonight, we light it for the first time. No offerings. Just witness.”

The doors were opened. Outside, a ring of black stone waited in the snow. In its center, a pyre of driftwood and ancient bones.

They stepped out together, shivering more from the silence than the cold.

Thora struck a match. It caught with unnatural speed. Within seconds, the flame was alive—taller than Daniel, roaring with heat. The others stood motionless. The older woman’s lips moved in a silent prayer.

Then—

Giggle.

A child’s laugh. Fleeting. High-pitched. Familiar.

Daniel’s head whipped to the side.

Nothing. No child. Just trees.

That wasn’t real. You’re tired.

The flame snapped again. This time, it leaned toward him. Just slightly. As if reaching.

His hand moved to the music box inside his coat pocket.

Behind him, the vodka man muttered, “I heard it too.”

But Thora only watched the fire. Smiling.

***

Later, in his cabin, Daniel lay awake staring at the beams. The music box was beside him on the bed, blackened edges catching the firelight from the distant hearth.

He reached for it. Opened it.

No sound.

He turned it over. A scrap of melted ribbon was still caught in its hinge. Red. Lina’s favorite color.

You’re not here to find her.

That’s what the counselor had told him. You’re here to let her go.

But he hadn’t let her go. Not when the fire took the house. Not when they said her body was too burned to view. Not when he signed the certificate.

She was afraid of fire. Always afraid.

His breath came faster. He squeezed the box in his hand, the corner digging into his palm.

Suddenly, something scraped the outside wall.

He sat upright.

Footsteps?

No.

It stopped. Silence.