The city did not sleep.
Kael crouched in the hollow of a collapsed dome, his body wrapped in shadow. The forge in his chest pulsed erratically, as though trying to match the alien rhythm echoing through the ruins. Every pulse of fire on the horizon sent a ripple through the ash, and with it came a scent that made his throat burn—iron and smoke, the stench of sanctified flame.
The scavengers had not risen since they fell. Their corpses lay twisted in the dust, their bodies hollowed out, as though something had pulled the marrow of their souls into the sky. Kael had seen death before, had dealt it himself, but this was different. This was erasure.
They are coming for you, the forge whispered. And they will burn everything you touch.
Kael ignored it. His eyes swept the ruins, searching for movement. The city itself seemed restless—walls groaning, beams quivering, stairways collapsing without cause. The ash had thickened again, but it moved strangely, flowing in spirals instead of drifting free, like smoke pulled toward unseen fire.
He slipped from his shelter, keeping low. His shadow stretched unnaturally far across the ground, twisting over broken stone. He could feel them now, even before he saw them—the Flamebearers. Not footsteps, not voices, but pressure. The weight of their presence pushed against his bones.
A ruined spire trembled as Kael climbed its cracked stair, his breath sharp in his chest. From its broken peak, he looked out over the skeletal city.
And saw them.
Three figures moved through the ash, distant yet impossible to miss. Each walked apart, but the storm bent around them like cloth drawn to a flame.
The first carried a spear taller than a tower's gate, its tip burning with a fire so white it seared the eyes. With each step he took, the ground beneath him turned molten, cooling into black glass.
The second was shrouded in chains, each link glowing as though plucked from a forge. The chains did not drag—they writhed, coiling and uncoiling around her body like serpents of fire. With every motion, the air itself seemed to scream.
The last was the smallest, a hunched figure wrapped in a cloak of cinders. At first Kael thought it weak, but then the figure lifted its head, and a halo of burning ash spread outward, blotting the sky in a circle of flame. The very storm recoiled from it.
Kael's shadow shrank back against him. The forge inside howled like a caged beast, not in hunger but in rage, as though these beings were its natural enemy.
The Flamebearers paused. Together. As if they had heard his unspoken thought.
Kael dropped from the spire just as a beam of fire split the tower where he had stood. Stone shrieked, molten shards raining across the ruins.
He landed hard, rolling through the dust, his wounds tearing open again.
The forge urged him: Strike. Feed. Devour.
But Kael's mind whispered another truth.
He could not face them head-on. Not yet.
Every ruined street trembled as the Flamebearers advanced, their light stretching across the dead city. Ash ignited wherever it touched, pillars of fire rising like torches to mark their path. The ruins were no longer his hunting ground—they were becoming a pyre.
Kael pressed his back against the bones of a fallen arch, shadows cloaking him. His pulse thundered in his ears.
They were not like the priests. They were not chains to be broken or souls to be consumed.
They were executioners.
And they were coming for him.