The silence was the loudest sound.
It pressed down on Kael, heavier than the cold, stiff limbs of the dead. The screams had vanished. The roar of flames had receded to a distant crackle. Only the low groan of dying structures and the faint sizzle of settling ash broke the stillness.
Kael lay trapped. Buried deep within the grotesque pile of bodies. The stench was overwhelming. Coppery blood. Acrid smoke. The sickeningly sweet smell of burnt flesh. It clung to his clothes, seeped into his skin, burned in his nostrils.
He clutched Elian to his chest. His baby brother, miraculously quiet, nestled against him. Elian's small breaths were shallow, almost imperceptible. Kael pressed his face into Elian's blanket, trying to shield them both from the horrors he had seen.
His father's last moments replayed in his mind. The terrifying face of Carn Malach. The casual brutality. The sickening sounds. The final, desperate plea in Elara's eyes.
Kael did not cry. He could not. The shock was too profound. His small body trembled, not from cold, but from the vibrating echo of trauma. His heart hammered, a frantic drum against the absolute silence of the dead.
He could feel the warmth of Elian's small body. A fragile, flickering flame in the crushing darkness. He had to protect him. His father's last command.
Time stretched. Minutes felt like hours. Hours, like an eternity. Kael didn't dare move. He just lay there. A silent witness in a grave of his own people.
Then, a low moan. Close by.
Kael froze. He peered through a tiny gap between a dead man's arm and a shattered piece of concrete.
A figure. Dirty. Bleeding. Barely alive. It was a man, a warrior. Judging by the tattered remains of protective plating on his arms and legs. He was slumped against the side of the corpse pile, his body mangled, his face contorted in pain. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps.
He was one of the many who had fought back. And lost.
The warrior's eyes, glazed with pain, slowly drifted. They landed on Kael.
He saw the small boy, hidden, clutching an infant. Most children would be screaming. Sobbing. Hysterical. But Kael was none of those things.
He was unnervingly still.
His small right eye, wide and clear, held a chilling emptiness. A void. It wasn't despair. It wasn't even fear, not in the way the warrior knew it. It was... cold. A profound, unsettling stillness that shouldn't exist in a child.
The warrior, a veteran of countless brutal skirmishes in Dirtspire, had seen many die. He had seen faces contorted in terror. He had seen defiance. But he had never seen such a lack of reaction to absolute horror. No tears. No scream. Just a quiet, terrifying presence.
This child... he doesn't break.
A raspy cough escaped the warrior's lips, splattering blood onto the dust. He was fading. He knew it. This was his end. But there was something in Kael's gaze. Something that stirred a final, desperate resolve in the dying man.
He shifted, gritting his teeth against a wave of pain. His hand, shaking uncontrollably, reached down. It fumbled at his side.
He pulled something out.
It was a blade. Rusted. Chipped along its edge. Its hilt wrapped in faded, grimy cloth. Not a weapon of power or prestige. Just a crude, functional piece of metal. But it had served him well. It had killed. And it had cut.
With a monumental effort, the warrior extended his arm. He pushed the blade towards Kael. The cold metal scraped against Kael's fingers.
Kael hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then, his small hand closed around the rough hilt. It was heavy. Cold. Unfamiliar.
The warrior's eyes, even in death's shadow, locked onto Kael's. A grim, knowing look. He drew a shuddering, ragged breath. His voice was a thin, strained whisper, barely audible, as if speaking from a great distance.
"Burn... more than those bodies."
His gaze flickered to the destruction around them. To the charred remains of Dirtspire. To the ash and blood.
Then, he focused back on Kael. His eyes held a desperate intensity. A final, burning message.
"Let hate... be your flame."
The words resonated. They bypassed Kael's childlike innocence. They ignored the shock. They struck a primal chord deep within him. Hate. It wasn't a feeling he understood, not yet. But the sound of it, the raw, burning force in the warrior's voice... it felt like a seed. Planted in the ashes.
A profound, cold resolve began to solidify within Kael. The terror, the grief – they didn't disappear. But something harder, something darker, began to form around them.
The warrior's eyes glazed over. His final breath shuddered out. His hand, still outstretched towards Kael, fell limp. His body slumped. He was gone. Another silent death in a silent, burning realm.
Kael was truly alone now. A powerless child. With a baby brother. Surrounded by death. And holding a rusted blade given by a ghost.
He stared at the blade. It was rough in his small hand. Impossibly heavy.
The warrior's words echoed in his mind. Let hate be your flame.
Kael closed his eye. Not to cry. But to see. He saw his father's broken face. He saw Carn Malach's dark, towering form. He felt the cold, empty space in his own chest.
A core of ice formed. Around a burning ember. It would not go out.
The Cleansing was over. But for Kael Ashborne, something far more terrifying had just begun. He tightened his grip on the rusted blade. A promise unspoken. A path irrevocably set.
He would remember. And he would burn.