Chapter 30. The Beginning of the End.

The heat was violent.

Not just in temperature—but in spirit.

The smell—sweet paint, dry canvas, glue, perfumed oils—all burning.
The crackle was not pleasant. It was hungry. The flames danced like actors eager for their cue.

And in the center of it—

Aleon the Untamed stood bare-chested now, his magnificent coat long discarded, left smoking in the dirt. His toned arms shone with sweat and soot, veins flared as he hauled another wooden plank away from the blaze, tossing it with a thud to the side.

He looked like a statue given breath—smeared with ash, eyes unblinking, framed in firelight. He did not bark orders—he roared them.

Aleon:

“BUCKETS—WELL LINE—MOVE!”

But despite his rage, despite his power, the fire laughed louder.

Ydoc, meanwhile, was swallowed by the crowd.

He had run to help.
He had warned them.
But now he felt himself folding inward,
a paper man in the sea of real people.
Shrinking.

Their words found him, like cinders blown in wind.

“—he was near it when it started—”
“That gray one, didn’t he come from the forest?”
“—I saw him! He was talking to no one, like a madman—”
“Could be Divide magic—foul spirits.”
“He was crying, who cries before a fire?”

He didn’t look up. He couldn’t.

Someone shoved past him with a bucket. Another brushed him hard with a shoulder. Not out of cruelty—but because they didn’t see him.

Or perhaps… they didn’t want to.

Ruby, her tail frayed and swinging with fury, was tossing people to task like a storm herself.

Ruby:

“GET THE RUGS—ANY RUGS—ROLL THE EDGE OF THE FLAMES! YOU—YOU! TIGHTEN THE LINE!”

Her eyes locked on a young kitsune girl too slow to move—she hissed at her.

Ruby:

“We will NOT lose the stage! MOVE!”

But it was already too late. The center beam was collapsing, a warped golden crescent breaking in two. The fire roared as if in celebration.

From the back—another voice, a high-pitched male one—was shouting:

Halfling Elder (panicked):

“Scott?! Scott?! Where is that damned tree-breaker!?”

He was small but furious, standing atop a crate, trying to see over the chaos.

“Has anyone seen the orc?! We need someone who can tear these beams free!”

He was met with chaos. With no answers.

Someone yelled back:

“He went east this morning!”

Another voice:

“No—north! I saw his axe leaning by the well!”

Another:

“He’s drunk again! Slept in one of the wagons!”

No one knew.

And then—inevitably—

The accusations took flight.

Someone near the food stall:

“This is sabotage. I told you the gypsies have their tricks.”

A shoony woman with her arms crossed:

“Scott’s the only one with the strength. Maybe he did it. Out of spite.”

A merchant from the ring of wagons:

“Wasn’t there a monster seen in the forest? A wolf-thing? The hound?”

A teen girl:

“No—no! I saw him! That man with the gray skin—he was here first!”

Ruby whipped around.

But her voice caught in her throat.
Because she had seen Ydoc. And she hadn’t stopped him.
And that small hesitation grew like fire.

“Wait—where is he?”
“He ran up first, didn’t he?”
“Where is the devourer?”
“Where is that spirit boy?”

Ydoc stood still.

Not hiding.

Just still.

As if his feet were nailed in the earth.

He watched the light flicker across their faces—panic, rage, suspicion.
He watched as the blaze devoured the last standing banner.
He saw Ruby glance at him—eyes caught between trust and doubt.

He didn’t move.

At the front of it all, Aleon had stopped.

His arms had gone slack.

He held one last smoldering curtain in his grip.

But he didn’t throw it.

He was staring now.

Not at the fire.
Through it.

As if the flames weren’t just heat and ruin—
but a vision of his entire life, burning down.

No anger.
No fear.

Just that hollow look.

Like a man watching the curtain close… and realizing the play was real.
-----------------------

The Fire’s Sermon

The blaze cracked.
But the voices cracked louder.

Too many.
Too angry.
Too afraid.

Until—
A snap. Not wood. Not flame.
A soul.

Aleon the Untamed rose high atop a broken beam, the heat licking his body like a lover. He raised his arms—muscular, ash-streaked—and shouted with a voice not meant for mortals:

“ENOUGH.”

The crowd froze.
Even the wind stilled.

The fire paused mid-feast, embers suspended in the air like spirits caught in prayer.

“I want all your ears,” Aleon growled, voice heavy with song and ash. “And your hearts. Listen to me now.”

The air turned strange—thick, like a drumbeat building beneath the skin. Each of Aleon’s words came with rhythm. Cadence. Like a sermon. Like a spell.

He looked out across them all—his circus, his guests, his town.

His eyes were wide, wild, burning brighter than the coals beneath him.

“This was no accident. This—this inferno—was not born from oil or matchstick, not from careless hand or drunken orc.”

He pointed westward, to the edge of the forest—where the Divide loomed like a dreaming beast.

“This was punishment.”

A woman gasped. A man dropped his bucket.

“We failed them! We failed to honor, to bless, to bind! The Divide is no friend. It is no mother. It is a WIFE SCORNED.”

