Chapter 31. and the Fires that Burns us all.

The Burning Stage Belongs to Aleon

The Fire Dances Still...

The woods are not silent—not truly.
Every broken twig beneath Ydoc’s heel is thunder in his ears. He can still hear Edwards—a sharp, pitiful yelping yelp, like a fox caught in a snare—before it’s suddenly snuffed out in a thud.

Ydoc flinches, but does not turn back. The glow of the burning stage now blinks behind branches. He presses on into the roots and shadows, his heart hammering like war drums echoing faintly through the trees.

But this is not his story now. Not anymore.
The stage is gone.
And in its place—

A throne of ash.
A crown of fire.
Aleon rises.

With Ruby vanished back to her own camp, her voice lost to the crackling, Aleon stands unchallenged. Enchanted or not, the crowd is swelling. Some are drawn not by belief—but by spectacle. By fear.
By hope that someone has an answer.

And so Aleon speaks. Not as a man. But as something more.

“Look. Look what we are left with.”

The flames lap at his arms, yet do not burn him. His shirt is gone, his hair kissed with smoke, and still he sings.

He does not shout.
He chants.

(“They burned the pact.”)
(“The spirits gave a sign.”)
(“The Hound has broken through. The cost of peace unpaid.”)

They arrive like dancers in wind.

News of the blaze carries far. Even to the crooked cobbled trails of Alphshade—a town nestled on the edge of reason, where lanterns never dim and every window has a charm of protection.

The Sahash arrive in murmuring waves—fluttering fabrics, glittering beads, braided bells, and sacred bones. The air shifts with incense, and so do the people.

The Sahash.

Rarely seen in mortal politics.

Never seen in passion.

Yet here they were—
Tall, gentle creatures of fur and clawed raptor feet, wrapped in traveling coats and dangling charms. Their long tails, wrapped in cords and bangles, curled softly like whispers of wind.

Their snouts were long and graceful, with an animal nobility warped beautifully into something more… human.
At the tip of each nose was a black mark, a dark spot of pigment that closely resembles a dear

They had forgotten their animal past—
but remembered everything else.

They are expressive beyond compare—some fall to their knees at Aleon’s feet, praising his clarity.
Others whisper curses in their language, eyes wide with distrust.
There is no middle ground. Not with Sahash. Not with fire.

A Sahash priestess slaps a talisman onto a broken wagon wheel and hisses,

“This was meant to happen. The Divide has awoken!”

Another—her brother perhaps—shouts,

“No! This is war talk! Don’t feed the madness! This is the Gypsy Curse all over again!”

A fight nearly breaks out, all bare toes and swishing tails.
Wrappings flutter. Bells jingle. A Sahash child hides under a cart, sobbing into a dream doll made of string.

Aleon lifts his arm. The fire twists with the motion.
No longer does he name names—he names a force.

“It was the HOUND!”
(“Drive them from our shore...”)
“Do you not see? Do you not feel it? The Divide has no mercy left for us.”
(“They're not like you and me...”)
“This is not peace. This is submission!”

His voice is music. Chanting, moaning, lilting with rhythm. The people sway—not all, but enough.

Even the Sahash who hate him… listen.

Far away now—Ydoc cannot hear all the words, but he feels them. The Divide bends around him, breathing with worry. Tiny spirit lights flicker in the underbrush, pale blue and frightened.

They whisper in his ear in tones only he can hear:

“Run, love… run before it’s too late…”

“Hide your skin, your teeth, your smell—they’ll come for you next…”

“It’s always the soft ones they eat first…”

“Please—please go…”

The flames behind him rise. A town ignites. A war begins.

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

Ydoc crossed the invisible threshold almost without noticing.
One moment he was standing on damp mortal grass, the faint echo of Aleon’s voice still clinging to his skin like smoke—
the next, the air changed.

The Divide took him back.

It always did.

But tonight it did not hum or glitter.
It groaned.

