Chapter 5
585 Words
The forge was still smoking when Elara reached it.
Crowds pressed close to the blackened doorway, murmuring in voices thick with shock. The air reeked of char and iron, heat still shimmering off the cobbles. Elara pulled her hood lower, the weight of the scroll hidden against her ribs like a guilty heart.
“They say the fire sparked from the bellows.”
“No he fell into the flames. My cousin saw it.”
“Hennar was steady as stone. This wasn’t accident.”
Elara shouldered past them, just far enough to glimpse inside. The walls were scorched, beams sagging black with soot. In the center lay a twisted frame, barely recognizable as a man, his tools melted around him like wax.
The boy Marek stood among the crowd, clinging to his mother’s skirts. His eyes were wide, hollow, staring at the ruin. His cheeks bore no tears, as if grief had not yet taught him how to cry.
Elara’s throat closed. The scroll had told the truth. Hennar’s life was the price for hers.
Her fingers tightened around the parchment hidden beneath her cloak. The ink still dripped red in her mind. Balance demands its due.
She should flee back to the Hall, bury herself in shadow and silence. Yet her feet carried her closer, until she stood almost beside the mother.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. The words slipped out before she could stop them.
The woman turned, her face pale and dazed. “Do I know you?”
Elara swallowed hard. “No.”
The woman’s gaze lingered, confused, before she turned back to her son.
Elara forced herself away, her cloak heavy as lead. Each step felt like walking through ash.
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She did not return to the Hall immediately. Instead, her path wound upward through the tiers of Strata, away from the smoke, away from the wailing. The streets grew cleaner here, the air sharp with incense instead of soot. Towers of pale stone reached higher, windows blazing with festival lanterns.
And there, at the highest tier, stood the Council Hall.
Elara had never been this close before. The building loomed like a crown of marble, each spire etched with runes that shimmered faintly even under the sun. Guard posts flanked the gates, their helms polished, their spears gleaming.
The Council of Seers. They who had built the Halls of Futures, who claimed to keep the city safe by binding time to ink.
Elara should have turned back. Instead, she lingered at the edge of the courtyard, staring up at the spires. Somewhere in those chambers, she thought, decisions were made. Futures were allowed or denied. And perhaps—perhaps—they were the ones who had hidden her scroll for her to find.
A bell tolled from within the Hall, deep and resonant. A procession of robed figures emerged, their hoods shadowing their faces. Citizens bowed low as they passed, murmuring prayers of thanks for another year spared by fate.
One of the robed Seers paused. Slowly, his hood turned toward Elara.
Her breath caught. Though his face was hidden, she felt the weight of his gaze pierce her cloak, her hood, her skin. A recognition that chilled her marrow.
Then the Seer inclined his head the barest fraction acknowledgment, or warning and moved on.
Elara stood rooted in the courtyard long after the procession vanished.
Only when the bells ceased did she whisper into the wind:
“They know.”
And the city seemed to listen.
- Writer
