The Ash Bride: Cinderella’s Real Bargain

Before the ball, before the slipper, Ella made a promise.

The woman who appeared by the cinders wasn’t clothed in light — she was wrapped in soot, her eyes like molten silver. She asked only one thing in return for the miracle: a favor on the twelfth stroke of the twelfth bell.

Ella agreed.

When midnight came, she fled the palace — but she didn’t lose her shoe by accident. It was pulled off her foot by invisible hands, burning hot as coal.

A year after her marriage, her stepmother and stepsisters vanished. The villagers whispered that the “new queen” burned them alive.

In truth, they were never found.

Archaeologists excavating the old manor centuries later uncovered charred bones beneath the hearth — fused to glass-like ash. Among them was a tiny metallic object, shaped like a slipper.

Radiocarbon dating couldn’t identify the alloy. The report’s final line read simply:

“Material consistent with unknown high-temperature combustion. Possible origin: unclassified energy source.”