Ashes Beneath: The Found Family and the First Flames

Flames licked the edge of the battleground, casting long shadows over broken spears and blood-slick stone. Ash drifted between bodies like falling snow. "Left flank's breaking!" the commander barked, voice hoarse but certain. He raised his blade. "Kaien. With me." Kaien turned toward him, just a beat too slow. "You should not be here," Kaien said, panting. "You’re supposed to be guarding the rear." The commander’s eyes flashed. “We don’t get to choose which side we die on.” A horn shrieked in the distance. A volley of arrows rained in. One struck a soldier beside them through the throat. "Keep your eyes up!" the commander shouted, yanking Kaien forward. Their shoulders collided. Heat pulsed between them. Kaien grit his teeth. “You always do this.” "And you always follow." Their swords clashed against the oncoming wave. Behind them, the sun bled into the horizon like a dying god. Smoke thickened. Something was wrong. The ground trembled. From the ridge came not soldiers—but something worse. A shimmering figure moved between trees. No footsteps. No voice. Only fire behind its veil. “Pull back!” Kaien shouted. The commander stood firm. “Not yet.” A hiss. A sound like burning silk. Then it struck. Flames surged like a wave. Kaien turned—too late. The commander’s body jerked violently, fire erupting from inside his armor. No scream. Just the thud of metal on stone. Kaien froze. “Move!” someone shouted behind him. He couldn’t. A child’s scream shattered the air. Kaien spun. A boy, no older than seven, stumbled from the trees, his clothes already smoldering. Kaien ran, but the flames were faster. The Wraith passed through them. The boy turned to ash. Kaien’s hands reached out, empty, shaking. And for the first time in years, Kaien screamed. YEARS LATER. The forest was quiet. Kaien stood at the edge of a narrow cliff path, looking down at the smoke rising from a distant village. His fingers twitched at his side. Behind him, crows cawed. “You going to keep staring, or finally move?” came a voice from behind the trees. Kaien didn’t turn. “Didn’t ask for company.” “Didn’t ask for silence either,” the voice replied. He exhaled slowly. The air smelled like pine and ash. Always ash. His left hand curled into a fist, then relaxed. “They burned,” he said, barely louder than the wind. “All of them.” “I know,” said the voice, softer now. “I was there.” Kaien’s eyes closed for a moment. Then he stepped off the ridge, boots crunching on frost-dusted stone. He didn’t look back. The wind shifted. Somewhere far off, a bell tolled once, hollow and slow. Kaien stopped mid-step. The forest was still. Too still. He turned toward the sound. In the valley below, a broken temple’s spire rose crooked against the dying light. Its bell tower swayed in the wind, though no rope moved it. From the tree line behind him, a whisper rose. "She has returned." Kaien’s jaw tightened. He reached under his cloak, fingers brushing the hilt of the blade he had not drawn in years. “I buried that name,” he muttered. “She’s not coming back.” The whisper answered, as if from the roots of the trees. “She never left.” Kaien looked to the horizon. The sky was red. Not from sunset. From smoke. And somewhere in the smoke, something was waiting. The breath ripped from her lungs as Lira jolted upright. "Ah'shvalon... sa'keth ve... sa'keth..." she gasped, voice raw, foreign. Her own words meant nothing to her ears. She blinked hard. Her bedroll clung to sweat-damp skin. The forest tent was still around her. Night outside. But the air crackled unnaturally. Then she felt it. Sticky. Warm. Her palm. She turned her hand. Blood. Not a cut. Just... blood. Centered perfectly in her left palm. From the darkness beside her, a soft voice broke through. “You spoke it again.” She turned sharply. A girl sat near the entrance, wrapped in shadow. “I… what did I say?” Lira asked. Her voice trembled despite herself. The girl tilted her head. “You called the fire by name.” Lira’s breath hitched. She closed her fist slowly, eyes flicking to the burned edges of her blanket. The symbols she'd etched into it months ago… one of them had started to glow. Morning. Pale light through old cloth windows. Lira crouched over her journal. She hadn’t remembered writing anything. And yet the page was full. Sprawled across it, her own ink. But not her thoughts. Nine flames. One burns backwards. Do not call her Elowen. That name is already ash. When the red sun rises, silence will break the last vow. Her hand hovered over the final line, trembling. From the far end of the tent, a voice spoke again. This time the girl wasn’t alone—two other children stood behind her. “Why do you write things you don’t understand?” one boy asked. “I don’t write them,” Lira murmured. “They come.” The girl stepped forward, eyes