Ash rises into the air, slips into the lungs, and seeps into the blood—until it reaches the mind, where it settles like a curse. Black dust bends the will, warps the flesh, and binds all fate to its weight.
City of Dim Light, by Sandra Sage
The boy looked toward the sky. The sun was almost high enough to warm him, though he couldn't stare at it for long—straightening his back made him a target. Better to stay bent, half-hidden. His feet were buried deep in the ash-dust that blanketed the field.
Sable motes clung to the vitiated air, drifting almost not at all. A still haze was always a good omen; only when the carbonic dust began to lift and wander did the wind stir. Worse was the spiral—herald of a rising storm. Worst of all was the tumble, when the grains fell in upon themselves, a sign of the coming squall: an invisible moving wall that struck with enough force to shatter bone and rupture skull.
Peter kept his gaze fixed on his feet. It was safer to look down—an old habit from years of dodging wandering bullets and unseen storms. The ash had stained his bare feet up to the ankle, wrapping them in a dark sheath. From a distance, it looked like a leather shoe, a fine one even. Up close, the boy almost believed it himself. And if he buried his feet deep enough, perhaps the ash would rise to his calves, turn into leather boots, and thaw the ice lodged in his bones.
A foolish hope. A boot of leather—what an inconsequential dream.
Still, the ash did almost everything leather might have done. It clung to the skin as long as the wind allowed, held a thin trace of warmth, and dyed him black. His legs were warmer than his hands, at least—warmer than his trembling knuckles and the tip of his nose, which burned red, nearly the color of the far-off sun.
He would have cupped his hands over his nose—if not for the soldiers. They stalked the plains with their precision bullets and patient malice, watching every movement, judging every breath, and squeezing their triggers with blissful certainty. Peter didn't need a mirror to know his nose was red; the itching alone proved it. His fingertips were crimson too, which only helped him picture the exact red of his nose.
Why red? he wondered. Whenever his skin flushed that color, the itch followed—days of it, crawling, needling, never letting up. And now, in this cold, the reddening felt like scalding water poured over him. But no water ever burned this hot.
Jaro used to say that cold and heat were kin—both could strip a man's skin—and it was no coincidence that people used the word blistering for each when they intensified.
Peter remembered a different sun—warmer, gentler. A time before ash-fields, soldiers, and chains. A home where tall trees rose high enough to brush the blue sky.
The soughing of the pines, the creak of old redwood limbs, the splash of the river, the birds' love-cries—he could still hear them somehow. Crossbills chipping, the high, rapid buzz of a crested tit, the soft piping of goldcrests, the bright calls of coal tits, and, always, the distant hoot of the night owl, though he preferred to remember only the warm days.
Here, there was no tree. No bird. No river.
He wondered whether the other slaves who trudged this land had once had homes of their own. Were their worlds as colorful as his had been? And did they, too, wish they could flee back to whatever place they had lost—back to a cabin by the lake on the hill, beneath the redwoods that reached straight into the sky?
Peter felt something wriggle between his toes—a gritty, jagged stone shifting under the ash. He dug it out of the gray sea and lifted it into the weak light.
In his palm lay a world-hearted crystal. He traced its shape with his thumb: a faceted adamant with ridged edges that threw a pink iridescent flare across the darkened field. It glittered like lithic starlight. For a heartbeat its pristine corona captivated him—but sense returned quickly, and he began the slow trudge toward the gem box to deposit his find.
Even as he walked, he kept stealing glances at the gem's shifting colors. Beautiful, he thought. This one will make the soldiers happy. Maybe happy enough to keep the bullets away.
If only he could walk faster—faster boys earned quieter days. Sometimes whole weeks without gunfire. But his back wouldn't straighten. Maybe he had hunched too long. Maybe the cold had frozen him half-bent. Maybe it was thirst.
That damned dew.
He could taste its alkaline bitterness in the dry carbonic air scraping his throat. Jaro had forbidden him from drinking the stuff—called it an err, a child's mistake—but every slave had to err at least once. Otherwise, how would they learn?
He recalled the creek beside his home—its water always cold enough to sting his fingers. And he remembered his mother's voice, repeating the same warning every summer: "Icy water won't quench your thirst, Peter. It only makes the thirst grow. Even an ocean of it couldn't satisfy a dry mouth."
The memory pulled him deeper into homesickness. Was it even his home anymore? His father was dead. His mother was dead. His sister—alive or not, he couldn't know. He owned nothing, not even himself.
The cabin on the hill was gone by now, he was certain. The soldiers had probably burned it—it was too humble to bother claiming. Then again, perhaps some officer had favored its simplicity. Either way, Peter would never return to that hill. If he had a home now, it was the shed.
A cage, yes—but it had walls of steel, a fire pit that scorched you if you stood too close and gave no heat if you stepped an inch away. It had the hard bread that cracked teeth if you bit too eagerly—a stone-loaf you had to soften on your tongue, waiting patiently as it dissolved enough to chew.
