Ash fell like snow.
It drifted from a colorless sky, thick and slow, coating the earth in gray silence. The wind dragged it across the cracked stone, along the broken roads, into the corpses that hadn't yet stiffened. Somewhere beyond the smoke and ruin, bells rang — not to mourn the dead, but to count them.
The man walked barefoot.
He stepped between the dead without glancing down, his feet blackened from soot and blood. He wore no armor. No sigil marked his tattered cloak. No one followed him. And yet, every soldier left alive in the shattered ruins of Northhold knew exactly who he was.
Ashwalker.
Some whispered it like a curse. Others like a prayer. But all agreed on one thing:
If you saw him walking toward you, it was already too late.
The wind howled. The ash thickened. And he kept walking.
He stopped before the last standing gate.
It was half-collapsed, held up by rusted hinges and desperate prayer. Beyond it lay a courtyard scorched by oil-fire and arrow storms. A dozen soldiers stood there, backs pressed to the temple wall — the last of Northhold's resistance. Their armor was scorched. Their eyes hollow. Their blades shook in tired hands.
One stepped forward.
A captain, maybe. His voice was hoarse from smoke. "State your name."
The Ashwalker didn't answer.
The captain's hand drifted to the hilt at his side. "You're no banner. No colors. You walk in with nothing but a blade and ash behind you. Who do you serve?"
A pause.
Then the man finally spoke — not loud, not soft. Just… steady.
"I serve what comes after."
The captain's brow furrowed. "After what?"
The Ashwalker stepped forward. "After mercy. After empires. After gods."
The captain hesitated. His men looked at each other, uncertain.
And then the sword was drawn.
It wasn't fast — not a flash, not some blur of speed like a hero from a bard's song. It was deliberate. Heavy. Like the sword itself didn't cut — it ended.
The blade was long, blackened steel. No sheen. No ornament. A weapon made for one thing, and one thing only.
Blood followed. Not a scream. Just the sound of steel through bone, and a body crumpling like cloth.
The soldiers froze.
The Ashwalker pointed the tip of his blade at them, then lowered it to the ground.
"I don't want you," he said. "I want who gave the order."
They looked past him, to the ash, to the corpses, to the field of fire that had once been a town. Then one of them — a young soldier, barely more than a boy — dropped his weapon.
The others followed.
When he walked past them, they did not move.
The temple doors opened with a groan. Inside, incense still burned. The kind that masked rot. The kind the Pale Choir used to hide blood under velvet robes and chants of absolution.
He walked the aisle alone.
At the altar stood a man in gold thread, a bishop's robe heavy with divine chains. He didn't flinch. He simply watched the Ashwalker approach with a sad smile, like greeting an old friend.
"So it is true," the bishop said. "You've returned."
The Ashwalker said nothing.
The bishop touched the altar, fingers brushing ash that had already seeped through the cracks in the roof. "Tell me… did you come here for vengeance? Or something older?"
The Ashwalker's grip tightened on the hilt.
"You burned this city," he said.
"I absolved it."
"You hanged children."
"They were heretics."
"You crucified their mothers."
"They were rebels."
A beat of silence.
Then:
"You're not afraid?" the Ashwalker asked.
"No," said the bishop.
"Why not?"
"Because," the bishop whispered, "I know what you are. And what you are can't be stopped by fear."
The sword moved again.
No flourish. No rage. Just execution.
Blood sprayed across the altar.
The body collapsed behind the altar with a wet, boneless thud. The bishop's blood steamed as it hit the stone, hissing like it too had been damned.
The Ashwalker wiped nothing from the blade.
He didn't pray.
He turned.
And saw her.
A girl, maybe sixteen, barefoot and starved. Her dress was torn, and her eyes were wide — not with fear, but recognition. She hadn't been in the temple when he entered. She'd come from one of the side passages, maybe a servant or a prisoner. But when she saw the bishop's body, she didn't scream.
Instead, she whispered:
"You really are real."
The Ashwalker paused.
She stepped forward. "They said you were a myth. That no man could survive the Black March. That you were smoke and vengeance and nothing more than war stories."
He said nothing.
She stared at the sword in his hand, still dripping. "You don't remember me."
He didn't answer.
"My brother," she said. "His name was Leor. They burned him in the square. You watched."
Still, he said nothing.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she kept her voice level. "You watched. You didn't stop them."
The sword dropped to his side.
