The world was orange.
Kaelen stumbled to his window, the floorboards shuddering under his feet. The view he knew so well—the quiet square, the sleeping homes, the gentle slope of the hill—was gone. Replaced by a living painting of hell.
Fire danced on rooftops. It ran along fences like liquid. The common hall was a roaring, shrieking beast of flame, spitting embers into a smoke-choked sky. The air itself tasted of burning pitch and charred meat.
And the sounds. Gods, the sounds.
Screams, yes. But not the shouts of a village fighting a normal fire. These were raw, shredding sounds of pure terror, cut off too quickly by wet, final cracks or the hungry whoosh of something catching fire all at once.
Beneath the screams was laughter. A high, jagged, unhinged sound that wove through the chaos like a snake.
Kaelen's body moved before his mind could catch up. He snatched his hunting knife from the bedside table, slung his father's bow over his shoulder, and burst out of his room.
Smoke coiled in the main room's air. His father was already at the front door, peering through a crack, his body rigid. His mother had Lyra clutched to her side, her face pale but set. Lyra was silent, her eyes huge dark pools in the flickering light leaking through the shutters.
"Weepers," his father spat the word like a curse. He turned, his eyes finding Kaelen. There was no fear in them. Only a fierce, terrible clarity. "Out the back. To the forest. Now."
They moved as one. Elara pushed Lyra ahead of her. Kaelan yanked the back door open.
A wall of heat slammed into them.
Their backyard, their garden, was an inferno. The trees at the forest's edge were already torches. And standing between them and the tree line were three figures.
They were silhouettes against the flame, but Kaelen could see the details as one turned. Tattered clothes. Skin marked with lurid, glowing scars. And their eyes… their eyes and the tracks down their cheeks shone with a sickly, internal light, like embers seen through ash.
One of them, a woman with wild hair, lifted a hand. A gout of flame, not from any torch, but from her palm, shot out and ignited the remains of their woodpile. She giggled.
"The back is cut off!" Kaelen's father roared, shoving them all back inside and slamming the door. A beam from the porch crashed down outside, blocking it. "Through the house! The front!"
They turned, a frantic knot of four, and rushed back through the main room. Kaelan reached the front door, threw it open.
The village square was a slaughterhouse.
Bodies lay blackened and still. Others ran, flaming like human torches, before collapsing. And in the center, directing the horror like a conductor, was a man.
He was taller than the others. His bare torso was a canvas of old, twisted burn scars. Fresh, glowing lines pulsed across his skin, following the paths of his veins. His face was a ruin of melted and re-hardened flesh, but his eyes—and the twin, blazing tracks from them—burned with a joyful, insane intensity. He held out both arms, and streams of fire spiraled from his hands, lashing out to tap the thatched roof of the weaver's hut. It exploded into flame.
"To the side street!" Kaelan yelled, pushing them left along the front of their house, away from the square.
They fled, choking on smoke. A Weeper, a young man cackling, stepped out from between two homes. Kaelen didn't think. He nocked, drew, and loosed an arrow in one smooth motion he'd practiced ten thousand times.
It took the Weeper in the shoulder. The man looked down at the shaft, puzzled, as if a mosquito had bitten him. Then he smiled, wrapped his hand around the arrow, and it burst into white-hot flame, crumbling to ash. He pointed a finger at them.
Kaelan shoved Kaelen hard. "GO!"
They scrambled into a narrow alley between the smithy and the storehouse. Halfway down, the world groaned. With a deafening crack, the second story of the smithy sagged, and a cascade of burning timbers and hot clay bricks crashed down, sealing the alley behind Elara and Lyra, separating them from Kaelen and his father.
"MOM! LYRA!" Kaelen screamed, clawing at the hot, impassable wall of debris.
"Kaelen!" his mother's voice came, muffled, frantic. "Get to the forest! Run!"
"We'll go around! We'll meet you!" Lyra's voice, trying to be brave, cracked with terror.
Kaelan grabbed his son's arm, his grip like iron. His face was a mask of soot and agony. He looked from the rubble separating them from his wife and daughter, to the open end of the alley that led deeper into the village, now glowing with approaching firelight. A decision flashed in his eyes, horrible and final.
He fumbled at his own neck, snapping a leather cord. He pressed a small, heavy object into Kaelen's palm. It was a pendant, a flat piece of dark grey stone, cold to the touch. Carved into its surface was a spiral, identical to the one on the old shrine.
"Listen to me," his father said, his voice a raw, urgent whisper. "You must get this to your mother. Do you understand? It is for her alone. Now GO!"
