The Empire Was Once Ash
It was so late in the night that not even wind remained. Ash fell from the eaves like salt.
When Kaelen pushed open the warped wooden door of the tavern, the fire in the hearth had already sunk into the coals, leaving only a ring of blood-red glow.
A torn old map hung crooked on the wall, split into three pieces, its northern edge curling like a dead leaf.
He stepped inside. Ash slid from his cloak, leaving a silent trail across the floor.
"You're late," said the old man in the corner, without turning his head. He simply lifted a clay cup and took a sip. "But this wine's still warm."
"I thought you no longer spoke of the Empire," Kaelen sat down softly, his gaze fixed on the torn section of the map.
"We stopped speaking long ago," said another voice by the hearth. He was just as old—a court historian, with a voice like silk burned at the edges. "Now we only drink."
There was silence for a time before Kaelen spoke.
"Did the Empire… ever truly unify?"
Neither of the two elders answered at once. They merely turned their eyes to the map on the wall—a map that once bore the emblem where seven royal flags converged. Now it was only a smudge.
"There's a saying," the old man finally said, "that the moment the first map was drawn, it cracked."
"The ink hadn't dried when the wind rose," the historian murmured.
Kaelen didn't smile. He only looked at the map. "Who brought that wind?"
"You're too young. You want a name." The old man gave a weary smile, with ash caught in his teeth. "But you should know—wind never leaves a surname."
He took another sip of wine, speaking slowly.
"Back then, we thought it was the northern king's greed.
Later, they said it was the southern marquis's weakness.
And after that, they claimed the gods had turned away, abandoning this basin."
"But the truth is—" Kaelen whispered.
"The truth is there was never a map," the historian said, setting down his cup, voice barely audible. "Only the ash at the borders."
The fire gave a soft crackle, like a word swallowed before it was spoken.
"I've read the old scrolls," Kaelen looked up. "They said seven kings declared themselves emperors at the same time. None recognized the others' reigns. Wasn't that chaos?"
"Of course it was," the old man nodded. "But if you asked the common folk, they only followed the flag they could see.
Isn't that unity?"
Kaelen repeated quietly, "They only followed the flag they could see."
The historian leaned back in his chair, gazing up at the ceiling. "Those flags… they all burned quickly."
A breeze slipped through the crack in the corner, brushing against the edge of the wall-mounted map.
Kaelen heard a faint sound, like something falling from a great height. But when he looked up, all he saw was a missing piece of the map.
"Do you remember what your grandfather used to say?" the old man suddenly asked.
Kaelen nodded slowly. "He said our ancestors wore a crown made of flame."
"Do you know what that meant?"
"It wasn't glory," Kaelen stared at the last corner of the map. "It was debt."
The old man said nothing more. He only reached out and slowly turned the clay cup in his hand. The wine made a dry, scraping sound along the inside, like time circling through soil.
The fire dipped a little lower. The shadows receded from their faces, leaving only the edge of their voices.
Before Kaelen could speak again, a small clump of ash fell from the roof.
The sound was so soft—it was like a sigh.
"Have you ever thought," he said quietly, "if the Empire was truly born of ash, then perhaps we never left it at all?"
No one answered.
The room was so quiet, they could hear the edge of the map flutter faintly in the wind—like a piece of cloth in a dead man's hand.
The First Map Never Dried
The hearth flickered twice—between waking and extinguishing—its light and shadow like two lost pages in a chronicle.
"Did your father ever see a real map when he was a child?" Kaelen asked.
"No," the historian replied. "He only saw replicas—the kind that were nearly dust. The lines had been touched so often they'd lost their spine."
"I used to think maps were drawn to define borders," Kaelen said, eyes on the torn scroll on the wall. "But now I think they're… more like a kind of promise."
"You're still young," the historian sighed. "Young enough to believe that what's drawn must be real."
He stood and walked to the broken map, placing his finger gently on a patch of blurred text—like pressing a fracture in a sick man's spine.
"This part once read 'Eye of the North,'" he said. "In the old Empire, they called it the Gate of Heaven—also the final ridge of defense."
"But it was cut off too," Kaelen said softly.
Silence expanded slowly, like a shield buried in snow, where sound had been completely absorbed.
"This place," the historian continued, "wasn't on the original map. It was added later."
"Why?"
"Because a king took it. Then, to make it seem like it had always been ours, they added it in the next edition."
Kaelen heard the wine in his cup cooling. He turned and looked at the old man, who had been silent for a long time.
"Do you know how many versions came after?" The historian still faced the map, his voice like reading from a list of ancient sins.
"Eight," the old man finally answered, voice brittle as frost. "Each with a different boundary. But all stamped with the same seal."
Kaelen stepped closer. He saw a faint grey line along the map's northern edge—like a crack left behind by dried water.
