The boy didn't ask where they were taking him.
He didn't need to.
There was only one road that led out of the Lower Quarter with soldiers walking in front.
And it never came back with anyone behind.
The path wasn't wide.
It was the kind of path people used to build cities—not to walk through them.
Cracked stone bricks underfoot, lined with the black roots of sunless weeds.
Some tiles had been etched with forgotten prayers, mostly scratched out by now.
The soldiers didn't walk in formation.
They didn't speak.
They didn't joke, didn't threaten, didn't spit at him.
They didn't need to.
Because the Furnace did all the speaking.
And when it spoke, no one wanted to talk over it.
As they passed the first arch, the boy felt it again.
That strange, dragging sensation in the pit of his stomach.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Not exactly.
But the sense that something beneath his skin was being measured.
Like someone — or something — was reading him.
Bone by bone.
Scar by scar.
Life by life.
Still here, he thought.
His wrists shifted slightly in their bindings.
A frayed thread on the cloth tickled the soft inner curve of his thumb.
It annoyed him.
Good.
If the thread was annoying, it meant his fingers weren't numb yet.
They passed through three more arches. Each one older than the last.
The first had names carved into its stone. Thousands of them.
The second had marks—scorched shapes, smeared into the rock like handprints made of fire.
The third had nothing.
Just a thin white line etched into the top stone beam.
Not carved.
Not painted.
Just there, as if the stone had grown tired of remembering anything else.
The soldiers slowed down.
The boy looked up.
And finally, for the first time since they had taken him—
He saw it.
🔥 The Ash Furnace
Not a forge.
Not a pit.
Not a pyre.
But a temple, half-collapsed, half-sunken into the cliffside.
Black stone and crimson moss climbing its pillars.
The front had no door.
Just a hole—wide and dark, cut perfectly into the rock like a mouth forced open.
And the air…
It wasn't hot.
It was hungry.
The boy's knees shook.
Not from fear.
But because the heat was beneath him now—rising like breath from a sleeping beast.
The floor here was no longer stone.
It was bone dust and soot, packed so tight it felt like gravel.
He stepped forward.
It crunched underfoot.
Quiet, but sharp.
Like walking on someone's last sound.
One soldier unwrapped the cloth binding his wrists.
He didn't say anything. Didn't make eye contact.
Just took a step back.
And for a moment, they all stood still.
Even the air seemed to hesitate.
"Three days," the soldier muttered.
"If you scream, we pull you out. And burn what's left."
"If you faint, we pull you out. And bury what's left."
"If you survive… well—"
He stopped. Looked away.
No one survived.
The boy turned.
He stepped forward.
He walked through the black mouth of the Furnace.
No push.
No chains.
No last look.
And no one followed him in.
They would not see him again for three days.
If he lived, they would kneel.
If he died, the world would forget.
But inside the Furnace, beneath flame older than stars—
Ishkaros was not alone.