The Ashes We Wake In

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

Smoke, iron and crushed herbs. My lungs gasped for air, each breath was like dragging knives across my ribs.

Then there was a sound.

Drip.
Drip.
Drip

Not water exactly. The rhythm was too deliberate, too measured like the steady release of a water spout.

My eyes opened to white light.

For a moment, I thought I was still there… the white room, the chairs, CIX’s consistent scowl. But this light wasn’t clean or still. There was a certain heaviness to it, the air too. The ceiling above me wasn’t plaster but a weave of roots and living branches, carved with runes that pulsed like heartbeats. From between the knots, flowers with translucent petals hung down, shimmering with their own glow. Every so often, on exhaled releasing a swirl of golden-green mist. The vapor descended, brushing across my face and I breathed it in. sweet as rain at first then it stung like tiny needles pressing into every pore

—Cough. Cough.

So, that’s where the smell was coming from.

My chest ached. My skin prickled.

I tried to sit up, but my body was heavier than iron. A sharp sensation of heat coiled around my arms and ribs. Instinctively, my hand reached to where the pain was only to be restricted.

A hollow reed tube pierced the skin of my forearm, running upward into a hanging gourd above, its belly glowing faintly with green light. Each droplet slipped through the reed, pulsing as it entered my veins.

Not water. Medicine. Magna. Maybe both.

That explained the sound but why was it in me?

I wanted to rip it out. My body was a symphony of pain, ever part in screaming in unison but my butt. My butt was on top of impossibly soft, spongy moss wrapped in strands of silk that hummed faintly when I shifted against them. If paradise was a place, my backside was definitely on it.

I almost let myself sink back into it, surrendering to the warmness but my stomach wasn’t having it. An impossible hunger gnawed through my torso like a pack of wolves—it wasn’t just the emptiness of a missed meal but the primal ache of something that had been drained and not yet returned.

Dragging my legs free of the warm bed, careful not to dislodge the reed tube, I looked around. I was in some kind of an organic room. A cube of living plant walls, runes glimmering faintly along their veins. It seemed alive, like I had somehow been injested by a carnivorous plant. At the very far end was a circular opening, its edges ringed with damp green growth that puckered like lips.

I pushed my head through.

The air was cooler outside. Outside, the world unfolded in tiers of floating walkways and glass windows. Organic buildings rose like petrified trees fused with stonework, their surfaces crawling with vines etched in runes. People walked from tower to tower using the bridge that curved between them like green arteries, pulsing with light. I was high—high enough a fall would shatter bones but low enough it would not kill me.

White trees were sprouted in between stone buildings, for some reason

To the left, twin marble statues rose in serene symmetry: one holding a flame, the other water. Their faces tilted toward the Silver Ring streets below, a dead giveaway where I was.

The Silver Ring

Specifically, the Healer’s Guild.

The last time I was here, Keiji and I had dragged Thomlin’s bleeding stumps through its gates. Back then, I’d seen nothing past the waiting hall and its plain wooden benches. I had no idea this was what lay beyond: the Ring of light and eternal green, where Magna flowed like rivers without end.

A sound snapped me back—a shuffle of footsteps on moss. I jerked my head back inside ready to face the potential assailant.

A woman slid through the doorway, broom in hand and gray robes, sweeping the mossy floor. Her robe shimmered with four sigils in a circular pattern on her chest, patterns I didn’t recognize. Her eyes didn’t meet mine at first —she looked at the tubes nailed into my veins and dropped her broom.

“Patient Thirty-Three,” she muttered. “Awake….”

Her voice was clipped, professional. Not unkind, but there was no warmth in it either.

I swallowed, paranoia getting the better of me. What if she was one of the Six in disguise, watching, waiting for me to slip? I had to play my part of a background character. Harmless.

“Where…where am I?” My voice cracked, deliberately weak.

“The Guild,” she said simply. “Wing of Restoration.” She moved toward me, her fingers perusing my body. “You’ve been under deep restoration for a while. Hold still….I’ll extract the lines.”

She worked with unsettling efficiency and precision. I flinched as she pulled them out, leaving behind a soft hiss and a wet pop. Tiny green holes glowed at the punctures like fireflies.

When the last tube was gone, she drew a wand that looked coated with roots from her sleeve. She stepped back, her stern face gave away no emotion and whispered:

“Redintegratio.”

The holes closed up and disappeared instantly.

“A clean recovery,” she said, her voice flat as stone. Then she gripped my chin, tilted my head side to side slightly, though from her expression you would think she was trying to break my neck. “Restoration was effective. Minimal scarring. Wash your face and the residue will clear. I’ll summon the Leading Healer for discharge.”

“Wait….” My hand grabbed her robe then dropped. “How… how long was I under?”

Her eyes flicked to a small crystal slab hovering at her side. Its surface rippled as numbers shited in liquid light.

“Sixty-one days since admittance.”

Sixty-one?!

The plant floor seemed to tilt beneath me. My chest skipped. I wanted to speak, to demand answers about what had happened to Keiji and the others, but my body betrayed me—weak, trembling, useless. I felt smaller than I ever had.

The healer must have seen it in my face, because she tilted her head slightly, just enough to break her mask of indifference. “

“You’ll be fine,” she said, almost gently. “Rest while I notify your registered contact.”

Her words clung like smoke after she left.

Sixty-one days.

What happened in all that time?

Where were Keiji and the others?

I looked at the empty moss bed, then at the doorway she had passed through.

And then it hit me suddenly, sharply—I realized.

The Mourner’s Pack.

Was gone.