Chapter 1: Through Ash and Fire
Elias Edge's house felt like a tomb that hadn't been sealed right.
It was small, one story, half-forgotten on the edge of town. A porch with two steps leaned into the dirt, and the screen door rattled if the wind so much as breathed. The roof tiles curled like they were trying to escape. A man could mow the whole yard in twenty minutes, but Elias rarely bothered. He let the grass grow long, half wild, until the neighbors gave him looks.
Inside, it was no better. A couch sagged under its own weight. A coffee table bore the weight of unopened mail and a razor still in its plastic. On one shelf sat a folded flag in its triangular case, a wooden cross beside it, and a cracked photo frame of a little girl with brown hair and a smile that outshone the sun.
Ava.
The clock on the microwave clicked over to 11:17 PM as Elias sat at the table, fingers around a chipped mug that hadn't held coffee since morning.
Sleep wouldn't come. It rarely did.
He rubbed at his jaw, feeling the fledgling beard rough under his hand. He hadn't shaved since the Army discharged him three months ago. At first it had been laziness. Then stubbornness. Now it was just part of him, something to hide behind when the mirror showed too much. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his short hair damp with sweat.
At 5'5", Elias had always been shorter than most men in his unit. They used to call him "pocket soldier," clap him on the back like he was a joke. He'd learned quickly that height didn't matter when you were hauling sixty pounds in the desert or fighting for breath under fire. His strength was compact, wiry, built to endure.
But endurance hadn't helped him when Ava died.
His marriage hadn't survived it either. She was gone, leaving only silence and a ring on the counter.
Now it was just Elias. Him, the ghosts, and the too long nights.
He stood and walked onto the porch. The boards groaned under his boots. The night air was thick, buzzing with cicadas, warm enough to cling to his skin. He'd quit smoking, but his hand still searched his pockets for a phantom pack.
Through the window, Ava's picture glowed faintly under the kitchen light. For a moment he let himself imagine her laugh carried in the air, light and sweet. But the sound twisted, warped, and became the memory of mortars, the thump in his chest the same as his heart hammering in panic.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck."
Then the real smoke hit him.
Not memory. Not desert fire pits. The acrid bite of burning timber, thick and sharp. He lifted his head and saw orange flicker against the sky two blocks over. A column of smoke clawed upward.
Elias's body was moving before his mind caught up.
"Shit."
He sprinted down the street, cutting through yards. The closer he got, the louder the chaos became, screams, shouts, the hungry roar of fire. He turned onto Maple Lane and froze at the heat.
A two story house was burning like it wanted to erase itself from the world. Flames chewed through the porch, spat from the windows, climbed the walls. Black smoke rolled out thick as tar.
Neighbors crowded the yard. Some shouted. Some just stared, paralyzed. A man with soot-streaked skin tried to push inside but collapsed to his knees, coughing.
And a woman screamed, her voice breaking. Two neighbors held her back as she thrashed, her face streaked with tears and ash.
"My baby! My baby's still inside!"
The words cut Elias deeper than the heat. He saw Ava in the coffin, saw his wife's empty eyes, heard the silence of a house where laughter had died.
"…not again," he muttered.
He dropped his flannel overshirt but didn't bother with the old soldier's trick of wetting cloth for his face. He had no time, and the only thing in his head was that a child was burning alive while people stood frozen.
He charged forward.
"Wait!" someone shouted. "You can't"
But Elias was already through the door.
The fire swallowed him whole.
The heat seared his throat instantly. Smoke slammed into his lungs, and every breath felt like knives down his windpipe. He coughed, gagged, staggered forward anyway. His eyes streamed as he squinted into the dark.
The wallpaper melted. The floorboards creaked under the assault. Somewhere glass shattered. The ceiling groaned like it was begging to fall.
"Kid!" Elias roared, though the fire tore his voice into scraps. "Keep calling, I'm coming!"
A faint cough answered him.
