Dream in the Ash (The Other Half of the End #1)

Chapter 1

Audreyyy.

Her stride faltered as she crossed the prison gates.

The intrusion wasn’t just a memory or an errant thought.

It was his voice.

Audrey Sarafian hadn’t heard him in ten years—not since the night her family’s house went up in flames—and she was found covered in their blood.

Her parents and twin sister died in the fire, and the police said it was arson.

Audrey, stunned and half-burned, told them about the man in her backyard, but no trace of him was ever found.

She was accused of murdering her own family—of setting the fire herself—and the evidence pointed to her, the frightened teenager with the bloodied hands and no alibi.

Prosecutors and psychologists insisted the man she saw that night never existed, that her mind created him to survive incarceration. Some days, she believed them.

His melodic murmur sliced through the noise in her head. Maybe he’d always known where she was and had simply been waiting.

You have no idea how many doors I can open, he whispered.

She should have been more afraid to hear such a statement, but right now, as she moved through the gates without shackles, she had one goal: to get through the crowd without breaking.

Steel doors slammed behind her. The world hit her. It wasn’t mystical or hallucinatory—this was physical. Voices crashed in. Audrey bit her lip as waves of hate and curiosity washed over her. Surface thoughts from the crowd invaded her skull, fuzzing her vision.

Was she ready?

When the judge vacated her conviction, she would have said yes—hell yes.

Now, with the murderer murmuring in her head, each step forward brought uncertainty.

Beyond the gates, spectators roared with their phones high.

Every mind touched hers, unfiltered, and impossible to shut out.

Audrey pressed her thumb into her palm until pain flared white behind her eyes.

Alex—her lawyer and only ally—had insisted she leave in daylight. You deserve to walk out the right way. So, she’d chosen daylight over hiding.

Then, everyone else’s thoughts dulled. Her head tilted to the side at the sudden silence.

Audreyyyy.

Hearing his voice in her mind again made it hard to breathe.

That accent was unmistakable. Unlike other voices, his was intentional, reaching straight to her core.

By most accounts, telepaths were extraordinarily rare, so rare that many considered the stories fiction, myth, or the last echo of old superstitions.

Most people doubted telepaths existed at all, dismissing them as urban legends, tabloid inventions, or fodder for conspiracy theorists.

Even governments didn’t officially acknowledge them; when rumors cropped up, officials just pointed to faulty polygraphs or suggestibility.

Being accused of telepathy in this day and age was almost as dangerous as being one: ostracism, surveillance, and whispers followed anyone different.

If left untrained, telepathy was unreliable and inconsistent.

Reaching for more could trigger a fierce headache, sometimes even a nosebleed or a blackout, if the telepath pushed for too long.

The noise of too many minds at once quickly became overwhelming, distorting vision and pushing the telepath off balance.

True telepathy—in the sense of holding a clear ongoing conversation at a distance—was supposed to be impossible, or so the stories went.

The only telepaths Audrey had met were her mother and her twin—and their “gifts” had been unreliable at best. Her family’s minds had brushed each other, sometimes leaking feelings or stray words, but they had never plunged so deeply or precisely into another mind the way he did.

They didn’t choose where to touch. He did.

Audrey did, too, but she’d never admitted it to anyone, not even her twin.

Her foot caught on ice, and she stumbled, correcting before the guards could grab her.

Steady. Don’t react.

Good girl, the killer murmured.

She tried to ignore him. If she responded, the media, police, and everyone watching would call it proof and send her back—this time labeled as crazy.

Faces layered over faces, cameras flashed, but none matched the man from her house when it all went up in flames: dark features, tattooed arms. He’d stood in her backyard, clear as day. Or maybe her memory lied; memory rearranged itself when needed. Still, she knew deep in her gut he’d been real.

You won’t find me unless I want you to, love.

Audrey kept her face blank.

There she is.

Sick freak.

Monster.

Smile. Something vicious.

This response wasn’t a surprise. The court vacated her conviction but did not declare her innocent. A gust cut through her jeans. She tugged her sister’s leather jacket tighter.

“Keep moving, Sarafian,” a guard muttered.

She trudged toward the outer fences looming with razor wire. Microphones bristled beyond them.

“Audrey! Over here!”

“Did you kill them?”

“What are your plans now that you’re free?”

“Papers,” a guard said, snatching the documents from her hand.

The gates buzzed open, and cameras clicked like gunfire.

She moved toward them, fingers on the cold fence.

For a heartbeat, she was eighteen again—covered in blood, Cary’s jacket slipping as police led her from the smoking ruins.

Headlines read: THE MONSTER IN PIGTAILS.

But the reflection in the camera lens now showed someone else—a hollow-eyed, feral-looking woman.

She swallowed hard and kept searching.

Still no sign of Alex. At first, she scanned the crowd with steady determination, but that confidence curdled into a twisting ache.

Whatever else was happening—the murderer’s voice, the media circus, the old nightmare opening its eyes again—Alex was still the first thing that mattered.

Alex was more than just her lawyer; he’d been her anchor since childhood, sharing bruised knuckles and hastily whispered secrets under blankets. Together they’d survived everything, including the slow grind of the justice system. In all that time, Alex had never once left her stranded.

The truth gnawed at her…he’d never been late, not even five minutes.

This delay felt impossible, almost like a betrayal by the universe.