"Did they use the same ink?"
"It wasn't ink," the old man said. "It was blood powder brought from the North—mixed with the ash of the earth."
Kaelen said nothing. He watched the line stretch slowly southward, like a kind of slow, degenerative fracture.
"So the map never dried," he said quietly.
"Never dried. Never settled," the historian nodded. "It kept changing—with every treaty, every cession, every crowning—they had to redraw it."
"We thought we had borders," the old man added. "But really, we were just helping them record each failure."
Wind slipped through the cracks in the wooden walls, lifting the hearth's ash ever so slightly.
Kaelen didn't know where to look. The map before him was quietly shedding its final traces of color.
"I've dreamed of a map like this," he said suddenly. "I stood at its center, and the lines were closing in, one by one. Like they were trying to carve me into a shape I couldn't escape."
"You're already inside it," said the historian.
The words carried no hatred, no sorrow—only the cold weight of a declarative border.
Kaelen nodded. He stepped back to his seat and stared at the curling edge of the map, saying nothing more.
A kettle in the corner gave a sudden rattle—like someone trying to break the silence, but failing to speak the full word.
The old man raised his cup and drank the cold wine.
"The map never dried," he said, "because it never ended."
Ten Thrones in Ten Winters
The fire had gone out. What remained of the coals looked like stars fallen from a lighthouse.
None of the three spoke. The only sound was the kettle in the corner, tapping rhythmically, as if to remind them—the night was not yet over.
Kaelen did not drink. His fingers rested on the rim of the cup, as though trying to hold a rhythm. But the rhythm kept breaking—like the names that briefly sat upon a throne, lingering no more than a line at the edge of a history book.
"Have you ever wondered," he said at last, "if a dynasty's name is spoken for only one season—did it ever really exist?"
The historian said nothing. He looked toward the window, as if trying to confirm whether that season had already passed.
The old man gave a soft laugh. "You mean the kings who only took the throne in winter?"
Kaelen looked at him. "Were there really ten?"
"Sometimes nine. Sometimes thirteen," the historian replied slowly. "Depends on which time, which house, you ask about."
"But I only ever heard of one empire."
"That's the version your father's generation left you." The old man lifted a finger, drawing lines in the air. "They told you the empire had one bloodline.
In truth… it was ten vines, all strangling each other."
Kaelen asked without thinking, "Which one survived?"
"None," the historian smiled. "What survived was the ash."
"My grandfather said we came from flame."
"They all said that," the old man looked at him, his eyes soft. "But do you know what every one of them said, when he took the throne on a winter night?"
Kaelen shook his head.
"He said: 'I am not the first, and I will not be the last.'"
A small clump of ash collapsed in the hearth—like someone placing a long sentence down, mid-thought.
Kaelen's fingers brushed the cup. A chill seeped in, like ink soaking through his palm.
He closed his eyes. For a moment, he was no longer seated on a wooden chair, but standing inside a great hall.
Ten thrones burned around him. The flames were silent. On each seat sat a king, his face blurred.
They stared at him without speaking, then opened their mouths all at once—but no sound came.
He saw they each bore a sigil on their chest, all different flags—some red, some white, one a snake split down the middle.
He tried to see their names.
But the names kept shifting before his eyes. Some resembled his family's crest. Some were unknown. Some—were from the North.
Kaelen jolted awake.
"I dreamt of ten kings," he said, his voice low as the last ember in the hearth. "They surrounded me. They didn't speak—but I knew they all wanted me to sit."
"Did you?" the historian asked.
Kaelen shook his head.
"Then you're still awake," the old man said. "The ones they convince—are those ready to burn away their names."
He paused, then added softly, "You're not there yet."
Silence returned.
The kettle had gone quiet. Outside, the ash began to fall finer—like snow that should never fall on a spring night.
Kaelen lowered his head. At last, he took a sip of wine.
He frowned, as though what he drank wasn't wine at all, but some unspoken question left behind by his ancestors.
The Pact of the Flame Prince
After a long silence, the old man finally spoke again—on the fifth time Kaelen glanced toward the hearth.
"Have you all forgotten the story of the Flame Prince?"
His voice was dry and brittle, like an old oath read aloud by accident after years of dust.
The historian turned his head and sighed. "That's a legend, not a record."
"But no one remembers the records," the old man replied. "So only the story remains."
Kaelen said nothing. He knew, in moments like this, one could only listen.
The old man sipped his wine—as if to moisten his throat, or perhaps to toast something older than memory.
"A long time ago, before any empire was born, a prince was named heir in a valley that was already going out.
He wasn't the eldest son, nor born of the queen—just the only royal still breathing that winter."
"The kingdom was collapsing. He stood on the northern icefields, and everything around him was burning—the inner city burned faith, the borderlands burned grain."
