Chapter 40: Embers of the Past

  Kael stood motionless at the ridge, staring down at Greenhaven, or what was left of it. His breath came shallow, cold against the night air. The acrid scent of burnt wood and charred flesh clung to his nostrils, suffocating in its familiarity.

  He had seen this before.

  He had wanted this before.

  The first time he’d laid eyes on Greenhaven in flames, he had felt—what? Exhilaration. Freedom. Like the town’s destruction had finally unshackled him from the weight of his past. But now, standing on the edge of it once more, all he could feel was the weight pressing back down on his chest, crushing.

  His fingers clenched into fists at his sides. The ruins stretched out below them, a skeleton of the home he once knew. The fire had not been content to merely burn the rooftops. It had gutted everything. Stone walls still stood, but blackened beams jutted from them like broken ribs. The streets he had once walked—alleys he had darted through as a child—were nothing more than ashen scars.

  The bakery is gone.

  The thought came unbidden, hitting him harder than he expected. The old couple. Aria.

  His mother. His father. His sister.

  He had spent weeks forcing those names into the depths of his mind, burying them beneath layers of indifference and defiance. Now, they clawed their way back to the surface, whispering through the smoke, tightening around his throat.

  Behind him, Lyanna stood in silence, the dragon egg cradled against her chest. Titanis was just behind her, the mechanical dragon’s molten eyes fixed on the ruined town. The mages, wrapped in their tattered cloaks, shifted uneasily, their breaths fogging in the night air.

  Below, Alric’s voice carried through the stillness. “Tight formation. Keep your bows ready. We move fast, take what we can, and get out.” His voice was firm, controlled, but even he could not hide the tension in it.

  Kael swallowed. His heart hammered against his ribs, his body screaming for him to move. To follow them down. To go back.

  Titanis shifted beside him, the sound of whirring mechanisms barely audible over the wind.

  Kael exhaled sharply, pressing a hand against the dragon’s plated side. “I should go with them.”

  Titanis did not respond immediately, his head tilting slightly. Then, the voice came, quiet and steady, not in words, but in thought.

  You are not alone, Kael.

  Kael gritted his teeth. That’s not the problem.

  You do not need to see with your own eyes. I will watch with you. Through you.

  The words settled into his mind like embers, burning away some of the raw panic beneath his ribs.

  They had not been apart since Titanis hatched. Not once.

  The dragon was a part of him—had been from the moment Kael had first reached out and felt Titanis's mind brush against his own. The thought of separation now, of standing on this ridge while others descended into what was left of Greenhaven, made his entire body itch with unease.

  Titanis lowered his head, molten eyes locking with Kael’s. We are bound.

  Kael let out a shaky breath. He felt Titanis’s presence, steady and constant, anchoring him. Even as the dragon remained on the ridge, Kael knew he would see through his eyes, hear through his ears.

  Watching. Always watching.

  He forced himself to unclench his fists.

  Alric was waiting. The soldiers were already moving.

  Kael exhaled and took a step back.

  The soldiers formed into a loose ring, their bodies tense, shields raised, swords gripped tight. The armor they wore was worse than before—dented, rusting at the edges, scraped raw from too many battles and too little time to mend. These men and women had marched through fire, through death, and now, they stood once more on the precipice of Greenhaven.

  Inside the ring, Kael and the other archers moved with careful, measured steps. Their job was simple—cover the fighters, watch the shadows, and be ready to strike the moment something moved.

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  Kael unslung his crossbow, running his fingers along the runes carved into its side. The runes glowed faintly beneath his touch, pulsing with dormant power. This weapon had seen him through everything. Every fight. Every escape. Every kill. He traced the worn metal, feeling the grooves where his fingers had rested so many times before.

  He loaded a bolt.

  Then they moved.

  The first thing that hit them was the smell.

  Rotting wood. Rotting flesh.

  The wind carried it in waves, thick and cloying, forcing its way into their throats, into their lungs. Kael swallowed against the bile rising in his stomach. He had smelled death before. But there was something wrong here, something deeper than just decay. It was tainted, as if the very air carried the whispers of the things that had done this.

  Their boots crunched over blackened debris, over charred fragments of homes that had once been_whole. Ash clung to the ground in thick layers, disturbed only by the deep grooves where something large had dragged itself through.

  And then, the bones.

  Kael had seen them before—when he had stood on this ridge last. But now, they were worse. Far worse.

  The skeletons of the town guard still lay where they had fallen, but they had been picked clean. Not just stripped of flesh, but torn apart, their bones flung across the cobblestones, scattered as if something had rooted through them for the marrow inside.

