The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 176

After setting the photo that carried the timeless bond between her mother and herself as her wallpaper, she set her phone down.

The room was completely silent. She hadn't turned on the lights, and the glowing lights of the Parisian autumn night reflected like a flowing golden river of stars in her dark pupils.

She stood up and walked to the massive floor-to-ceiling window, pushing it open. A cool evening breeze carrying the rich scent of the café downstairs rushed against her face.

These past few days in Paris had felt like a vivid, surreal dream.

But now, the dream was over, and it was time to go home.

Back in Oslo, Annelise's life seamlessly merged back into the quiet, orderly routine she was so accustomed to.

By October, the autumn in Oslo was as brief as a fleeting nap; the long, glorious daylight hours of summer were snatched back almost overnight.

The daylight visibly shrank, growing shorter with each passing day.

By four in the afternoon, the sky was already dimming to a dusty yellow.

By five, the entire city was submerged in a deep, melancholic twilight blue.

Annelise knew that the task she had written about in her notebook had officially arrived.

She needed to learn how to sleep in the dark.

Sure enough, once daylight was compressed to a mere six hours, insomnia returned like an uninvited, hostile guest.

This time, it didn't come with the sharp, bloody panic it carried when she first arrived in Oslo.

Instead, it was a deeper, silent, bone-aching exhaustion.

She would wake up completely out of nowhere around two or three in the morning.

Once awake, it was impossible to fall back asleep.

Outside the window was the pure, unpolluted black void characteristic of the Nordic polar nights.

Within this extreme silence and absolute darkness, her hearing and her memories would magnify to terrifying levels.

The dark memories she managed to suppress during the day with work and sunlight began to replay endlessly in her mind, frame by frame, like a midnight horror film.

The cold halo of light cast by the massive surgical lamp above the operating table.

Hackett Lehman's stoic, unreadable profile hidden behind fogged-up glasses.

The terrifying, sharp whistle of Lizzie Zucker's leather whip tearing through the damp air in the Lehman family's dark basement.

These flashes no longer brought her agonizing, chest-tearing pain.

They functioned more like a permanent trauma response permanently etched into her cells.

Her heart wouldn't physically hurt anymore, but it would uncontrollably race.

Her body wouldn't violently shake, but her muscles would instantly lock up into a state of hyper-vigilance.

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