Kaelen asked quietly, "How did he survive?"
The old man looked at him.
"He knelt."
The room went still, as if those two words had smothered the fire.
"He didn't kneel to the gods," the old man said slowly. "Nor to his ancestors. He knelt to the North."
"They say the people of that icefield never swore oaths.
But that night, they came down the mountain in armor. The prince drew a circle at their feet—with charcoal.
Then pointed to the center with blood and said: 'This is my throne.
If you want me to sit on it, you must hold this line for me.'"
"Did they agree?" Kaelen asked.
"They laughed," the old man said. "But they nodded too."
"What did it cost?"
"Sixteen cities. Eight ancient roads. And the names of three generations—engraved on someone else's stone."
The historian murmured, "There was no treaty."
"No," the old man nodded. "Because they didn't need one.
What they took wasn't ink or paper.
They took the wind, the line of defense, the bones of the land."
Kaelen leaned back in his chair. "So that kingdom really existed?"
"It did," the old man said, eyes on the ash in the hearth.
"More stable than most dynasties.
Only difference was—the pillars were grown from someone else's trees."
"The Flame Prince…" Kaelen repeated the name, like reciting a spell.
"Some say he wore a crown made of fire. Others say it was just scorched copper.
His portrait was erased long ago from the royal archives—but if you kneel beneath the old northern temples,
you can still see his sigil carved into the floor: a serpent coiled around a burning map."
The historian added, "Some say that sigil is a forgery. Added later."
"Of course," the old man smiled.
"All history is added later."
Kaelen fell silent.
He thought of the ten burning thrones in his dream—one of them flared the brightest, and the shadow beneath it had no feet.
"Do you know," the old man said suddenly, "that circle of charcoal still remains?
Out in the stone plains of the North.
No one can say which land it belongs to.
No banners. No army. Only wind.
But if you stand there long enough, you'll hear fire speak beside your ear."
"What does it say?"
"It says: 'What you owe will never stop burning.'"
The hearth finally died.
Kaelen's Dream of the Map
He drifted into sleep without meaning to.
The words had run dry, the fire had gone out, and the wine cup lay overturned on the table—its damp ring like a border on a map left unfinished.
Kaelen tilted his head, and the dream took him.
He stood in a room with no walls, bound on all sides by lines.
The lines weren't drawn—they grew from beneath the floor, like vines, or blood-hungry veins.
They crept slowly up his ankles, his knees, his shoulders, until they wove a transparent net that lifted him into the air.
He felt no fear.
He only tried to trace where the lines came from.
On the ground below, a map was unfolding.
No hands moved it.
It spread on its own, like a living thing.
The paper was wet.
Its corners oozed ink the color of blood.
Kaelen saw himself standing at the center of the map.
Lines reached from every city and tethered themselves to him.
When he moved a finger, a border somewhere shivered.
Voices murmured from far away, like someone reciting an old script.
He strained to hear. The words came in fragments:
"Who owns this place—?"
"That year—who redrew the lines?"
"Did he sign his name, or his ancestor's land?"
He tried to answer, but his mouth would not open.
He looked down and saw another line wrapped around his throat.
His body was becoming translucent.
He could see his bones—and within them, another skeleton, older, more fragile, blackened like char.
That skeleton had a name too.
But the writing was blurred.
The map caught fire.
It didn't ignite—it began to burn of its own will.
Flames traced the borders like a snake awakened.
The fire-serpent started in the North, raced through sixteen old cities, curled around seven ancient roads, and finally coiled beneath his feet.
Kaelen tried to step away—
but realized he wasn't standing on the map.
He was embedded in it.
His arms were the northern frontier.
His chest bore the texture of the central plains.
His left eye—was the place that had once been severed, then redrawn.
The fire-serpent circled upward around him, whispering in scattered syllables:
"Whose heir are you?"
"Which line do you represent?"
"Have you ever redrawn the map?"
Kaelen tried to speak.
But he realized—he didn't know what the original map looked like.
He had only ever seen a thousand versions.
Each one called itself "the only one."
Each one drew the same land in a different color.
Then the map began to peel from his body.
His skin turned to paper.
Ink lines spread across it, coiling, tangling, tearing.
He kept his eyes open—yet he could not wake.
He understood:
the dream would not end
unless he chose to burn the entire map.
But he couldn't.
His blood was the ink.
He was the map.
When he finally opened his eyes, the fire had died completely.
The room was cold.
The historian slept at the table.
The old man curled in his chair.
All the cups were empty.
Kaelen did not move.
He only looked out through the gray window, where dust floated in the faint light—like topographic lines still smoldering.
He spoke quietly, as if to himself:
"We can't get out."
No one stirred.
