The ash didn't fall like snow. Snow was clean. Snow melted. Ash was just the bones of something that used to be alive, grinding into your skin until you forgot what it felt like to be clean.
Kael wiped sweat and grit from his forehead, leaning on his shovel. The trench was deep enough—waist high, just as the Village Elder had ordered. Around him, the people of Hollow Creek moved with the jerky, frantic energy of prey that smelled a predator.
"Deeper, boy," Old Man Horek grunted, tossing a shovelful of grey earth over the berm. "If they come tonight, shallow graves won't stop them."
"They aren't graves," Kael said, though the words tasted like iron.
"Give it an hour."
Kael gripped his shovel tighter. Horek was a pessimist, but in the Ashlands, pessimists were the only ones who lived long enough to get wrinkles. The village stood on the edge of the Black Reach, the last scrap of human land before the world turned into monster territory. They were a buffer zone. A meat shield for the shiny kingdoms in the south.
Thump.
The sound wasn't a footstep. It was too heavy. It felt like the ground itself had hiccups.
Kael froze. Horek stopped shoveling. The entire line of villagers went still. Silence swept over Hollow Creek, absolute and heavy.
Then the bell rang.
It wasn't the slow toll of the church. It was the frantic, clanging scream of the watchtower.
"BEASTS!" someone screamed. "NORTH RIDGE!"
The world dissolved into chaos. Mothers grabbed children. Men with rusted pitchforks and wood-chopping axes ran toward the pallisade—a joke of a wall made of sharpened logs and prayer.
Kael didn't run to the wall. He ran to the Signal Pyre.
It was his job. His only job. If the beasts came, light the fire. The fire would be seen by the Border Fortress on the hill, five miles away. The Knights would come. Ser Elric would come.
He scrambled up the ladder of the wooden platform, his lungs burning. The pyre was stacked high with oil-soaked wood. trembling, he struck his flint. Once. Twice.
A spark caught. The oil roared.
A pillar of orange fire tore through the grey sky, a beacon of desperate hope against the gloom. Kael shielded his eyes, looking south toward the fortress.
"See us," he whispered. "Please."
Below him, the screams began.
The beasts hit the wall like a landslide of fur and muscle. They were Wolf-kin, standing on two legs but running on four, their jaws wide enough to crush a man's skull. The pallisade snapped like dry twigs.
Kael watched from his perch, frozen in horror. He saw Horek disappear under a pile of grey fur. He saw the village baker trying to fight off a beast with a rolling pin before being swiped aside like a ragdoll.
But he didn't move. He watched the fortress.
They have to see it. It's too bright to miss.
Minutes passed. The screams below thinned out, replaced by the wet sounds of feeding.
The fortress remained dark. No trumpet blast. No gate opening. No thunder of hooves.
And then, he saw it.
On the battlements of the distant fortress, a small light flickered. A torch. Someone was standing there, watching the pillar of fire. Watching Hollow Creek burn.
They saw.
They just didn't care.
"Acceptable loss," Kael murmured, the words feeling foreign in his mouth. That's what the tax collectors called the sheep taken by wolves.
The realisation didn't make him sad. It didn't make him scared. It made him cold. Colder than the ash.
A heavy impact shook the tower. Claws dug into the wood.
Kael looked down. A beast was climbing. Its eyes were yellow, intelligent, and hungry.
Kael didn't have a sword. He didn't have armor. He had a flint striker and a heart that had just turned to stone.
He looked south one last time, engraving the image of that indifferent fortress into his mind.
"I see you, too," he promised.
Then he kicked the ladder away and grabbed a burning brand from the pyre. If he was going to die, he wouldn't be an acceptable loss. He would be a problem.