  One skull lay at his feet, cracked open down the center. Kael’s stomach twisted.

  Behind him, one of the soldiers muttered a curse. Another gagged, pressing a hand against her mouth as she turned away from the sight.

  The houses that remained were nothing but husks—blackened, skeletal things. A few still stood, their doorways yawning open, their insides gutted. But others had collapsed entirely, their frames buckling inward, creating piles of smoldering ruin.

  And the silence.

  No voices. No distant weeping. No survivors left to cry out for help.

  Only the creak of dying timber.

  Only the wind, rattling through the bones of a dead town.

  Kael tightened his grip on the crossbow. His heart thumped against his ribs, slow and steady. Too quiet.

  They weren’t alone.

  He lifted his gaze to the ruined streets ahead, scanning the alleys, the doorways, the dark corners where something could be waiting.

  And then, in the far distance, something shifted.

  Not wind. Not rubble settling.

  Something watching.

  Kael sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Hold,” Alric ordered, voice low, barely above a whisper.

  The soldiers stopped. No one moved.

  Kael’s finger hovered over the trigger of his crossbow.

  The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. No one spoke. No one moved. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

  Kael’s hands tightened around his crossbow, his finger resting against the trigger. Every instinct screamed at him, every nerve wound taut as a bowstring. The town was dead—but something was watching. He felt it, that prickling awareness crawling down his spine, the certainty that unseen eyes were tracking their every step.

  Alric shifted, the faintest clink of armor breaking the quiet. “Shields up,” he murmured, barely above a breath. The soldiers obeyed, their battered shields rising as one. Their formation shifted slightly, tightening without fully closing in—just enough to protect the archers, just enough to ensure that if something came, they’d be ready.

  Kael swallowed, his throat dry as dust. He forced himself to move, slow and careful, stepping over scattered bones, over the burned husks of homes that had once been full of life. He tried not to look at the skulls, at the way they had been cracked open like ripe fruit. He tried not to remember who had lived in these houses.

  But the memories clawed their way back anyway.

  The blacksmith’s forge had once burned bright, its fires a beacon in the cold. Now, it was nothing but a twisted wreck, its great iron anvil toppled, its roof caved in.

  The baker’s shop, where the scent of warm bread had once filled the air, was hollowed out, its front door ripped from its hinges. The counters inside were smashed, the floor coated in a layer of blood so dark it had turned black.

  And the library—gods, the library.

  Kael’s breath hitched as his gaze landed on what little remained of it, visible atop a small hill even from this distance. Charred beams jutted out like broken ribs, the stone foundation still standing, but he knew. He knew that the books—the endless, countless books—were nothing but cinders.

  The desk where he had spent hours, running his fingers over old maps, tracing runes in the margins of ancient tomes—it was gone.

  The place that had been his refuge, the one part of Greenhaven that had ever felt like home, was nothing more than a smoldering ruin.

  He had wanted this once.

  The first time he had seen the town burning, he had felt joy.

  Now, all he felt was shame.

  A breath of wind stirred the ashes, sending them spiraling into the air like dying embers. The past clawed at him—faces he had tried to bury rising unbidden in his mind.

  His father. The man’s hard eyes, the weight of his disapproval.

  His mother. Her quiet sighs, the way she had looked at him like he was a puzzle she could never solve.

  His sister.

  Aria.

  The memory of her laughter nearly broke him.

  The weight of it all crushed down on him, squeezing his lungs tight. He forced himself to breathe, to swallow the grief before it could choke him. Not now. Not here.

  The town was dead. But Kael wasn’t.

  And neither were the things that had killed it.

  Something moved.

  A flicker of motion at the edge of his vision—just a shadow, just the barest hint of something shifting behind the wreckage of a collapsed house.

  Kael reacted before he could think, snapping his crossbow up, his body moving on instinct. The soldiers around him tensed, weapons raised.

  Alric saw it too. “Eyes sharp,” he murmured. “No sudden movements.”

  Kael exhaled slowly, forcing himself to focus. Where was it?

  Then he heard it.

  A wet, dragging sound.

  Not footsteps. Not the scuttling of rats.

  Something heavy, moving across stone and ash.

  Kael’s pulse pounded in his ears. He glanced to Alric, who gave a single, sharp nod.

  Slowly, carefully, Kael shifted his stance, keeping the crossbow steady as he turned his gaze toward the ruined house.

  A shadow stirred within.

  Then, two eyes blinked open in the darkness.

  Not human.

  Not alive.

  Kael’s stomach dropped.

  The thing stepped forward.

  And the silence shattered.