He had expected the quiet wash of green glow, the soft moss and laughing sprites. Instead he walked into a suffocating stillness. The colors bled toward gray. Shadows clung to roots like oil. The vines overhead were thicker than he remembered, sagging under their own weight, and every thorn glistened like a tiny tear.

All around him, the spirits had gathered.
Small fairies in torn dresses, driftlight wraiths, painted mothlings perched on low branches—they weren’t singing or teasing as they usually did. They were staring at him with eyes like hollow coins.

One fairy, tiny as a hummingbird, wore a dress spun of dew and silver thread. She sobbed into her own hands, wings quivering like shattered glass. Her voice cracked when she spoke, high and small:

“They hate me… the mortals hate me…”

Another, a soft little sprit shaped like a candle flame, flickered and dimmed, whispering apologies to no one.

Ydoc took a step and realized the ground under his boots had begun to shift—moss curling into knotted ropes, grass flattening into damp, black furrows. Depression hung like a fog. The Divide’s magic was not immune to despair; it absorbed it. Warped it.

All around, the fair folk began to change.
A beautiful dryad’s arms sprouted curved black claws.
A willow-spirit’s teeth lengthened, poking out of a trembling mouth.
A chorus of faint sobs drifted through the trees as one after another pressed their foreheads to the earth, praying in languages older than sunlight.

“Forgive us… forgive us… it’s our fault…”

“We didn’t do enough…”

“Father… we didn’t do enough…”

The prayers blended into a low animal keening.
A dulison—a shared delusion, a ritualized belief—was taking root: if something so terrible had happened, it had to be their fault. They had to be punished.

Ydoc stood among them, gaunt and still, feeling the weight of their self‑loathing press against his ribs like cold fingers. This place that had once been his refuge, his endless forest of oddities, now felt pitiful and small, clawing at itself in the dark.

Sad.
Pathetic.

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The edge of the Divide had always been a threshold, a seam where two worlds stitched together—
but now it was rotting.

The trees looked wrong.
Not merely dark, but ill, their bark blistering into scales, their leaves curling into brittle claws. What had been soft moss underfoot had grown veined and pallid, like skin stretched over bone. From the shadows at the tree line, shapes shifted: thin spines arching out of cloaks of mist, glimmers of too many eyes, half‑formed things waiting to be born. Monsters, or the idea of monsters, swaying like reeds.

A horn cut through the quiet.
Low, ancient, a sound like a seashell pressed to the heart. Every spirit flinched at once. The fairies in their tattered dresses jerked upright; the candle‑sprites sputtered and dimmed; even the dryad with her new black teeth turned her head sharply toward the sound. It was their king’s call, the signal to run.

And they did—snapping out of their trance like startled birds.
They bolted deeper into the Divide, into the still‑colorful heart where safety lived. Tiny wings buzzed, robes swirled, claws scraped on bark. The air filled with whispers of apology, shreds of wings, the smell of crushed flowers. The forest swallowed them like a closing door.

Ydoc did not run.

He stood, detached, arms slightly lifted as if unsure whether to reach out. The dryad stumbled past him, eyes wild, teeth still too long. For a moment he imagined cupping her face, kissing her forehead—claws and all—telling her she was okay. But the moment broke. She vanished between two warped oaks, gone like smoke.

Now he was alone in the gray.

It wasn’t quite his realm—not the full lifeless monochrome he remembered—but something in‑between. Life still twitched under the soil. Roots still pulsed faintly, like veins beneath translucent skin. Yet it all felt like a corpse still warm from the last breath.

Home, he thought dimly. He should return home.

But the word stopped him cold. Home to what? A ruined cabin? A memory wiped clean?

Edwards was gone. Captured, maybe. The festival—burned.
He turned in a slow circle. No lights, no voices, just the horn echoing farther and farther away, and the whisper of unseen claws in the gray trees.

“What… do I do now?” he whispered to no one. His breath misted, hung in the still air, and vanished.

No answer came.

Only the gray.