She had been walking for hours.
Down stone steps older than any map. Past carvings worn smooth by time and weather and forgetting. Beneath arches that trembled without wind. The air here was neither dry nor damp. It simply was, like a breath held too long under a grave.
Reneta descended alone.
Her torchlight flickered. Shadows twisted behind her—long, uneven things that bent where her body did not. She kept one hand loosely curled around the hilt of her sword-whip, its coil at her side shifting gently with each step. Not drawn. But close.
The deeper she went, the more the stone seemed to pulse.
Not with life.
With memory.
Like something had once sung here—something vast and buried. And it still resonated, faintly, like the echo of a bell muffled by ash.
⸻
Her orders had said little.
"Complete the pilgrimage. Reaffirm loyalty. Root yourself in ancestral purpose."
And then a seal.
Not a sigil she recognized—just a broken spiral, inked in red, circled by seven stars. The wax had smelled faintly of ash and myrrh.
They hadn't told her where her path would lead her.
Only that she must descend until it ended.
Now, it had.
⸻
The stair flattened into a vast stone chamber, carved deep into the earth like a forgotten womb. No altar. No banners. No shrines. Just silence—thick as smoke, dry as a lie.
At the chamber's heart: a pedestal.
Obsidian. Veined with something that looked like root or Thread. On top of it sat a single bowl. Smooth. Black. Filled to the rim with ash.
Reneta stepped forward.
Her boots scraped something brittle.
She paused.
Then knelt.
Brushed it clean.
Not roots.
Bones.
Small ones.
Human.
Old enough to be mistaken for ruin. Old enough the Empire likely didn't care if they were ever found.
She rose slowly, the torchlight dimming without flame.
Her eyes returned to the bowl.
Nothing remarkable. Plain. Cracked on one edge. And yet… each step closer twisted her gut—not from fear.
From recognition.
⸻
She reached out.
Her fingers brushed the rim.
And something surfaced.
Not a voice.
Not a vision.
A scent.
Burnt pine. Clay dust. Wet iron.
A fire.
Not from war—but from memory.
She had been five. Maybe six. Smoke rising. Her mother screaming at her to run. Her father's coat pulled over her head to keep her from choking. She remembered hiding. Waiting. Not being found.
The day she stopped having a name of her own.
The day the Empire gave her a new one.
The ash felt warm. Familiar.
A sob caught in her throat.
She swallowed it.
Her knuckles whitened around the torch hilt. Her other hand hovered over the coiled whip at her hip, like she could lash the past into silence.
She didn't.
⸻
More fragments stirred.
Her first instructor at the academy—forcing her to bind her left hand during Threadwork. "Too much pull from the wrong lines," he'd said. "You'll bend before you break."
Her mentor's whispered lullaby—the one not sanctioned by Doctrine, the one said to be sung by witches.
A girl once—Isa. She had drawn a spiral in chalk beneath their shared cot. The next day, she was gone. The bed never filled again.
Reneta blinked.
Her eyes stung.
But she didn't cry.
Not now. Not yet.
She turned toward the back wall.
And froze.
⸻
Carvings.
Seven stars.
Faded in color.
Each symmetrically placed.
If one had patience they may have noticed a pattern. Reneta had none.
But still something told her they held weight. As if someone had poured grief into the stone itself.
Below them: runes. Most were broken or burned.
All but one.
One symbol remained. Sharp. Small. Glowing faintly red, like an ember caught in breath.
Reneta stepped forward.
Her fingers brushed it.
⸻
The world ripped open.
No warning.
Just heat.
And screams.
She stood on black soil. No — ash. The remains of something once green. Trees burned in rows like funeral pyres. Fire spiraled through their roots like veins laid bare. And in the distance — screaming.
Not of war.
Of people burning.
Witches.
She didn't know how she knew. But it bloomed in her chest like a bruise. Men and women with ash-marked skin, bone rings, and ink-threaded robes. Some stood defiant. Others clutched children with symbols carved into their skin—runes that pulsed before vanishing into flame.
Children.
Another name surged up.
Rune? Ruin?
She didn't know what it meant. But her soul reeled from it.
And there—on a rise above the grove—stood a man.
Watching.
He did not move. He did not speak.
He only watched as the grove devoured itself.
But his aura—
It was the most noble thing she had ever felt.
Like light had been folded into judgment. Like justice had been sculpted into flesh.
She wanted to step toward him. To ask who he was.
But before she could—
Someone ran to her.
A boy? A girl? The shape blurred, wrong in time. Eyes wide, breathing fast, they pressed a book into her hands.
"No matter what they do—keep it."
Then—
Shattering.
Like the sound of glass memory breaking.
And the vision snapped.
⸻
Reneta gasped.
She was on her knees, fingers clutching something solid.
Real.
A book.
Blackened. Bound in red thread. Warm, like it had just been pulled from the edge of flame.
It smelled—
Like scorched truth.
She stared at it.
Then her hand.
Ash clung to her skin.
Not warm. Not cold.
Just there.
She rubbed her palm. Once. Twice.
It didn't fall away.
"They sent me here to remember what I'm supposed to forget," she whispered.
No reply.
But the silence didn't feel empty.
It felt… attentive..
Her Threads shifted. For a breath, her aura flickered—tangled hues of soul and symbol, resonant but restrained.
The bowl behind her pulsed once, like it heard the motion.
⸻
She stepped back.
The silence pressed in.
She had come to obey.
To follow orders.
To reaffirm loyalty.
But instead—standing in this hollow place, surrounded by ash and lost things—Reneta felt something the Empire had trained out of her.
Grief.
Grief for the girl who once believed everything had meaning.
Grief for the warrior forged to be a weapon.
Grief for the woman who'd buried them both.
⸻
She didn't take the ash with her.
She left it in the bowl.
But as she turned, she touched the hilt of her sword-whip, the chain silent against her side.
Not for defense.
Not for violence.
Just to remind herself she still chose to carry it.
And the memory from the ash—
it followed her.
⸻
She climbed in silence.
The carvings faded behind her.
The stair twisted upward like a question with no answer.
And deep in the dark below, the glowing rune dimmed.
Not gone.
Just hidden.
Just waiting.