He dropped lower, boots crunching through debris as he forced his body forward. His forearm brushed a doorframe, and pain lit his skin—his sleeve caught fire, burning through to flesh before he beat it out with a curse. His arm throbbed, the smell of cooked skin clinging to him.
"Goddamn it."
He forced up the stairs. The wood burned his palms when he braced himself. Each breath scorched his chest raw, but the cough up ahead pulled him like a lifeline.
Halfway to the landing, the ceiling gave. A flaming beam crashed down across his back, knocking him to his knees. Agony tore a shout from his throat as the fire chewed through his shirt into his skin. He shoved the beam aside with raw force, the stink of his own flesh burning wrapping around him. His shoulder screamed. His back felt flayed.
He staggered to his feet. The girl's voice broke through the roar, small and terrified "Help!"
Elias shoved open the door. Inside, a child huddled under a desk, coughing, eyes huge with fear.
He staggered forward, lungs seizing, body screaming.
"Got you," he rasped. His voice was nearly gone. "Arms around my neck. Don't let go."
She obeyed, clinging tight, sobbing into his scorched chest.
The hallway behind them collapsed. Fire surged closer, greedy.
Only one way left.
Elias kicked at the window. Once. Twice. The glass shattered outward. Cold night air rushed in.
He shielded her with his body and dove.
They hit the lawn hard.
The impact cracked through him. Pain exploded white hot in his chest. He heard something break, jagged and wrong, felt it spear into his lung. Breath fled him in a wet gasp. He tried to drag air back, but each inhale gurgled blood.
The girl cried out, but neighbors swarmed, pulling her free. Her mother wrapped her in shaking arms, sobbing hysterically. Her father clung to both of them. The child coughed, alive.
Alive.
That was enough.
Elias rolled onto his knees, chest heaving. His vision tunneled. Each breath rattled with wet pain. He coughed, and blood spattered his lips. His burned arms trembled uselessly at his sides. His body was finished.
But the girl was safe.
He smiled faintly through the blood. His last thought was Ava's laugh.
"Good," he whispered. "I can rest now."
Darkness claimed him.
But it wasn't silence.
It was threads.
The world unraveled into strands of violet light stretching across an endless sky. Ash drifted like snow. The fire was gone. The pain was gone.
He was kneeling on cracked stone in a ruined city, arches like bones against the horizon. A spire stabbed at the heavens. The air hummed like a plucked string.
"…the fuck?" Elias muttered, voice whole again.
He touched his chest. No broken rib. No burns. His fledgling beard still scratched under his hand. He was alive.
A growl echoed through the ruins.
Shapes slunk forward, wolf-like, but wrong, hides glistening with light under their skin, eyes milk white.
Elias grabbed a broken spear he saw nearby and set his stance.
"Come on then," he rasped.
The first lunged. Instinct and something else, some strange vibration, pulled him sideways, spear driving home. The creature dimmed and collapsed. Another rushed. He cracked it down. A third leapt, he shoved the spear through its jaw. Silence followed.
Then, a whimper.
Elias turned.
Near a fallen column, a small cub limped into view, midnight fur stitched with silver light. Its leg bled, its eyes wide.
Elias lowered the spear.
"Easy," he whispered.
The memory of the screaming mother burned behind his eyes. Ava's smile echoed in his chest.
"Guess peace will have to wait," Elias muttered.
And he stepped forward.
The cub shrank back against the fallen column, ears flat, but it didn't run. Maybe it couldn't. Maybe it knew there was nowhere left to go.
Ash drifted thick through the air, glowing faintly in the violet sky. For a heartbeat the ruins held their breath. Then claws clicked against stone.
Two more of the pale scavengers slunk out of the rubble, ribs like knives under their skin, their milky eyes fixed on the cub. They moved in that sideways, jittering way feral dogs sometimes did, half confident, half starving.
"Of course," Elias muttered, adjusting his grip on the broken spear. His throat burned with every word, his lungs still remembering smoke. He spat to clear the taste of ash and blood. "Nothing's ever easy."
