The road had not been walked in years.
Ash had swallowed the stones whole, and what paths remained bore no tracks—no cart wheels, no hooves, no bootprints. Trees on either side stood like ancient witnesses, blackened by fire, stripped of bark, and hollowed to husks. No wind stirred their limbs. No crows nested in their boughs.
Only Kaelar moved.
His steps were silent. The chains still clung to his wrists, half-melted and warped from the fire, but he'd twisted them loose from the post's remnants. Now they hung like bracelets of defiance, clinking faintly when he walked. The sound echoed strangely in the dead forest—soft and clean, like a name whispered behind closed doors.
He walked until his feet bled again. Until the blisters broke open and left red trails behind. The pain was welcome. The pain meant control.
The fire didn't kill you.
So nothing else will.
By the time dusk pressed against the hills, he reached the remnants of a village.
No banners. No smoke. No sound. Just low, crumbled buildings slumped beneath years of ashfall, their frames hollowed out like ribcages. A rotted well stood at the center, its stone chipped and moss-choked. Doors hung open on rusted hinges. Shutters swung in the breeze like broken jaws.
Kaelar passed beneath the rotting arch of the old gate. No guards had ever manned it—he remembered that much. He had passed through this place once before, during the early days of the war, when the border was shifting like a wounded animal. A night spent here in quiet. A girl with copper hair had given him her only loaf of bread.
Now, even her bones were gone.
He did not mourn. Not anymore.
But he paused beside what remained of the chapel.
It leaned to one side, stone eaten through by lichen and time. The wooden doors had been burned off their hinges. The altar was bare. One of the old stained-glass windows had shattered inward, its shards glittering faintly in the fading light like broken promises.
Kaelar stepped inside.
He looked upon the ruined idol—once a shrine to Oryndel, the Flame-Lord, god of mercy and justice. His old patron. His first prayer. The name he whispered when healing soldiers in the mud.
Now, only the base of the statue remained. The torso had been hacked in half, its arms gone. An axe lay rusted in the corner.
"I bled for you," he said quietly, to the silence.
No answer came.
Not from the idol. Not from the cold heavens above.
He stepped forward and pressed his bloodied palm to the stone, streaking it crimson. The shrine did not respond. No light. No warmth. No whisper in his soul.
Only stillness.
He turned away.
Outside, the first stars had begun to pierce through the dust-cloaked sky, pale and flickering. He found shelter beneath what remained of the baker's shop—four walls and half a roof. He slid down against the corner, joints stiff, and laid his head back against the crumbling wood.
Sleep did not come quickly.
When it did, it came without mercy.
He dreamed of fire.
Of ropes tightening against his wrists as the crowd chanted below.Of a priest reciting a prayer he had written, twisted now into a condemnation.Of the king's seal burning red on the execution order, the ink not yet dry.
He remembered the moment the flames caught his robes—the moment heat turned to pain—the moment he screamed, not in agony, but in rage.
Not because he was dying.
But because they dared to smile while doing it.
Kaelar woke before dawn.
His breath came slow. Steady.
He stood, cracked his neck, and walked.
No food. No water. His body should have collapsed by now—but it didn't. The wounds still hurt. But the bleeding had slowed. Something deep within him was moving. Not healing him exactly—something else. Sustaining him. Feeding on him.
He didn't fear it.
Let the thing inside him grow. Let it burn. He would need it soon enough.
By midday, he reached the edge of the old patrol road. It wound through the hills east of the capital, where border villages had once thrived. He moved carefully now—there might still be scouts this far out. Merchants. Travelers.
He could not be seen—not yet.
A flicker of reflection caught his eye as he passed a half-buried signpost. A broken mirror nailed to a fence, tilted sideways.
He stopped.
For the first time since the pyre, he looked at himself fully.
The man in the glass was not the Kaelar the world remembered.
That Kaelar had been polished. Gilded. Wreathed in silk and silver, the saint with firelight in his eyes. That Kaelar had been beautiful in the way that made men kneel and women weep.
This Kaelar looked carved from vengeance.
His cheekbones were sharper. His eyes darker. Something cruel lingered at the corners of his mouth, even when his face was still. The scarring across his chest—twisted and ugly—ran diagonally, where the flames had licked deepest. His hair had grown wild, falling to his shoulders in uneven waves. His irises had changed.
They were no longer gray.
They were smoldering.
The thing inside him had left its mark.
Good.
Let them see it when he came.
Let them know what crawled out of their fire.
By the time night fell again, he stood at the hilltop overlooking the outer ring of the capital.
Halren.
City of Spires.
Crown of the Ninefold Throne.
From here, the skyline gleamed like a cage of marble and smoke. Dozens of towers pierced the clouds, each flying different banners—houses, guilds, churches, consorts. The palace stood furthest at the center, rising like a fang into the sky, veiled in gold mist.
Kaelar had once stood atop that very spire.
He had once sung to dying soldiers from its balcony. He had once kissed a prince behind its chapel curtain.
Now it waited for him like a mausoleum dressed in silk.
He sat beneath the trees and watched the torches flicker below. Wagons moved through the lower gate. Guards in green-and-black liveries manned the checkpoints. There would be no way in without a name. A face. A story.
He'd need one soon.
But not tonight.
Tonight, he simply watched.
Studied.
Waited.
And beneath the surface of his skin, the thing in the ash moved again—gentle, patient, hungry.