Chapter 2 – Ash and Memory
1248 Words
The road wound through the highlands like a scar, pale dust rising with each of Elias’s steps. The storm that had followed him from the forest had broken at last, leaving the sky an open wound of gray and silver. He walked alone now—though the whisper of the witch’s laughter still echoed faintly behind his thoughts, a sound half-real, half-memory.
His boots sank into the soft earth as he reached the edge of a battlefield long forgotten. The land here reeked of ash and old sorrow. Charred bones jutted from the soil, and the remnants of blackened banners flapped weakly in the wind. He stopped, his breath shallow.
He remembered this place.
Once, he had ridden through here wearing the armor of a soldier, the sword at his side gleaming with fresh polish and purpose. Back then, his heart had been young and foolish, believing that justice could be carved from steel and blood.
Now, only ghosts walked beside him.
He knelt in the mud, gloved fingers brushing the cold metal of a discarded helm. The crest upon it—an eagle with one broken wing—was still visible. He swallowed hard.
“Tharen,” he murmured.
The name hung heavy in the air. His brother in arms. His friend. His shame.
Elias closed his eyes, and the past unfurled before him like smoke.
The clamor of war filled his ears again—the roar of men, the crackle of fire, the metallic scream of blades colliding. The air was thick with the scent of iron and burning flesh. Elias, younger then, charged through the chaos with Tharen at his side, their swords flashing like lightning in the storm.
“Keep your head low, Elias!” Tharen had shouted, his laughter bright, reckless.
“Only if you promise not to lose yours!” Elias had shot back.
They had fought for a lord who promised peace. A lie wrapped in a noble banner.
When the fires died, peace did not come. Only silence—and the knowledge that they had destroyed more than they had defended. Villages burned. Fields salted. The eyes of the fallen stared at him even now, centuries later, in dreams he could not escape.
It was after that war that Elias had laid down his sword and taken up the hunter’s cloak. Hunting monsters was easier than facing the one he had become.
He stood, letting the helm fall from his hands.
“I thought killing the cursed would make me clean again,” he said softly, to no one and everyone. “But maybe I was only chasing my own shadow.”
The wind stirred the ash at his feet, swirling it into shapes—faces, fleeting and hollow. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw Tharen’s grin among them. Then it was gone.
A whisper brushed his mind—not from memory this time, but something deeper, otherworldly.
You cannot outrun the past, Elias.
The witch’s voice, faint as the wind’s sigh.
But perhaps you can change what it means.
He turned toward the sound, though he knew she was not there. “You speak like you know what redemption costs.”
A pause.
I do.
He swallowed. Her voice lingered like smoke, wrapping around his guilt with unsettling tenderness. For a moment, he almost wished she were beside him—this woman of sorrow and magic—because she, at least, would understand what it meant to be bound by pain.
By midday, Elias reached the ruins of an old chapel. Vines crawled up its cracked walls, and birds nested in the hollows where saints once stood. He stepped inside, boots echoing softly on the stone floor. A single beam of light pierced through a broken window, falling upon the altar. Dust motes floated through it like drifting souls.
He removed his cloak and knelt. His hands trembled slightly as he drew from his pocket a small silver locket—tarnished, bent, but still whole. Inside lay a faded sketch of a woman with laughing eyes.
“Liora,” he whispered.
The name tasted like sunlight and loss. She had been a healer during the war. Brave. Gentle. The kind of woman who saw good even where there was none left to find. He had loved her in the quiet spaces between battles—brief moments of peace stolen like breaths before drowning.
When the fires came for her village, he had arrived too late. The lord he fought for had ordered the burning.
The locket trembled in his grip.
“I swore I’d never love again,” he said. “And yet…”
He thought of the witch—her dark eyes reflecting centuries of grief, her touch like ice and warmth all at once. He hated that he felt drawn to her sorrow, that he saw something of himself in her ruin.
The chapel creaked in the wind. From somewhere high above, a shard of stained glass broke free, tumbling to the floor and shattering at his feet. Blue and crimson shards scattered across the stones, catching the pale light.
Elias stared at the broken glass. “Even beauty remembers how to bleed,” he murmured.
That night, he built a small fire outside the chapel. The flames flickered weakly, fighting the chill. He sat close, warming his hands, eyes unfocused. In the distance, wolves howled, their cries carrying through the empty fields.
He thought of the witch again—how she had looked when the curse broke, fragile and luminous, as though every star in the sky had bent to see her freed. He wondered if she was truly free… or if the world had simply given her a new kind of cage.
A rustle broke the quiet. Elias reached for his dagger. But it was only a raven, black as midnight, perched on a branch nearby. It c****d its head, watching him with uncanny intelligence.
He lowered the blade. “You again,” he muttered. The same bird had followed him since the forest. “Tell her I’m not coming back.”
The raven let out a low croak that almost sounded like laughter. Then, with a beat of its wings, it took flight—circling once before disappearing into the horizon.
Elias sighed. “Stubborn creature,” he said. But his heart quickened nonetheless.
Because deep down, he knew what it meant.
The witch had sent it.
He leaned back, staring into the fire. The heat painted his face in gold and shadow. He let the past play itself again—Liora’s smile, Tharen’s laughter, the screams of war—and felt, for the first time in years, not only sorrow, but purpose.
If the witch’s curse had been born from heartbreak, then perhaps hers and his were not so different. Perhaps they could unmake each other’s chains.
He closed his eyes.
The wind rose again, soft and strange, carrying with it a whisper that brushed his soul.
You are not alone, Elias.
And for a fleeting moment, he believed it.
The fire cracked, sending a spiral of sparks into the sky—tiny souls ascending toward the stars. Elias watched until the last ember faded, then drew his cloak tight and lay down beneath the ruined chapel’s shadow.
Tomorrow, he would begin the journey north—to the Witch’s Vale.
To find her again.
Not as a hunter.
But as something far more dangerous—
a man who still dared to hope.
- Writer