The fire surged in agreement.

“We dared throw a festival of stars—without inviting the sky. We danced with spirits, then mocked them. We gave coin, not blood.”

He turned, eyes on Ruby, his only match.

“Tell them, Red Fox. Tell them how you denied the offerings this year. Tell them how YOU chose reason over ritual!”

Ruby’s tail lashed behind her, her fists clenched. But her voice—steady, defiant.

“Aleon, no—this isn’t it. This is grief, this is panic—this is not the time to go mad and raise a mob!”

She stepped forward, her fur catching light like a torch—but her heart was flame enough.

“We are mortals. We can’t pretend to control what we don’t understand. But we can stand together. Not tear each other apart!”

Aleon laughed. And the fire laughed with him.

He reached into the flames beside him—his hand vanished inside—and pulled forth a coil of smoke and ash that wrapped up his arm like a tattoo of living cinder.

His next words came as a song. Low. Melodic. Haunting.

“I saw it in the fire…
I heard the howl behind the wind...
I felt the breath of the one who gnaws bones beneath moonlight…”

He turned again to the crowd, and then—

Roared:

“THE HOUND.
The Hound comes for us!
The fire says so. The flame remembers!
I’ve seen the beast. A shadow made of grief.
Eyes that blink like burning stars—
Skin of feathered ink—
Teeth made to devour joy itself!”

The crowd recoiled. Some wept. Others clung to loved ones.

Ruby, voice cracking, begged—

“Aleon, please—don’t do this. Don’t turn fear into fire. Not again!”

But her words were drowned in the firelight, swallowed by the rhythm of his chant.

And behind them, unnoticed—

Ydoc fell backward.

Not physically.

But inward.

His heart stung like a string snapped under too much pressure.
His mind reeled.
His eyes blurred—not from flame, but from the voices.
The spirits.

So soft. So small.

“Run, love...”
“Run now, our beloved...”
“Before they call you by the wrong name again…”
“Before they make you wear the face…”

“Of the Devourer.”

---------------

The flames howled.
But not louder than Eddy Woods.

The drunken fox stumbled into view, waving a bottle above his head like it was a sword, shirt half open, belt undone, tail wild.

“Spoiler alert!” he screamed, stumbling up onto a charred wagon wheel. “It was Aleon! Always has been! Haha—burn the stage, burn the truth, baby!”

The crowd flinched.
Some gasped.
Others growled.

Ruby turned sharply, her ears back, fury in her voice—

“Eddy, what are you doing!?”

“Oh you know me, sweetheart!” he slurred. “I’m just telling the ending early. The Big Twist! We’re all just puppets, ain’t we? A little fire and we show our true—hic—tails!”

He laughed. Loud. Alone.

Aleon did not laugh.

He pointed—arm straight, eyes cutting through the crowd like a sword of judgment.

“Take him. Now. That fox is no friend to us—he feeds the Divide! An agent of chaos. Let him burn with the rest of them.”

The guards moved. Eddy flinched. But Ruby blocked them, snarling.

“No one touches him! He’s drunk—not cursed!”

Aleon’s gaze darkened.

And then—
He saw it.

A flicker in the distance. A figure slipping into the shadows beyond the tents.

Ydoc.

Aleon said nothing.
But his lips curved.

He stepped toward the fire—barefoot, bare-armed, shirtless now.
His chest was streaked in soot and sweat. His hair wild, crown-like in the wind.

The flames bent to him.
The ash curled in rhythm.

He raised both hands like a prophet and sang—half-shout, half-hymn:

“You want truth?
You want justice?”
“Then hear the tale—of the Hound.”

“The beast that slaughters in silence.
The shadow with teeth.
It took lives last year. Dozens.
We covered it up.
I SAW IT.”

He spun, voice rising with the heat:

“It comes from the Divide—it is the Divide.
The hunger of that place, given flesh!”

Ruby screamed—“STOP—Aleon STOP THIS!”—but the fire answered him, not her.

And the crowd…
They listened.

Their rage and grief, their fear and broken hope, all twisted toward belief.

Aleon’s voice grew softer now. A whisper.
And yet the entire crowd leaned in to hear.

(Drive them from our shore)
(They’re not like you and me)
(Which means they must be evil)
(We must sound the drums of wa…)

“They are not our neighbors. They are not guests.
They do not grieve like us.
They do not love like us.
They do not bury their dead.”

Ruby was crying now.

“Please... stop this...”

But Aleon kept going, his voice like drumbeats now:

(They’ll come again tomorrow)
(We cannot let them stay)
(Our children are not safe)
(They will not go away)

Then—

“Tonight,” Aleon declared, “the treaty is broken.
Tonight, the war begins.”

And far beyond them, slipping through the brush like a scared animal, Ydoc ran.

And in his ears, he heard the spirits again—so small, so many:

“Don’t let them name you wrong again—run!”
“Run, darling. RUN.”
“We love you… don’t let their voices become yours…”
“Run before they carve you into something you’re not…”

(They’ll paint you the villain…)
((How loud are the drums of war? oh Ydoc?)