Chapter 5: Beneath The Ash

Content note:
This story revisits moments of childhood domestic violence that shaped the man Ashen became.
It’s being shared not for shock, but for understanding. To show the quiet beginnings of who he is, and how the world that hurt him once became the reason he built one that could hold others gently.

“For those who live their nightmares, so that others may have their dreams.” -Callie Hart

Part 1

The noise had finally settled.
The last laugh from a customer still echoed faintly, then vanished into the bones of the building. The Velvet Chapter lives inside another space, a velvet-draped door within a door, so when the world outside went home, silence didn’t rush in. It crept. It had weight.

Ashen stood on the tall ladder, reshelving a book left behind, a copy of The Hobbit. He ran his thumb over the green leather spine and felt the raised grain of the paper like a pulse. The scent of a fall candle melting under its lamp, the quiet hum of the A/C powering down, and the dim light of the chandelier filled the air.

And then the world shifted.
Not in sound. Not in temperature.
A rush from memory.

He was eleven again. Holding a tattered copy of The Hobbit, one you can tell has been read through a hundred times. 

The house was small, dim, built of old arguments and thin walls.
The air smelled like beer and frustration. His mother’s voice was soft and apologetic, trying to hold a storm with words too small to matter. Then came the crack, the smash of a bottle tipping and hitting the floor.

Young Ashen climbed out of bed and froze in the hallway.
His stepfather was yelling again. His mother’s hands went up, palms open, and that simple gesture, a surrender, set something off. The first punch came fast and wild.

Ashen ran before he thought.
The man turned, already half gone to fury. The second punch hit the boy instead of his mother, and the world snapped white. His back met plaster. The sound went hollow, the breath gone. The man stormed out, the door slamming like a gunshot.

Then there was only quiet.
The kind that rings in your ears.

His mother sat on the floor for a moment, stunned, then whispered his name. As the blood dripped from his nose, he didn't move. He wasn’t crying. Enough tears had fallen over the years; all that remained now was a stillness he didn’t yet know was called resolve.

He sat there for a time, head against the wall, while his mother began cleaning the glass, pretending nothing had happened. When he finally stood, he went back to his room and picked up the book that had fallen from his bed. He opened it where the flashlight had slipped between the pages, reading the words that had already started to shape him.

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

He read that line again and again until it felt like breathing. And that’s when the vow took root, silent, deep, permanent.

Part 2

The ladder creaked as he leaned against it, returning The Hobbit to its shelf. The spine slid neatly into place, the sound small and final, like a door closing on the past.

He exhaled.

Even though his past was full of continued strife, he realized books had raised him.
Gandalf had taught him that wisdom doesn’t need to shout. Bilbo had shown him that courage isn’t the absence of fear but the decision to take one more step anyway. Darrow taught him that rebellion means building, not burning. Kingfisher taught him love could be reverent, that a man could cherish a woman’s strength without feeling smaller for it. And from Rhysand he learned that love, real love, requires equal parts wildness and gentleness, a man strong enough to love not out of weakness, but out of devotion.

Each story had carved something into him.
Each lesson became muscle memory.

When he built The Velvet Chapter, he thought he was building a signal fire, a way to call her back. The girl from the Ferry Building. The woman with the silver hairpin. He thought if he made the space beautiful enough, tender enough, it might draw her in like gravity.

But standing there now, off the ladder and looking at the shelves full of stories, surrounded by the soft hum of the empty shop, he understood something different.

He hadn’t just built it for her.
He had built it as an extension of himself, because of what those stories had taught him to believe about love.

The warm lighting that made strangers linger.
The way fantasy and romance meet like two halves of the same heart.
The notes on the wall, the laughter, the quiet corners, all of it had come from what he learned in those pages: that goodness doesn’t announce itself, it invites; that love isn’t spectacle, it’s shelter.

The store isn’t a shrine to someone missing.
It is proof he had become the man he is meant to be, steady, curious, kind.

He turned toward the counter where the silver hairpin waits, still glinting faintly under the low light. He touched it gently with two fingers.

He still wanted her to walk through that outer door, to step into this world he had made. But now he understood what she would see if she did: not a man chasing a wild feeling, but one who had found purpose.

He smiled.

Maybe this place wasn’t just meant to bring her to him.
Maybe it was meant to give people a place to discover their own story.

He turned out the lamp, leaving a single light glowing in the back, not to call anyone back, but to let them know that inside this door within a door, someone had learned what fantasy could mean to the world.

Author’s Note

This is a work of fiction, though I’m not sure where the line really is anymore.
Ashen isn’t real… probably. But the feelings that built him are.
The Velvet Chapter was never just a store. It’s a reflection of every story that ever taught me gentleness, courage, and love that doesn’t need to own to cherish.

If you ever find yourself standing inside these walls, surrounded by books and the hum of soft light, I hope you’ll feel what Ashen does, that stories don’t save us from life; they teach us how to live it better.