He pointed to a low fence at the alley's end. "Over that, cut behind the tannery. Find them!"
He gave Kaelen a shove so powerful it nearly sent him to his knees. Then, without another word, Kaelan Morrow turned. He drew the heavy woodsman's axe from his belt. He planted his feet in the middle of the alley, facing the oncoming glow, a single man against the hellfire.
"DAD!"
"GO, KAEL! FOR THEM!"
The last thing Kaelen saw was his father's broad back, solid as an oak, as the first flaming figure rounded the corner.
Kaelen ran. He vaulted the fence, his bow catching, snapping the string. He didn't stop. He landed in a sprint, the cold stone pendant clenched so tight in his fist it felt like it would cut his skin.
Behind the tannery. Find them.
The tannery was a lake of fire. The stench of burning hair and hide was vomitous. He couldn't get through. He changed direction, his mind a map of his home, now overlaid with flame and death.
He saw Maude, the innkeeper, lying in the street. He didn't stop.
He saw Garrick the blacksmith, his great hammer in hand, standing over the body of a younger Weeper whose neck was bent at a wrong angle. Three more Weepers surrounded him, fire growing in their palms. Kaelen ducked behind a water trough, watching, helpless, as the fire flew. He ran again before Garrick's screams ended.
He was close to the village's eastern edge. The forest was there, a dark wall beyond the firelight. Hope, desperate and wild, clawed at his throat.
Then he heard her voice.
"Kaelen…?"
It was weak. Choked.
He turned.
A storage shed had collapsed. Under a heavy, burning crossbeam, pinned like a butterfly, was his mother.
Elara's legs were buried. Her dress was smoldering. Her face was turned toward him, streaked with soot and sweat. Her eyes, wide and scared, found his.
"Mom!" He scrambled to her, dropping his knife, using his bare hands to claw at the hot, splintered wood pinning her. It was too heavy. He heaved, his back screaming. It shifted an inch, no more. "Where's Lyra?!"
"She… she ran ahead. I told her to run. I fell…" Elara's breath hitched. "The beam… Kaelen, go. Find your sister."
"I'm getting you out!" he roared, tears of frustration and terror finally breaking free, cutting tracks through the grime on his face. He pulled again, muscles tearing.
A shadow fell over them.
The heat intensified, becoming a physical weight.
"Ohhh," a voice sighed, a voice like the crackle of fat in a fire. "A little bird, trapped."
Kaelen looked up.
It was the scarred man from the square. Up close, he was a monument to pain. The old burns covered him. The new ones glowed. He smelled of char and incense. His glowing eyes held a childlike curiosity as he looked at Elara, then at Kaelen.
"You," the man said, his melted lips twisting into a smile. "You have his look. The keeper's look."
"Stay away from her!" Kaelen snatched up his knife, standing between the Weeper and his mother. His hands shook.
The Weeper's smile widened. He took a step forward, utterly unconcerned. "He promised us we could burn. He promised us it would mean something. Your father hid the meaning. So we'll burn it out."
He raised a hand, not in a fist, but with fingers splayed, as if to caress the air.
"NO!" Kaelen lunged, driving the knife with all his strength toward the man's chest.
The Weeper didn't dodge. He moved his hand, almost lazily, and caught Kaelen's wrist. The touch was searing. Kaelen screamed as the smell of his own cooking flesh filled his nose.
The knife clattered to the ground.
The Weeper held him effortlessly, his burning eyes inches from Kaelen's. "Watch," he whispered, kindly.
He turned his other hand toward Elara. He didn't throw fire. He simply reached down and touched the hem of her smoldering dress.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a transformation.
The fire raced up the fabric like a living thing, hungry and swift. In less than a second, it enveloped her. There was no time to scream. One moment, her eyes were on Kaelen, full of a love so vast it eclipsed the terror. The next, she was a silent, writhing silhouette of pure orange flame within the outline of a person.
Then the silhouette crumpled.
The sound Kaelen made was not human. It was the sound of his soul breaking.
He wrenched free, his wrist blistering. He launched himself at the Weeper, fists, teeth, a raw animal snarl ripping from his throat.
The Weeper looked almost bored. He backhanded him.
The impact was like being hit by a falling tree. Kaelen felt his ribs creak. He was airborne. The world spun—a whirl of orange sky, black smoke, the face of the burning man receding.
His back hit the solid stone wall of the old well.
Darkness rushed in, not as a gentle fade, but as a shutter slamming down. The last thing he heard was the laughter. The last thing he saw was the pendant, still clenched in his fist, the spiral stark against his seared skin.
Then, nothing.