unblinking. “You’re the one who forgot first, aren’t you?” Lira stiffened. “What did you say?” The child smiled. “She remembers you anyway.” Lira slammed the journal shut. The relic chamber smelled of cedar and ink. Lira moved between shelves of crumbling manuscripts and forgotten names. She set a brass candleholder on a cracked altar and struck the flint. The flame rose clean. Then, it leaned. Not flickered. Leaned. As if pulled. Steadily. Intentionally. Toward the west. Lira stared. Her breath hitched again. “Wind?” she whispered aloud, though the air was still. She turned slowly toward the far wall. A cracked mirror hung above a faded tapestry—once gold, now rust-colored and thin. In the mirror, her reflection stared back—but her eyes glowed faintly red. “No...” she breathed. The candlelight flared briefly behind her, then stilled again. “I don’t want to remember,” she whispered. “Not again.” But somewhere beyond the wall, a faint bell began to toll. One low chime. Two. The flame bent sharper, straining toward the west. She stepped barefoot onto the grass outside the hall. The air was colder now. The children were gone. In the distance, above the crooked valley ridge, a soft red glow had begun to rise. Not the sun. Too early. And it pulsed. The bell tolled again. Closer. Lira squinted into the haze. The edges of the sky seemed to ripple like fabric. She wrapped her arms around herself. A whisper trailed through the treeline behind her. “She remembers you.” Lira turned fast. Nothing. Only birds fleeing the canopy in a sudden frenzy. She took a shaking breath. Then, her voice steadier than she expected, she whispered into the wind: “Then I remember her.” Behind her, the candle in the hall died on its own. Ahead, the horizon pulsed with ember light. And Lira began to walk. Kaien ducked beneath the rotting archway, a hand brushing instinctively over the rusted doorframe. The temple was half-swallowed by the hill it rested in, its roof collapsed in one corner, its walls bent by time. Inside, the air was thick with ash: dry, weightless, the scent of things burned long ago still clinging to stone. His boots left prints as he stepped further in. “Smells like death,” he muttered, voice low. He ran his fingers over the edge of a shattered pew. Charred edges flaked away under his touch. The altar at the front was still standing, though cracked. A once-golden sun symbol above it had faded into a dim smear of rust and soot. Behind him, the wind shifted, pressing against the hollowed walls like a breath held too long. Kaien turned slightly. “I know this place,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t.” He stepped toward the altar, already knowing what he would find. The object was small. Wooden. A carved horse with one wheel missing, its body smooth from years of touch. Kaien’s breath caught. He reached for it slowly, fingers brushing the blackened altar as he lifted the toy into his palm. It was warm. Not from the sun. Not from fire. From memory. He turned it over. Beneath one wheel was a tiny sigil, etched in a language he hadn’t seen in a decade. Not since the city burned. “That’s not possible,” he muttered. Footsteps creaked behind him. Just one. He spun. No one. Only the sound of the candleholders creaking on their iron chains above, swaying without wind. Kaien clenched the toy in his fist. His voice dropped, tighter now. “You died with them.” No answer came. Only silence. And the taste of ash rising in his mouth. From behind the altar, a gust of wind swept through the cracks in the stone. It wasn’t cold. It was dry. Parched. The kind of wind that sucked all breath and sound with it. “She lives again.” The voice did not echo. It sank, into him. Kaien turned, too late. The figure shimmered in the shadows by the broken stained-glass window. Cloaked in flame and grief, faceless and flickering like candlelight under water. The Wraith. It didn’t move. It didn’t need to. Kaien staggered back, reaching for the hilt he’d sworn not to draw. The figure stepped forward, and vanished. Gone. Like breath extinguished. Only a smear of soot remained where it had stood. A child’s footprint beside it. Kaien exhaled shakily, backing into the altar. He gripped the horse tighter. It pulsed once, warm in his hand. “She’s not supposed to come back,” he whispered. But deep down, part of him had always known she would. He stood in the half-light, chest rising with each labored breath. From the entrance of the temple, moonlight filtered through dust motes and broken stone. And in that silvered doorway, a shape lingered. Small. Still. Kaien stared. The silhouette of a child, backlit, unmoving. Just like that day. The field. The flames. The scream that never reached him in time. His hand twitched. “Who are you?” he called, voice rough. The figure didn’t answer. He stepped forward, but the moment