Ashes of Zareth

The man we had saved stumbled away into the smoke. His steps were unsteady but he was moving, which was more than a lot of people in that city could manage.

"Thank you,"

he called back, his voice breaking, before the haze swallowed him.

It should have felt like something. It didn't, not the way I expected. The air was too thick with burning and screaming and the specific smell of a place being destroyed while people were still in it, and the word thank you got lost in all of that before it could land anywhere useful.

Kaelra's grip on my sleeve tightened and she nodded ahead.

We stepped forward carefully.

The cloaked figure stood in the center of the street, head bowed, not moving. Fire outlined his silhouette on all sides. Around him, more than eight soldiers were down. Some cleanly, a single cut, nothing wasted. Others had been dealt with differently, armor twisted, bones wrong. Whatever he had used on the second group was not the same as the first.

Kaelra's voice, barely above the fire.

"Yuu. He killed all of them."

"Yeah,"

I said. I couldn't look away from the still shape of him standing in the middle of what he had made. My hand went to my dagger without me deciding to put it there.

"Who are you?"

No response.

Kaelra stepped forward, daggers lowered but visible.

"We're not your enemies. If you're fighting against whoever set this city on fire, then we're on the same side. Say something."

Silence. The heat pressed against my face. Smoke in my lungs.

I heard it before I could react. Boots on broken stone directly behind us.

Kaelra spun, blades up, but the attacker had already closed the distance, sword lifting over my back.

I turned too late.

The cloaked figure was simply not where he had been standing. The soldier dropped. His head was at an angle that meant he was already gone before he hit the ground. The figure stood in his place, one hand red.

Neither of us had seen the movement. Not even a flicker.

The silence stretched until he finally spoke, his voice low and unhurried, the kind of voice that didn't need to be loud because it was already certain.

"You should not be here."

"We came to help,"

I said. "People are dying."

He tilted his head, almost like he was genuinely curious about that.

"And what do you believe you can do against this?"

He gestured at the burning buildings, the bodies in the street, the screaming that was still going somewhere in the distance.

"Against nobles who send their soldiers to punish what they call defiance?"

Kaelra's jaw set.

"If you know who's responsible, tell us. We can fight them too."

He lifted his head. For the first time I caught the faint glow under the hood. Not the same as the figure in the devastated town from before. Different quality. Dimmer, hotter, like coals buried deep.

"It is finished,"

he said.

"Finished?"

My voice came out wrong.

"The men who ordered the fire. The commanders who gave the instructions. The blades that carried them out. They are dead. Every one. I made certain of it."

No pride in it. No remorse. Just fact.

Kaelra let out a breath.

"So you killed them all."

"They deserved nothing less."

I wanted to argue. I opened my mouth and nothing came. Were they wrong? These soldiers had burned homes and cut people down in the street on somebody's order. If I had gotten there first, with what I had inside me, would I have stopped at driving them off?

I didn't know. I didn't like that I didn't know.

The figure turned slightly, smoke curling around him.

"Go. Save who can be saved. But understand what you have seen here. The fire did not begin with these soldiers. It began with the people who sent them. Nobles who believe that title and blood give them dominion over who lives and who does not. This is what they build."

Kaelra stepped forward.

"Then tell us, if you're not our enemy, why are you here?"

He raised his head again and I saw the glow more clearly this time. Not human. Not beast. Something that had been through more than either of those categories covered.

"To witness what must fall,"

he said. "The chains holding this land are cracking. Bloodlines will weep. Thrones will shake. And when the tide comes, the marked will walk paths others cannot follow."

Kaelra looked at me, brow furrowed.

"The marked?"

He studied us for a moment.

"You will understand when the gates open. Until then. Survive."

Then he was gone. No sound. No motion. Just absence, and the echo of his words sitting in the smoke.

We didn't stand still. The city was still burning.

We ran.

I pulled water and wind together and threw them at the flames in long sweeping bursts. Kaelra moved like she always did, fast and purposeful, her daggers cutting through debris and blocked doors, pulling people out of collapsed houses and shoving them toward any open street she could find. Together we worked without speaking much. Desperation was the only coordination we needed.

Each time I pushed the fire back I felt eyes on me. Some grateful. Some uncertain. Some frightened in a way that had nothing to do with the flames.

I kept going anyway.

We found a boy inside one of the buildings, maybe ten years old, burns up both arms, coughing too hard to speak. I knelt beside him.

"I can try something,"

I said.

Kaelra glanced at me.

"Healing?"

"A little. Don't expect much."

My hands weren't steady. The healing patterns I'd been practicing from the book were rough and slow and I never fully trusted them. But I pressed my palms to the worst of the burns and pushed what I could and the boy's breathing eased. Not fixed. Better.

Kaelra put a hand briefly on my shoulder.

"That's enough. Keep moving."

Hours went by in pieces. The screaming quieted in stages as the fires went down. Eventually, the streets went from chaos to an exhausted and terrible stillness.

I sat on the steps of what had been a tavern and couldn't stand up again for a while. Kaelra slumped beside me, face streaked with soot and sweat.

Around us, the ruins of Zareth smoldered. People moved through the wreckage like they were learning to walk again after something had been taken from their legs. Some came and pressed my hands or bowed quickly before moving on. Others walked a wide path around me, pulling children away from my direction.

Kaelra looked at them and then at me.

"We did what we could,"

she said.

I looked at the broken houses and the families sitting in the street and the smoke still rising from the ruins.

"Doesn't feel like it."

"Maybe not,"

she said. "But to them it was everything."

Her hand brushed mine and neither of us spoke for a long time after that.

But underneath the quiet, the figure's voice came back.

Nobles. Orders. The fire they create.

Something had shifted in me during those hours in the burning streets and I hadn't decided yet what to call it. But it was there.

We found an older man sitting by a well, hands trembling around a cracked jug. Kaelra crouched and asked if he was alright.

"Alive,"

he said. "Which is more than most."

I crouched beside him.

"We need to know something. Where does the road lead from here? Beyond this continent."

He blinked.

"Beyond? You mean to another continent?"

"Yes,"

Kaelra said. "Somewhere away from this."

The man stared into the smoke for a long moment like he was recalling a map he had not thought about in years.

"To the east. Across the wide sea. There's a land sailors call Jorentu. Few speak of it much anymore. The people there don't involve themselves with our wars. They trade little, visit less. But they live without kings breathing down their necks."

He looked at us.

"If it's peace you're after, maybe it's there."

Then, quieter:

"But be warned. A continent apart doesn't mean free of shadows. Jorentu hides its own things. Things people have generally decided are better left alone."

Kaelra looked at me. Something in her eyes that had been absent for a while.

She bowed her head to him.

"Thank you. You've given us more than you know."

We left him by the well. Above us, through the last of the smoke, the first stars were coming through.

Jorentu. I said the word quietly and tasted the unfamiliarity of it.

That night, walking through the remnants of the city, the figure's voice kept returning.

The marked will walk paths others cannot follow.

I didn't know what that meant. Not yet. But if Jorentu held any piece of it, that was where we were going.

And somewhere unbeknownst to us in the dark, three people were still watching. Patient. Silent.