Her hands clenched and unclenched, shaking a little before she stilled them in her pockets.

Something cold slipped down her spine when she remembered the calls that ended as soon as she spoke his name, the dead silence on the other end.

The more she tried to brush it off as nerves, the more her thoughts spun out of control.

Was Alex in trouble? Had something happened to him, right now, because of her?

She wanted to believe it was nothing, but an anxious pressure ratcheted up inside her, making every breath feel shallow.

Maybe Alex wasn't just delayed. Maybe something went wrong.

He isn’t coming.

Her grip on the chain-link tightened.

Ask yourself why.

She refused to believe him or respond. Yet Audrey found only reporters and cameras. Before giving up, her eyes snagged on a woman leaning against a dented sedan, cigarette burning low with a crooked smile.

It was Skyler, a former prison ally Audrey knew from years earlier.

“Hey, stranger,” Skyler called. “You interested in a ride? Maybe a bed and some work?”

Before getting out, Audrey had heard stories about people preying on recently released inmates.

“Not shopping,” Audrey said.

“Sure.” Skyler stepped forward and pressed something into Audrey’s hand. “Just in case you change your mind.”

It was a folded scrap with Skyler’s address and number scrawled across it.

Behind Audrey’s ear, the voice stirred again.

He isn’t coming.

She closed her fingers around the paper and pocketed it. “Bye, Sky.”

Maybe she’d be back, but now Audrey had other priorities. If Alex wasn’t coming—and if the man from the fire came for her freedom—he’d made one mistake.

He’d left her alive.

A bus idled at the curb. DESTINATION: TOLUSA.

The biggest city in the US was so dense it disappeared into itself and was infamous for swallowing people whole.

Rumors said if you ran fast or low enough, no one would ever find you again in its endless maze of alleys and high rises.

Yet, Tolusa wasn’t just any city; every story she ever heard or half-remembered warned that Tolusa changed people or uncovered their secrets.

People said it drew dangerous things to its center.

Whatever Tolusa wanted from her, she only needed one thing from it first: Alex. After she found him, they would both find the answers to this mess straight from the killer’s mouth.

As Audrey walked ahead, she mapped out her next moves with crisp determination.

Arrive in Tolusa, track down Alex, then get to the truth about the man who haunted her family.

If Tolusa were a place to disappear, she would use it to hunt.

If the voice wanted her, he would follow—and she would confront him on her terms.

Keep listening, she thought.

Oh, I am. You’d better run.

She broke into a jog. “Wait—hey, wait!”

The driver cracked open the doors, and Audrey stumbled up the stairs. As the bus lurched away, heat blasted from the vents, making the air smell of coffee and wet wool. She shuffled past staring passengers to an empty seat.

That’s her.

Everyone knows her face.

She’s the reason for this media circus.

Audrey sat and pressed her forehead to the glass. A woman with hard eyes glared. “You. They said you were innocent. Now you think you’re better than us.”

Audrey met her stare. “You have no idea what I’m thinking. And they never said I was innocent.”

The woman’s lips curled as a shank flashed low. “They gave you forty dollars. I want it.”

Her pulse steadied into a calm rhythm. “I’m not afraid of you,” Audrey murmured.

The woman moved first, but Audrey caught her wrist. The rudimentary weapon still nicked her palm. When the bus stopped hard, more voices erupted.

How did she…

The way she moved…

She’s not normal…

Shock and fear pooled around her, and the woman froze, open-mouthed. Audrey stared back, daring her to try again.

She didn’t.

Audrey wiped the blood on the seat and looked away.

The city ahead had more people than she’d been around in years, and she needed to be ready.

Two hours to Tolusa meant two hours to plan her next move.

She would find the man who haunted her family and force him to tell the truth about what happened that night.

More than just clearing her name, her reputation—and her very sense of self—hung in the balance.

If she could finally unravel the truth, she might recover not only her innocence but the last pieces of her lost family, and maybe even her sanity.

In chasing him, everything was at risk: her hard-won freedom, the fragile grip she kept on her mind, and the hope that one day she could stop running.

She could almost sense a thread, fraying but unbroken, tying her mind to his, waiting to be tugged.

For years, she’d speculated that the killer had wanted something from her that night.

While she hadn’t heard him speak to her in prison, he circled her nightmares.

Was it revenge or something stranger, something only she could give him?

Maybe it was a secret buried in her mind or a talent he could use for himself, something the fire was supposed to destroy but somehow survived inside her.

Now, his words throbbed with warning, as if he expected her to remember something she was supposed to have forgotten.

Unable to help herself, she shot a glance over her shoulder. A dark sedan followed closely. When the bus turned, the sedan turned. Audrey eyed the car. He was no longer just a voice in her head; now he was flesh and blood.

You didn’t think I’d let you wander off alone, did you?

She straightened in her seat, tuning out the bus. As it rumbled on, she resisted turning around again. Predators made mistakes when they believed they were hunting prey.

You want me? Come get me.

His response was instant. I will.

A smile spread across her face.

Not because she wasn’t afraid…but because she was done pretending not to know how to break things.

She’d once torn open a locked evidence room with nothing but a broken chair leg and raw nerves.

In prison, she outsmarted guards twice her size and kept herself alive by reading moods and intentions behind words.

If anyone doubted her grit or thought she was helpless outside those walls, they were about to find out otherwise.