his boot touched the floor again, the image wavered (like heat over sand) and vanished. He turned his head. Nothing. Only the whisper of wind through the cracks in the wall. Only the echo of the bell tolling again, farther now… or closer. And still, clutched in his hand, the toy pulsed once more. Kaien didn’t speak again. He walked out into the night. But something (someone) walked with him. “Full blaze,” Sylas muttered, throwing his cards onto the crooked table. A grunt rose from the man across him. “Liar.” Sylas smirked, but his eyes were tired. “Cheat, maybe. Liar, no.” The smuggler cursed under his breath. “That’s the third round.” Sylas dragged the pot of silver coins toward him. “I told you not to bet on ghosts.” A bottle rolled across the table. Another player laughed. The floor creaked beneath shifting boots. The tavern’s roof was half gone, and rain dripped lazily through the broken beams. Heat from the hearth never reached the corners. Someone called from the doorway. “Courier for Marek.” Sylas didn’t move. “Who’s askin’?” the smuggler spat. The courier stepped inside, thin as bone, eyes like dust. “No one living.” Sylas rose without a word, walked to the door, and took the scroll from the man’s hand. He didn’t thank him. Just stared at the seal. The parchment was soft, old. The wax seal barely clung to it. He broke it with his thumb. Inside: No name. No plea. No instructions. Just one thing. A symbol. Three intersecting rings scorched into the parchment, surrounded by nine strokes: one crooked, one smudged black. Sylas exhaled through his teeth. “Shit.” Behind him, someone asked, “Bad hand?” He didn’t answer. The courier was already gone. Vanished like fog into the wet street. He turned the parchment over, looking for something, anything. But that mark was enough. He hadn’t seen it since the temple fell. Since the night his sister whispered, “If it burns, don’t run toward it.” Sylas looked up toward the sky, where smoke curled above distant hills. He folded the parchment in half, then again. It crackled softly in his palm. He closed his fist. It was starting again. And he knew exactly where it would lead. Sylas knelt beside the fire pit out back. It was little more than a dent in the stone, surrounded by broken bottles and old embers. He struck a match and held the parchment over the flame. The edges caught immediately. Orange flickers devoured the symbol. He watched until only the center remained. Until it curled and vanished. Then he sat there, fingers still raised above the pit. They trembled, almost imperceptibly. His jaw tightened. “Why now?” he muttered. “Why not let it rot where it died?” The match burned down to his fingertips. He dropped it. The others inside laughed again. A bottle shattered. But Sylas stayed outside. The rain touched his shoulders gently, soft at first, then steady. He stood slowly. He looked toward the western sky, toward the valley of ash, where the bells had once rung in warning, not worship. “Not again,” he said. But his boots were already turning toward it. The tavern doors slammed behind him. Nobody tried to stop him. They never did. He adjusted the strap across his shoulder, the weight of the long blade pressing down his back. “Sylas,” someone called from the shadows. “Don’t go chasing ghosts.” He paused. Rain streaked down the side of his face. “That’s the problem,” he replied. “They’ve already found me.” He stepped into the night. Past the crumbling signpost. Past the place where the roads split. One led east, to trade. One west, to ruin. He chose the west. The wind carried ash. He could smell it before he saw it. The village where it all began (the one with the temple half-buried in sorrow) waited for him again. He lit a cigarette with wet fingers, failing twice before it caught. Above him, the sky pulsed red. He exhaled smoke. And walked straight into the memory. Lira stood at the tree line, her cloak barely moving in the breeze. Kaien saw her before she saw him, or maybe she had known he was there all along. She didn’t speak. Neither did he. They faced the temple together, two silhouettes carved from different ruins. After a long moment, she asked, “You found the altar?” Kaien nodded. “And the toy?” He turned toward her. “You knew it would be there?” “I dreamed of it last week,” she said. “In a language I never learned.” Kaien crossed his arms. “Still reading bones and ash like they’re scripture?” “I stopped believing in prophecy,” she said. “But it hasn’t stopped believing in me.” A long silence stretched between them. Only the bell tower groaned in the wind. He said nothing. Just walked past her toward the back of the temple. She followed. Neither asked why the other had come. Neither dared admit they already knew. The crunch of gravel announced him before his voice ever did. Sylas approached with that same tired swagger, a