But he knew—that sentence was the final word the fire-serpent in his dream had not finished speaking.
Flags That Burned Before Dawn
Dawn had not yet broken.
A strip of ashen light slipped through the crack in the window, stretching every shadow in the room until they thinned and faded.
Kaelen woke, but did not move. The dream still pulsed beneath his eyelids, like a fuse not yet extinguished.
The historian had woken before him. He sat by the hearth, carving at a cold candle with a folding knife.
"I saw sixteen flags," Kaelen said quietly.
The historian didn't look up. "Too many."
"They were all burning," Kaelen continued. "But under each flag stood someone. None of them ran."
This time, the historian raised his head.
"They didn't run," he said. "Because each of them believed it was the last flag."
The old man was awake too. He leaned back in his chair, eyes open at some point no one noticed.
"Flags should burn," he said. "They're just cloth used to cover the real color underneath."
Kaelen looked at him. "And what's the real color?"
"Who knows?" the old man shrugged. "Maybe blood. Maybe mud."
The historian spoke again, voice firmer than before.
"A flag is belief. Not illusion."
"It's not belief," the old man replied. "It's command."
"Command whom?"
"Command you to die. For a place whose name you can't even say in full."
Kaelen looked at the wine cups on the table.
They had been overturned the night before. Now, the rims held clots of dried wine—like the residue of spent tongues.
"Which flag did you stand under, back then?" he asked.
The old man didn't answer.
The historian spoke first. "I remember you wearing the red cloak, shouting slogans on the west wall."
"And you shouted too," the old man shot back. "Just later than I did."
They both fell silent.
Kaelen said softly, "If our slogans contradicted each other, why are we all still here?"
"Because the flag burned slower than we did," the historian said.
Kaelen exhaled.
He rose from his seat and walked toward the ruined map.
Once, the colors of flags had been printed on it.
Now, they had all faded, leaving only brownish rings, spreading at the edges like some kind of contagion.
"Do you remember the color of the first flag?" he asked.
No one answered.
"Do you remember what was drawn on it?"
The old man said, "I remember it was heavy.
When it hung over the gate in the rain, the ink would drip.
Like it was bleeding."
Kaelen looked down. "Did you ever wonder if it was never truly a flag at all?"
The historian scoffed. "What are you trying to say? That all history is just cloth? That it should all be burned?"
"No." Kaelen stared at the map. "I'm saying maybe no flag was ever big enough to hold everyone."
"So what will you do?"
Kaelen didn't answer.
He reached forward and tore off a corner of the map—the part that once held a crest, now too blurred to recognize.
"I want to see how many kinds of ash there really are," he said.
Wind came through the broken window, caught the torn scrap of cloth, and carried it into the hearth.
The fire had not been lit.
Still, the flag burned.
It burned quietly—like the revocation of a document that never should have existed.
The Ashfall Has No End
Morning came, but there was no sun.
The light was gray—like sifted dust falling through the back of the sky.
The streets outside were silent.
A bell tower rang three times in the distance—missing the fourth.
No one knew whether it was an error, or a choice.
Kaelen stood at the doorway, watching the fog and ash interlace.
He wore no cloak.
Ash settled on his shoulders, on the backs of his hands—like volcanic dust once scattered in old rites.
He did not brush it away.
Inside, the two old men were long asleep.
Perhaps still arguing with another flag in a dream.
Or perhaps already folded into the dust itself.
Kaelen turned and stepped back into the room.
He stood once more before the map.
The torn corner—the crest—had burned away, leaving a blackened void.
It looked more like something that had always been missing, rather than something taken.
His fingertips traced the edge.
It wasn't a tear.
It was evidence that the borders had once been rewritten.
He murmured,
"This wasn't a mistake. It was design."
The kettle in the corner was dry.
The hearth—unlit, hollow.
He thought of the fire-serpent in his dream—coiled around parchment, around flesh, around names.
It had never truly left.
It merely hid beneath every crown.
He closed the map gently.
Not flattened, but folded—like a letter.
As if tucking away what was never said.
He placed it inside his coat and turned.
When he pushed the door open, the hinges gave a faint groan—like they did not wish to see the world again.
Outside, the ash was still falling.
Each flake soundless, but dense as rain.
He stepped into it.
Each step deliberate, as if walking across muddied memory.
The ash did not pause.
At the end of the street, a dead tree bore a faded flag.
It fluttered in the wind—half a wave, half a farewell.
Kaelen ignored it.
He simply kept walking.
No direction.
No destination.
Just movement.
Because he knew:
the ash had never stopped, and never would.
It was not the aftermath of disaster—
It was the empire's own weather.
A climate named the past.
From that day onward,
the ash fell for thirty years.
No one remembered how long the faded flag remained.
Only that its last motion came
on a morning with no name.