"I was bleeding out in the crowd," she said. "And you just stood there. Cloaked in ash. Eyes like coals. You didn't move."
"I wasn't ready," he said quietly.
She flinched. "And now you are?"
"No," he said. "But now I don't care."
Outside, the sky began to open. Rain fell — thick, blackened drops that hit the ash and turned it to mud. Thunder rolled in the far distance, muffled by smoke and ruined stone.
The girl followed him outside.
"You're not a savior," she said, watching him descend the broken temple steps. "You're just a man who kills after it's too late."
He didn't respond.
"Then why keep going?" she asked. "What's left?"
He looked up at the sky.
And for the first time, he answered honestly.
"I don't know."
She waited beside him in silence. The wind caught the edge of her torn dress. Somewhere beyond the walls, the bells of the dead tolled again.
She turned toward the courtyard. "They'll crown someone else. Another bishop. Another lord. Another leash."
"I know."
"And you'll kill them too?"
"If they build it in blood," he said, "then yes."
A long silence passed. Then, hesitantly:
"Take me with you."
He looked at her. "No."
"Why not?"
"You don't want this."
She stepped closer. "You don't get to decide that."
He looked away.
But she didn't. "If you're going to kill them… I want to see it. I want to know they scream."
A gust of wind swept through the ruins.
"You'll die," he said.
"Good," she replied.
They left Northhold at dusk.
No horses. No banner. Just two silhouettes walking through the mud and flame-lit fog, toward a road few dared follow — the old King's Spine, where no caravans passed and no maps bothered marking.
He didn't ask her name.
She didn't offer it.
Somewhere behind them, a soldier watched them vanish into the storm and whispered to no one:
"Let the gods have mercy on what they find."
A week passed.
Word traveled faster than horses, faster than crows. By the time the Ashwalker and the girl reached the next province, stories had already taken root.
They said the Pale Bishop had been nailed to his own altar.
They said his eyes were left open, so he'd keep watching heaven as the sky ignored him.
They said a storm had risen the moment the execution finished — black rain, godless wind, and thunder that sounded like a warning.
No one agreed on what the Ashwalker looked like.
Some claimed he wore a crown of ash and bone.
Others said his skin was branded with the names of every city he'd burned.
Some whispered he had no face — only a mask of soot and blood.
But they all agreed on this:
Where he walked, things ended.
In the quiet hills of Brenn Hollow, a blind priest heard the tale.
He sat alone beneath a willow, mouth pressed to a cracked holy book, whispering prayers in a tongue no one used anymore.
When the story reached his ears — carried by a boy running messages between towns — he stopped praying.
"Are you certain?" he asked, voice dry with dust.
The boy nodded. "They say it was him. The one from Blackreach."
The priest exhaled. A long, bitter breath.
Then he whispered a name the boy didn't recognize — and crossed out a line in his scripture with a charcoal nail.
In a castle far north, a man with silver hair stirred from his seat as the report came in.
The room was filled with incense and firelight, but the chill didn't lift. He read the letter slowly, his gloved hands steady. When he reached the final sentence — 'Ashwalker confirmed. Bishop executed.' — he smiled.
Not warmly.
The smile of someone who'd waited years for the wrong storm to return.
"Send riders to the High Table," he said.
"And the boy?" one of his men asked.
The silver-haired lord paused, then turned to the burning fireplace. In the flames, a single log cracked — and a scatter of ash leapt into the air like fleeing ghosts.
"Let the boy run," he said. "It'll make the hunt sweeter."
Back on the road, the girl walked five paces behind the Ashwalker.
She still didn't know his real name.
Didn't know where he was from.
Didn't know where they were going.
But every night he built a fire, sharpened his blade, and stared into the flame like it owed him something. And every morning, he rose before the sun and walked like a man who didn't believe the earth should stop him.
She'd asked once, when the silence got too heavy to carry.
"Why do you keep going?"
He didn't answer that day.
But three nights later, as the wolves howled far off in the dark, he finally spoke.
"They killed my brother," he said.
She sat across the fire, hands curled around her knees.
"How?"
"They thought I was him."
She didn't say anything. Just stared at him through the flames. The way the fire danced across his face, it looked like the ash in his veins was trying to crawl back out.
"Do you want to kill the one who gave the order?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "He died years ago."
"Then who's left?"
He looked out at the night. At the stars that blinked like dying embers across the black.
"Everyone who watched."