They send him east.
Not to fight. Not yet.
“You must see what was lost,” the Seer says, “before you can destroy it.”
And so Aren walks, escorted by four silent guards down a narrow road made of bone-white stone, across a landscape of dying frost. The snow here no longer falls. It just hovers — suspended mid-air, like breath never exhaled.
The road is called The Ember Path.
But there is no fire here. Not yet.
At first, Aren stays quiet.
He watches the guards — all wearing expressionless silver masks, faces turned inward. They do not speak. They do not look back. Their swords are sheathed in glass.
At a bend in the road, he sees a tree made entirely of ice. Beneath it, a frozen bird sits in mid-song, beak open but soundless.
He stops.
None of the guards do.
He touches the bird.
Its head turns.
And it screams.
They camp near a forgotten shrine.
It is shaped like a house — small, wooden, blackened with old flame. There’s no roof, just broken beams and ash-stained floorboards.
Aren steps inside alone.
He feels... something familiar. A shape in the dark.
Then, a whisper.
“You left us in the fire.”
He spins.
No one is there.
Just a child's toy on the ground — burned at the edges, missing a leg. He kneels, heart pounding, and picks it up.
It hums with memory.
A flash.
A scream.
A woman’s hand pulling him back.
And then the heat.
The guards find him on his knees, whispering things he doesn’t remember saying.
“I didn’t mean to. I tried to carry them out. I swear I—”
They do not ask questions. They do not offer comfort.
Only one of them — the tallest — touches his shoulder.
“This is the cost of remembering,” she says. Her voice is human. Soft. Almost kind.
“You walk the Ember Path long enough, and eventually… it burns back.”
That night, Aren dreams again.
But this time, he is not alone in the fire.
The Hollow Child stands beside him, holding his hand.
“They told you forgetting would save you,” the child says.
“But all it did was sharpen the flame.”
The fire rages around them.
The child's mask begins to crack.
“You think this war is outside you.”
“But it started inside.”
“And it’s not over yet.”
[End of Chapter Two]
Read the Chapter 1 here
Comments
Post a Comment