CH 20. The Memory of Ashfall.

#Alice

The thin moonlight cut through the cracks in the wooden slats, tracing long white veins across the warped floor. The room smelled like old smoke and forgotten sweat.

Alice sat cross-legged on the floor with a lighter in her hand. She flicked it.

Again.

Again.

She hissed between her teeth and shook it violently. “Come on…”

But the lighter just sputtered in defiance.

With a bitter sigh, she reached up and unclasped the pins from her hair. The metal clips came free one by one, and her long black hair spilled over her shoulders like oil on glass.

The pins—four of them, all etched with half-visible runes—lay gleaming in her palm. She flicked her fingers and each one flew. North, South, East, West, sticking cleanly into the floor.

In the center lay a slice of half-gray meat filched from a street vendor’s garbage. It twitched. Paled.

Then—reddened.

It was close enough. She picked it up and held it over her head, inspecting it, even smelling it, not minding the liquid hitting her temple. She held the lighter to a part for a while, then bit into it.

Moments later, she vomited in the corner. Then she wiped her mouth on her wrist—her hand shaking just once, just enough to betray how much she hated this—and crawled toward the rickety bedframe.

She reached beneath it and pulled out a leather folder. For days now she had been writing down every thought she remembered. When she looked at it every new time, she could see the connection between two seemingly disconnected memory scraps she had written, and the book over time had grown.

On one of the first pages was a name entirely on its own, scribbled there in sharp ink:

**Leny Kolari.**

She stared at it for a long moment. Then flipped the page.

There was a grainy sketch. She’d gotten the jaw wrong, but the eyes—those were right.

Leny—he was a big man but not with the kind of fat that slowed a man down. The kind that built around power.

A man shaped like a boulder and somehow quicker than he looked.

Knuckles like engine pistons. A voice that could stop a market mid-hustle.

He would crack a man’s head open during a local tournament’s qualifying brawl—barehanded. And when the judges protested, he’d stared them down until they apologized.

He was going for the Concord Trials. They mocked him.

“That fat bastard? He’ll be lucky if he survives the orientation.”

They always mocked him. But not to his face.

Never to his face. His strength had only managed to birth fear, not respect.

Alice traced her thumb over the sketch. “You said if I ever got lost… find you before the Concord Trials. You better be in Avod, Leny.”

She closed the folder and tucked it under the bed again.

Then she stood and walked toward her closet.

---

She didn’t dress like someone living in poverty or like a fighter, either.

Tonight, she dressed like a ghost of someone she used to be.

A pale blue silk gown clung to her body. Dominion-cut, sleeveless, slit along the leg. The bodice was etched with faint silver embroidery, thorn-vines looping like breathwork.

The dress shimmered faintly, looking like it belonged at a gala, not in a one-room slum flat with cracked wood and vomit-stained corners.

She wore it anyway because she wanted the contrast.

.

.

.

A heavy knock hit the door.

“Alice,” came a voice—oily, bored, and beneath it all a quiet coil of threat. “Boss says the grace is done. If I don’t see the money I’m allowed to drag your bones.”

“Fuck.” She just remembered—this was the day they kicked her out of her house.

He slid a silver canister under the door. The hiss that followed was subtle. Almost musical.

Gas.

Her body tensed. Acrid smoke rose around her, clinging to her dress like regret. She kept still, breathing slow. One breath. Two. Three.

The gas had just started making rounds in underground markets at this time. They were engineered to dull awakened monsters and give adventurers a chance when fighting monsters way stronger than them—but a sicko had re-engineered it.

She leaned back against the wall and further controlled her breathing.

When the footsteps left, she counted twenty more heartbeats.

For a moment a scene just like this played out; she thought she heard him—Aiden’s voice.

“Don’t miss.”

But it was gone. Just memory’s echo.

Then she moved.

She pulled a dagger from the wall—a dull, cheap thing, but it would serve. She tucked it under the slit in her dress, then approached the window.

She stepped onto the sill. Below, three stories down, the alley waited pitch dark, ready to kill someone unserious.

She gathered her dress in one hand.

“Don’t snag, don’t snag, don’t snag—”

She pulled a second blade, spun it once, then threw it at the crossbeam across the alley.

The moment the metal struck wood she vanished and reappeared mid-air at the impact point.

She caught the beam with one hand, the wall with the other. Her knees buckled from the landing, but she held. It wasn’t Ashfall, but she could work with it.

---

The city unfolded. Silk clung to her calves as she ran, catching the breeze that rolled in from the shoreline.

Children darted past her, arguing over fake spell stones. She sped up and passed a woman trying to resell bruised mangoes under a stolen Scope. Past a preacher shouting that the Wildworld was God’s gift, not man’s weapon.

She reached the gates of the Shadowspine Circle just as someone else was walking in.

A man stepped forward.

Tall. Towering.

Leny Kolari.

He wore a vest that didn’t quite button across his chest, arms thick as tree trunks, and a cane he clearly didn’t need—just liked the weight.

The people outside looked at him and whispered.

“That’s the guy trying to enter the Concord Trials?”

“He’s gonna die in round one.”

“Fat ones always think they’re chosen.”

“Heard he bought his slot. Probably bribes the Spell-tech testers too.”

Leny turned slightly.

Just a glance, and they shut up fast.

He stepped into the Shadowspine Circle, and the doors closed behind him like a spell sealing.

---

Inside, the air changed; blue lanterns lit the way.

Alice moved to the central table. The quartermaster looked up, his brows lifting slightly.

“You’re… overdressed.”

She smiled faintly.

“It’s a formal affair.”

“What do you want?”

“Fastest route to Tarungi; Obonsam Fort.”

“Are you _sure_ you want to put that on your card? With interest rates these days… it’s just so easy to get in over your head. Perhaps you should sleep on it.”

“I’ll pay.”

He studied her—face, tone, breath. He didn’t ask why.

After a pause, he gestured.

“East. Follow the ravine to get to the port. Don’t take the high road.”

“Wildstorms?”

“And worse. Skinwalkers have been plaguing that area. The better ships aren’t helping matters.”

“I’m still going.”

Ashfall was made some time in the future from the weapon of a hero who would soon die. She needed to be quick. If she was fast enough she might even experience the fight.

He raised a brow. “Crazy girl.”

She dropped a pouch of coin.

He caught it.

Behind her, Leny laughed.

Not cruelly.

Just deeply. Like someone who’d already buried his critics and was waiting to see if she could outrun hers.

“Is that Alice,” he said from behind his massive coat.

She turned. Smiled.

“Don’t die before I get my daggers.”

“Which one you? You already have damn so many.”