### Chapter 20 – The Lesson in Ash
The rumor reached the palace at dawn. A patrol captain, pale and sweating, knelt before Kael and Selara in the council chamber, his words spilling fast as if he feared silence more than his own tongue.
"My lords… there are meetings in the western quarter. Unmarked gatherings. They speak against you. Small, but… growing."
Selara sat back in her throne, fingertips pressed together, her smile almost amused. "How precious. A firefly daring to outshine the moon."
Kael did not smile. He rose, the chain of his cloak rattling softly, and the sound alone made the captain bow lower. "Tell me where," Kael demanded.
The man stammered, then gave the location—a row of abandoned homes near the tanners' street.
Kael's silver eyes gleamed. "Then we burn the street."
---
By midday, soldiers swarmed through the quarter like a tide of steel. Families were dragged from doorways, children screaming, elders protesting. The condemned street was cordoned with oil-soaked ropes, barrels cracked open, the stench of pitch filling the air.
Selara herself walked the line, trailing a finger along the cheeks of those kneeling in the mud. To one woman she said, "Which of you met in shadows? Tell me, and I'll let your child live."
The woman sobbed, clutching her boy, and cried out a neighbor's name. Selara's laughter rang clear. "How eager we are to trade lives when our own is on the block. Beautiful."
The neighbor was dragged forward, his mouth bound, his eyes filled with despair.
Kael lifted a torch. The crowd's murmur rose like a tide of pleading.
"You whisper rebellion," Kael said, his voice carrying over the quarter. "You think shadows hide you from our sight. But we are the night. We are the fire that consumes shadows."
He hurled the torch into the first oil-soaked doorway. Flames leapt, devouring wood with a roar. Soldiers followed suit, tossing torches until the whole street was ablaze.
The screams came quickly—some from those trapped inside, others from those forced to watch.
Selara leaned against Kael, smiling as if admiring art. "Every rebellion begins with a spark," she murmured. "We answer with an inferno."
---
Among the crowd, hidden behind overturned carts, Liora and Marenya watched with white-knuckled fists. Davren trembled, the boy's lips moving in silent prayer as the fire painted his face in flickering orange.
"Do you see?" Marenya hissed. "This is what they'll do to us. To everyone. We can't hide. If we wait, we die in silence."
Liora's jaw clenched, her eyes reflecting both the flames and her own growing resolve. "Then we don't wait. We strike. Even if it kills us—we strike."
The Silent Flame had watched its first massacre. And in that horror, its embers glowed hotter.
---
When the street finally collapsed into ash and smoldering ruin, Kael looked over the smoking wreckage and the hushed, broken crowd. His words were soft but carved deep.
"This is mercy," he said. "Because next time, I won't burn a street. I'll burn the city."
The citizens bowed their heads, too terrified to weep. And yet, somewhere in the ashes, a whisper stirred: *Monsters bleed.*
---