Chapter 3 Part 1
The Cinder Path
The sky held the color of old embers—ashen orange at the edges, choked gray above. The path eastward was less road than scar, a long line of cracked earth carved between fields of dry husk-wheat and ghost-thin trees. Nothing green remained.
Velrona walked at Erlin's pace, her control firm but fluid. His legs carried them well. Not strong. Not fast. But dependable. They had passed five ruined markers—each once denoting a village—and seen no soul, living or dead.
Tell me again why we're walking into fire country, Erlin muttered.
Because flame remembers names.
That a metaphor or a warning?
Velrona didn't answer. The wind did—carrying a scent that was part soot, part sweet rot. Something had burned here, not long ago.
Up ahead, a rise in the path revealed a wide depression in the land. What once might've been a small farming village was now just charcoal outlines of homes. Fences fused into the dirt. A well sunk in on itself like a collapsed throat.
At the far end of the ruin, something moved.
Velrona stilled.
A figure—barely visible in the settling dust. Small. Slumped.
A child?
No.
A girl. Maybe sixteen. Her clothes hung in strips, half-melted to her skin. Her arms were covered in soot and branded with spiraled glyphs that glowed faintly in the growing dusk.
Velrona stepped forward.
Erlin's voice caught. You're going to help her?
Velrona didn't respond.
The girl saw them.
She didn't scream or run. She just stared, eyes wide and dry, as if she'd used up all her tears days ago.
Velrona knelt.
The girl flinched back but didn't bolt.
"I'm not here to burn you," Velrona said, using Erlin's voice softened by her inflection.
The girl blinked.
"…You're not one of them?"
"No."
"They said fire was truth."
Velrona's eyes narrowed. She looked at the brand spirals. Not random. Ritual glyphs.
Ythara's script.
This girl had survived a flame rite.
"What happened to your people?" Velrona asked.
"They tried to run," she said quietly. "The Ember Choir came anyway."
Velrona's breath slowed.
You know that name? Erlin asked.
I know the woman who built it.
"She said you'd come," the girl whispered. "The one who walks in burned shoes. She said you'd ask questions."
Velrona's expression didn't change.
But her hand trembled.
Just once.
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Velrona's hand trembled once, a brief flicker in Erlin's borrowed muscles. She made no effort to hide it. The girl was too broken to notice.
The brand on her arm pulsed faintly, spiraling up from the elbow in three rings of uneven fire-scar tissue, etched in a language few outside the inner circle of the Choir of Sanctified Flame would recognize.
Velrona recognized every line.
She'd written them once—in charcoal and prayer. On paper. Never on skin.
She reached for the girl's hand.
To her surprise, the girl didn't pull away. Her fingers were blistered, but not freshly. The wounds had set long enough to leave waxy, cracked bands across her knuckles.
"What's your name?" Velrona asked.
The girl blinked, as if confused by the question.
"…Raea," she said after a pause. "From Senveth Hollow."
Velrona didn't know the village. The map Father Lirn gave her had listed nearly a dozen towns purged by fire-sects in the past five years. Many were new. Most were ruins.
"Who left the mark on your arm?" she asked.
Raea's voice grew faint. "The Chanter."
Velrona's gaze sharpened. "Not a priest?"
"No. A girl with no eyes. They said she'd seen too much. That the Saint took her sight so she could only see flame."
Erlin stirred inside her mind.
You hearing this?
I built the rites. I never wrote that part.
So they're improvising.
Or someone's twisting the doctrine.
Velrona inspected the spiral brand again. The symmetry was broken in several places. It wasn't done with care—it was done in speed, or spite.
"Were you the only survivor?"
Raea nodded. Then frowned.
"I think so. They made us walk through the pyre. If you screamed, you were pulled back. If you passed silent… they marked you."
"Passed?"
Raea's voice dropped to a whisper.
"It wasn't just fire."
She leaned closer. "There were things in it. Spirits. Screaming like burning glass. My sister fell through the ash, and I heard her—still screaming even after the flames went out."
Velrona didn't move.
This is Ythara's doing?
No, Velrona answered. It's someone using her name. This is messier. Louder. She never let pain run wild. Not like this.
The girl swayed.
Velrona caught her before she collapsed fully. She was half-dehydrated, feverish. Weighing nothing. Burned bodies always did. They shed water and fat like ghosts trying to slip free.
"We need shelter," she said aloud.
"There's a farmhouse," Raea mumbled. "Over the ridge. Crows live in it now. But they don't burn."
Velrona helped her to her feet.
As they walked, the cinder air thickened behind them. The village lay still, swallowed by soot.
But not silent.
Behind Velrona's borrowed ears, a whisper pressed against her thoughts—not from Erlin, not from the girl.
A system ping.
Unclaimed spiritual residue detected. Location: Pyre Trench.
Draw pending. Do you wish to investigate?
Velrona looked back once.
The char line shimmered.
Not now.
She turned forward, leading the girl into the smoke.