The scavengers fanned to either side, their growls vibrating in his ribs. The hum came again, the strange resonance that warned him, not in sound but in bone. A plucked string under his skin. It told him where they would strike before they did.
The left one leapt. Elias sidestepped, spear whipping up in a short, brutal thrust. The splintered tip punched into its shoulder, grinding bone. The thing screeched, light under its skin flaring, then dimming as it collapsed.
The second pounced while his weapon was still buried. The hum rang sharp in his chest, move! Elias let go of the shaft, pivoted into the rush, and slammed his boot into the beast's ribs. At 5'5" he'd always been the smaller man in a fight, but he knew how to use his weight like a hammer. The impact sent it sprawling, yelping, before it scrambled upright again, foam hissing from its jaws.
Elias ripped the spear free from the first corpse, spun it in his grip, and waited.
"Come on, ugly," he growled, chest heaving. "I'm not done yet."
It lunged again. This time he didn't sidestep. He met it head on, jamming the spear down its throat with both hands. The impact rattled his shoulders. The beast gagged around the wood, light flickering frantically beneath its skin, then stilled.
Silence returned, broken only by the faint whimper behind him.
Elias yanked the spear free and leaned on it for a moment, catching his breath. Sweat mixed with ash on his face. His back throbbed where the beam had burned him. His chest felt tight, phantom ache where a rib had once punctured his lung.
He turned to the cub.
It hadn't moved. Its flanks shivered with shallow breaths, one leg bent wrong. Blood seeped into the ash beneath it, dark and strange, threaded with faint glimmers of silver.
Elias crouched, careful not to make himself look bigger.
"Easy," he murmured. His voice came out rough, smoke scorched. "Not here to hurt you."
The cub bared its teeth weakly, but its body sagged with exhaustion.
Elias slid the spear aside, palms open. He tore a strip of fabric from his undershirt, spat into it, and pressed it gently against the wound. The cub flinched, but didn't fight.
"Yeah," Elias said. "I know it stings. Join the club."
He wrapped the makeshift bandage tight, knotting it so it wouldn't slip. His burned arms shook with the effort. Up close, the cub smelled of cold stone and something faintly metallic, like lightning after a storm.
When he finished, he sat back on his heels and studied it.
The cub blinked at him, silver-threaded eyes wide and uncertain.
"You're just a pup," Elias muttered. "And this place wants you dead as much as it wants me dead."
The cub licked its nose, gave a faint huff, then, slowly, crawled forward until its muzzle brushed his hand. Its tongue was rough, a cautious test.
Elias snorted. "Hell. Guess we're partners now."
He slid the strap of his flannel under the cub's body, fashioning a sling to carry it against his chest. The pup tensed, then went still once he had it settled. Its heartbeat fluttered against his ribs, fast and nervous.
Elias pushed to his feet, spear in one hand, cub in the other. He scanned the ruins. More shapes skulked at the edge of shadow, watching. He could feel them. He didn't need to see their eyes, the hum in his bones told him they were there.
"Yeah, I see you," he muttered. "Not tonight."
He started down a side street, keeping to cover. The cub shifted against him, small body radiating fragile warmth.
"What the hell am I doing?" he asked the night. "Carrying a goddamn wolf puppy through a nightmare."
The cub sneezed softly, as if unimpressed.
Elias chuckled dryly, though it came out more like a cough. "Fine. You need a name, don't you? Can't keep calling you 'hey you.'"
He thought for a moment. Images flickered, chess games with buddies overseas, black birds perched on telephone wires back home, survivors making do with scraps.
"Rook," he decided aloud. "Yeah. That'll do. You look like a Rook."
The cub, Rook now, blinked up at him, eyes glinting silver in the ashfall.
Elias adjusted his grip on the spear and trudged deeper into the ruins, ash swirling around him, violet threads blazing across the sky. His throat burned, his chest ached, and every step reminded him he should be dead.
But he wasn't.
Not yet