half-lit cigarette dangling from his lip. “Well,” he said. “Is this the part where I pretend this wasn’t a mistake?” Kaien didn’t look at him. “Depends. You still pretending you care about anything?” Sylas chuckled once, low and sharp. “Guess not.” Lira turned slightly, but said nothing. Sylas stopped a few feet away, eyes scanning the temple’s rear wall. “I figured if I was going to be dragged into another graveyard, might as well be one that remembers my name.” Kaien moved aside, revealing the trail of crude stones behind the temple. Sylas’s smirk faded. “You weren’t joking.” “No,” Kaien said. “I wasn’t.” Lira bent down beside the first grave, her fingers brushing over a faded sigil. Sylas muttered, “We were supposed to bury this.” Kaien looked at him and said, “We did.” The graves were shallow. Marked only by river stones. No names. No symbols. Only silence. “They were buried in a circle,” Lira murmured. “That isn’t coincidence.” Kaien crouched near the smallest one. “I remember this pattern.” Sylas lit another cigarette, staring down at the stones. “Who digs graves for kids in the shape of a ritual?” Lira didn’t answer. Instead, she reached into her satchel and pulled out a weathered scroll. She unrolled it carefully, revealing a hand-drawn diagram—nine points in a ring, each tied to a word in ancient script. Kaien stood. “You told me this was burned.” “I lied,” she said. Sylas spat on the dirt. “Of course you did.” A breeze passed between them, stirring the ash near the stones. Something in the wind smelled faintly of burnt feathers. Kaien stared at the ninth grave, his jaw clenched tight. “I know this one,” he whispered. Lira didn’t look up. “I know.” Kaien knelt before the final stone. Unlike the others, it was cleaner. The dirt around it seemed untouched, like the earth refused to close. He reached forward, brushing away a layer of soot. Letters revealed themselves beneath his fingers. Scratched roughly, as if by a child’s hand. Not symbols. A name. “Elowen,” he read aloud. Lira took one step back. “That isn’t possible.” Sylas dropped his cigarette. “You said she was dead.” Kaien stood slowly. “I never saw her body.” The wind picked up. The bell in the ruined tower gave a single, hollow chime. Lira whispered, “No one carves a name for the living.” Kaien’s voice hardened. “Unless the dead refused to stay buried.” They turned toward the forest. Something moved between the trees. Small. Barefoot. Watching. Sylas reached for his blade. Kaien didn’t move. “She’s not dead,” he said. And none of them could bring themselves to say it out loud… But maybe she never was. Lira crouched beside the cracked altar, hands steady despite the tremor in her breath. The relic in her palm was no larger than a coin. Smooth obsidian etched with sigils that had long since faded from written language. Kaien lingered at the edge of the doorway. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I’ve already done worse,” Lira muttered. She struck flint against steel. The candle caught. The flame sputtered once, then surged upward, casting pale light across the ruined chamber. The relic in her palm flared, a piercing blue glow that shimmered in unnatural patterns. Kaien stepped back. “What the hell is that?” “It’s responding,” she whispered. “Responding to what?” She didn’t answer. From the shadows above, something unseen shifted. The ceiling groaned. Then the flame bent sideways, as if pulled by an unseen breath. Lira’s eyes didn’t leave the glow. “It’s here,” she said quietly. “It never left.” The blue light began to flicker faster. Beneath the altar, one of the foundation stones shimmered. Faint veins of red glowed beneath its surface, like embers trying to wake. Lira reached toward it, but the heat forced her back. Kaien stepped forward without hesitation. “Help me.” Together, they crouched, fingers braced against the cracked edges. “It’s stuck,” Lira grunted. Kaien shifted his weight. “On three.” They pulled. The stone gave way with a deep, groaning crack. A sudden rush of warmth poured out from beneath, thick and dry, like opening an oven. A shaft of light poured in from above, refracting through the blue relic, washing the pit in strange hues. Lira leaned over the edge. What she saw made her flinch. Kaien moved beside her, saw it too, and said nothing. His hands clenched at his sides. Beneath the altar, untouched by time, was a ring of perfectly arranged bones. Child-sized. They didn’t look buried. They looked… placed. A perfect circle of skeletal remains, each one no larger than a child of ten. Skulls rested atop folded hands. Some wore fragments of bracelets, threadbare cloths clinging to their limbs like shadowed silk. The ash around them pulsed gently with heat, not flame, but memory. Lira stepped back. Her voice broke. “This is a ritual site.” Kaien didn’t move. “This was a