Ash falls for two days.
Not like snow.
Like witness.
Blackthorne wakes into a gray that does not lift. The sky is heavy with the aftermath of Heaven’s fire, clouds low and exhausted as if even they are ashamed to rise. Soot coats the streets. It settles in hair, in lungs, in the folds of clothing. Every breath tastes like burned truth.
The dead are carried out at dawn.
Seven bodies wrapped in soaked cloth, laid on the stones where the firestorm broke. No shrine sigils. No sanctified rite. Just hands linked in circles that tremble more from restraint than sorrow.
Kael stands at the head of the line, bare to the ash, head bowed. His shoulders look carved from grief and iron.
I stand beside him.
The shadow is quiet.
For once, it does not speak.
When the pyres are lit, no one looks a
