By afternoon, the wind carried a stench of iron—like air drawn from molten metal.
Alan and Shadow leaned against the back of a shattered tower, both gasping for breath.The ruins ahead sprawled far wider than they had expected. The ground was covered in fine gray-white dust that shimmered faintly, like frost under moonlight. The air was damp, thick with the scent of spent bone. He didn't need to ask; he already knew—this was an ash furnace field.
The ash furnaces had once been Imperial devices for refining fire—machines that could convert the human soul into fuel. Centuries ago they were outlawed, sealed away. Their reappearance meant only one thing: someone was plotting to rekindle the Old Flame.
Alan crouched and used his dagger's tip to lift a pinch of ash. It wasn't cold. It still held a faint, unnatural warmth."Someone's been here recently," he murmured, frowning.
Shadow crouched beside him, staring at the pale dust."I saw an ash furnace once when I was a child," she whispered. "The sky burned red for three days."
Alan sheathed his knife. "If the sky burns three days," he said evenly, "it means an entire city has died."
They moved along the tower's base. Broken metal supports jutted from the earth like bones pushing through skin. Wisps of heat rose from the ash piles. The fireseed in Alan's chest stirred restlessly. He pressed his palm against it until the heat sank back—but his heartbeat lost its rhythm.Fire could smell old souls, especially in a place like this—it hungered.
Shadow caught his expression. "You're suppressing it again?"
"Mm."
"If you keep doing that, it'll die."
"Later," he said—the same answer as always.
They found a half-collapsed stairway behind the tower. At its base was an iron door, forced open long ago. Dust filled the gap, but there were footprints—some large, some small. Shadow touched one. "A lot of people."
"That's not good news."
"Do we still go down?"
"If we want salt, we go down."
He tapped the door lightly with the knife's spine. The sound was muffled—small chamber beyond."Three-beat wind," Alan whispered.
Shadow pressed against the wall, silently counting. Wind in. Wind out. On the third beat, they slipped inside. The iron scraped grit, shrieking as it opened—and the fireseed jumped once in his chest, startled awake.
A round furnace chamber lay beyond, ten meters wide. The walls were veiled in ash. In the center lay a fallen metal pillar, still radiating warmth. Alan spotted the crystal layer at its base—salt, translucent and tinged blue. Pure. Enough for three nights.
He stepped forward, but Shadow caught his arm and pointed.
Three human husks lay on the far side—bodies shriveled to cinders. They bore the clear marks of burning, yet no charred stench—only the dry heat of ash. Stranger still, their chest pouches still flickered faintly with light.
Shadow recoiled. "They're… still burning?"
"When the fire devours the flesh," Alan said, "it doesn't stop at the soul. The furnace keeps what's left."
He skirted the bodies and knelt by the salt crystal. The blade scraped hard blue salt with a sound like glass breaking. Heat pulsed from his chest—the fire wanted to feed. He ignored it, gathering the crystals fast, sealing them into the bag in under two minutes. Shadow watched the corpses, tense.
One of them twitched.
She reacted instantly, bar lifting—then froze mid-motion. It wasn't movement.Light was breathing from within the husk—flickering in and out, like lungs drawing air.
Alan backed two steps. "Fall to the line!" he shouted. He flung salt in a sweeping half-circle. Shadow leapt into the curve as a burst of fire tore loose behind them. The chamber flared blinding white; pale blue rings crawled across the walls.
The fire ring spun, pulling the ash into a vortex that hissed toward the center. The sound was wrong—like a gale shoved into a narrow glass throat, wailing low. Alan squinted through the glare. The furnace at the heart of the room—half-dead—was waking.The residual coals at its base shimmered red, climbing upward.
Shadow gripped her blade. "Who lit it?!"
Alan's gaze locked on the three black husks, their surfaces still radiating warmth. His voice came cold as hammered iron:"They did."
The furnace's logic was simple and cruel. When a person died with fire still alive inside, the furnace claimed the remainder. It fed on the lingering flame, stealing half a soul at a time.To linger here was suicide.
Alan seized Shadow's wrist and hauled her toward the exit."The salt?" she gasped.
"Got it."
"The fire—?"
"Don't look back."