tomb.” “No,” she whispered. “This was a seal.” He glanced at her. “What’s the difference?” She shook her head. “A tomb holds the dead. A seal holds something worse.” Above them, the wind rattled the loose window frames. From beneath the bones, something glowed. Kaien reached into the circle, careful not to disturb the remains. “What are you doing?” Lira asked. “Looking for proof,” he said. His fingers closed around something smooth, flat… carved. And suddenly, the warmth beneath the ash spiked like a heartbeat. Kaien pulled the object free. It was a femur. Clean. Pale. Unbroken. And on it (burned into the curve of the bone) was a symbol. Three interlocked rings. Nine lines. One crooked. One black. Exactly as it had been on Sylas’ note. Kaien stared at it, unmoving. Behind them, the relic flame flared again, pulsing to the same rhythm. Lira stepped closer, voice low. “That symbol… how is it here?” Kaien didn’t answer. His gaze locked on the bone like it was accusing him of something. “Kaien,” Lira said again. He finally spoke. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.” Lira’s eyes widened. “Where?” Kaien stood, still holding the bone. “On her skin,” he said. Before Lira could speak, a gust of wind tore through the chamber, extinguishing the flame. From the shadows, a child's voice echoed. “You said you wouldn’t forget me.” They turned. The grave was no longer empty. Sylas leaned against a charred wall, the ember of his cigarette fading. "You know," he said, voice low, "there was this boy. Ten years back. Little runt with big eyes. Quiet. Scared of everything." Kaien and Lira didn’t answer. He kept going anyway. "I found him hiding under a corpse cart. Could barely speak. Took him in, fed him, taught him to keep a knife close." He flicked ash onto the cracked stone floor. "Thought I saved him. Thought maybe he was worth saving." Lira glanced at him. “What happened?” Sylas stared out toward the trees, jaw clenched. "One night, he burned down a caravan. Full of families. Said they looked at him wrong." Kaien looked up, but said nothing. Sylas exhaled slowly. “That’s when I stopped playing savior. Turns out monsters don’t always grow teeth. Sometimes they smile first.” And for the first time in a long while, his voice shook. Lira sat cross-legged near the grave circle, her eyes tracing the ritual lines carved into the dirt. “My sister believed in prophecy more than I did,” she said quietly. Sylas turned. “Did?” “She’s gone.” No one interrupted. Lira’s hand hovered over the relic seal she had re-hidden beneath her cloak. “She followed the flame. Said she saw visions of a girl who could speak to ash. Said if we found her, we could stop the end.” Kaien’s expression didn’t change. “We chased it for months. Tracked ruins. Interpreted signs. Until we found a shrine in the Deepmark Vale.” She swallowed hard. “It was a trap. The girl was never real. Just a way to lure Ashmarked.” Sylas folded his arms. “What happened to your sister?” Lira stared at the fire pit. “She tried to walk through the flames.” “And?” he asked. “She didn’t burn,” Lira whispered. “But she didn’t live either.” Kaien crouched beside the last grave. The one with Elowen’s name. His hand closed around a river stone. Smooth. Cold. Carved with nothing. He pressed it gently into the soil, aligning it with the others. No prayer. No speech. Lira approached but said nothing. Sylas stayed where he was, watching the horizon, smoke curling around his jaw. The silence stretched. Then Lira finally spoke. “What was her name?” Kaien didn’t answer. She tried again. “The one you lost.” He set a second stone beside the first. “I never asked,” he said. Sylas turned. “You led a convoy of children and never learned their names?” Kaien stood slowly. “I did once.” He brushed the dirt from his hands. “But I stopped saying them after the third died.” Neither Lira nor Sylas responded. The sky above them turned darker, though the sun had not yet set. Kaien’s eyes stayed on the grave. The wind shifted. A sudden gust swept through the hollow of the temple grounds, carrying with it the sharp scent of scorched earth and something older: copper, salt, memory. A caw broke the silence. Lira looked up first. Nine crows circled above the old bell tower. Then one by one, they landed on the jagged tiles of the temple roof. Nine black shapes. Still. Watching. Then one cried out. Not a normal caw. Something broken. Off-key. Like grief given voice. Sylas flinched. Kaien stared at them, jaw set. “It’s a warning.” Lira’s hand went to the relic seal inside her cloak. “Or a reckoning.” One of the crows flared its wings, revealing a single white feather streaked red. They all turned toward the forest as if guided by some unseen cue. And in the silence that followed, the wind whispered again. “She is waking.” Kaien turned. He didn’t need to ask who.