They broke from the chamber just as the furnace roared—boom.A blast of hot wind slammed them. Shadow stumbled; Alan yanked her upright and up the stairs.Ash-black smoke poured from the crack of the door, spreading up the shaft like boiling fog. Alan risked a glance back.
The three corpses had opened their mouths. From each throat unspooled a thread of pale fire—gray-white, not red. Soul flame.
"Run!" he hissed.
The wind inside the tower reversed, sucking downward like a beast inhaling. He knew it—one heartbeat too late and they'd be dragged in whole. They climbed with everything left, bursting from the tower mouth into screaming wind.The gray surge followed, struck their backs, and seared their skin. Alan threw himself over Shadow, shielding her. The salt bag at his hip tore; white grains scattered. The gray wave hit the salt and froze with a hiss like boiling water on ice.
They lay gasping, wrapped in haze. Shadow rasped, "You're insane."
Alan didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on his chest—the fire's glow shone through cloth. He lifted a trembling hand. The pouch thumped once, faint but alive, like a heartbeat."Don't move," he told it.
The flame ignored him—brighter, hotter.Shadow backed away. "Alan, is it—"
"Silence!" he snapped, palm clamping down. Veins bulged across his hand. The heat clawed through bone. He gritted his teeth, drew his dagger, and cut his palm. Blood spattered the pouch.
The fire jolted. Its brightness halved.
"You're feeding it!" Shadow cried.
"It's hungry."
"It'll drain you dry!"
"Better that than being found."
He gasped for air, forcing the glow down until it calmed. Sweat poured down his jaw. Shadow stared at him, eyes caught between fear and pity."It's controlling you," she whispered.
Alan shook his head slowly. "No. I'm using it. Remember—fire isn't friend or foe. It's just hungry."
The wind shifted, stripping a layer of ash from the ground. Beneath it, a rusted plaque gleamed. Shadow brushed it clean, squinting at the worn engraving:
[Imperial Seventh Army – Ash Furnace Station No. 2.Closed: Year 394 of the Empire.]
She read it softly, then laughed—a brittle, bitter sound. "Three hundred years… and it still isn't dead."
Alan looked north, where dim silhouettes of more towers blurred through the haze."Death doesn't come by itself," he said. "Someone has to perform it."
They camped in a hollow outside the tower. The ash storm hadn't yet settled, and dusk had already begun to fall. Alan checked their supplies—salt, low. Enough for maybe two nights.He looked up. The air shimmered with gray sand, weaving strands of dust across the sky.Far north, a faint light pulsed—not sunlight. Another furnace, waking.
Shadow rewrapped the torn salt bag and leaned against the rock. "Do you think we can get out?"
"We can," Alan said firmly. "North line's the only way."
"But there are furnaces there too."
"That's why they won't follow."
Night swallowed the land.The ash heaps rolled and breathed like sleeping beasts. Alan lit a sliver of tinder; the flame crawled low across the ground. He lifted the pouch flap—inside, the fire was quiet, steady. He stared at it for a long time."I know you're hungry," he whispered. "But ask for blood again, and we burn together."
The flame flickered once—understanding, or mimicry—and went still.
Shadow dozed beside him, the heat of the furnace still lingering in the air, turning the night thick and feverish. Alan stayed awake. He knew the scent of ash could travel far, and in that darkness countless "residual souls" would be drifting, sniffing for the living.He gripped his knife. The cut on his hand still bled faintly. The warmth beneath his ribs pulsed against the cold, a rhythm half his, half its own.
He etched three lessons into his mind:
I. Never overfeed the fire.II. Never return to an ash furnace.III. A man may die—but the fire must die first. No embers left.
Lifting his gaze north, toward that faint shimmer of light, he murmured,"Tomorrow we move with the wind—never under the towers' shadows."
Shadow didn't answer—only her slow breath rising and falling beside him.The gale surged, sweeping away another veil of dust, revealing still more towers beyond.One by one, the furnaces slept beneath them, waiting for the next soul foolish enough to wake them.
Alan closed his eyes at last, palm still pressed to the pouch.The fire was calm.The ash was not.And through the long night, the wasteland breathed—like a forge that would never cool.