And it had water. Clean, crystal water.
The thought alone made his throat burn with a thirst far greater than the one he truly had.
Peter reached the gem box at last. The multicolored crystal in his hand glittered as he dropped it into the onyx container, casting a brief shimmer of cold light that offered no warmth. Tonol looked up and smiled at him.
Tonol always smiled.
He did whatever the soldiers ordered without a hint of doubt. Three men tall and one man wide, Tonol carried the entire box alone with effortless strength. Whatever power filled his arms, his mind held little of it.
He didn't know he was a slave.
He didn't even know what a slave was.
His speech gave him away—words grafted together in the wrong order, syllables twisted and misplaced. You could understand him if you tried, but it always came out crooked. He even misnamed himself. Instead of Tonol, he called himself Tonololo, and never used I or am when speaking.
"Tonololo bread liky—crunchy crunchy," he would say whenever he ate the stone-hard loaves.
Better not anger the soldiers when they're happy with him, Peter thought.
He turned and limped back toward the unsearched fields. Jaro stood with Ruk, the two of them scouring the ash together. The old man couldn't move far without a steady arm; the cold had taken too much from him in recent years.
Peter angled his path toward them. Their spot wasn't warmer, nor could they share enough body heat to matter—but if you had to freeze, it was better to freeze beside friends.
"Hey, boy! Prisoner nine-two-seven! Where are you going?"
The shout came from behind Peter. He didn't need to turn to know it was one of the soldiers; he recognized the man's voice from the nights the guards lingered outside the chained walls of the slave shed.
He must be in a good mood, Peter thought. Otherwise he wouldn't bother calling my number. The soldiers preferred prisoner to slave, and forced the slaves to call one another inmates, as if they had all committed crimes.
What crime had Peter ever committed?
Much like most of the others, his only sin was that his father had once spoken the title of the Supreme Executor the wrong way—calling him the Grand Executioner instead. A slip of the tongue that had cost the man his life… and cost his children their freedom. His wife, too.
"Boy!" the soldier barked again. "Go check that woman. See if she's still alive."
The boy glanced at the woman.
They had left her there overnight, during the last shift. Her newborn was dead, and she had not been able to walk back to the shed with the others. The soldiers hadn't bothered to give her a bullet; they had simply abandoned her to freeze in the blistering cold of the night.
They used to drag the bodies away.
Lately, they'd grown fond of leaving them out in the open—displayed like warnings, left to rot where every eye could see.
But nothing truly rotted here.
There were no birds, no bees, no flies, no ants. Nothing lived on this land except the beast that walked on two hinged legs—man. And without scavengers, decay worked slowly. First the bodies turned blue, then black, as the flesh rotted from the inside outward. The stench of it—of organs spoiling beneath unmoving skin—clung to the air for days.
Death had a smell here.
Peter had known it since the day his mother's skin began to reek, just before she finally slipped away.
She was new to the shed—new to MelasOon, too. She was still plump after two months of labor and dry bread and ice water. Plump, even after the cold she had endured last night. Plump—when no one stayed plump here for long.
Her skin wasn't red anymore.
It had turned blue.
It had been red the night before, when they left her to die with her deadborn child pressed to her chest. But now her face was blue.
"She's dead. Let the boy sweep," one of the soldiers muttered.
Peter heard them arguing. One insisted he'd seen her wiggle. The other snapped back in a twanging, shivering voice, "It's so cold even the dead shake."
Cold.
Could they even feel cold?
Not under all that wool and boiled leather. Not inside their mechajackets—blessed with artificial heat generators. Not the same cold that gnawed Peter through his tattered rags, the blistering ache he held at bay with nothing but a thin crust of leather-like soot.
Their voices drifted on—talk of the gem box, the woman, the shift, the cold—and Peter stood uncertain, waiting. No one had given him a clear order yet, and without one he couldn't move.
Then the first soldier growled,
"Boy—go check the woman. See if she's still alive. And do it now."
The soldier's tone was definitive, commanding.
The boy had no choice; he had to go to the woman.
Why did the soldier even care whether she was dead or not?
Peter searched for an answer and found none. If she lived, they wouldn't let her keep living. If she breathed, they wouldn't grant her a quick death. They would simply wait—patiently, almost eagerly—for her to wither and rot.
Living here was a curse.
Wouldn't it be kinder for her to be dead, like her child?
Peter stretched his stiff leg, forced his back to straighten, and felt his bones protest. Then he stepped forward—head lowered, body aching—toward the woman curled around the infant that had been born dead on this dead planet.
No wonder she had tried to kill herself a few nights ago.
Who would ever want to bring life into a place like this?
"Prisoner nine-two-seven, I've changed my mind. Stand still—if you can."
The soldier's snarl froze Peter mid-step. He hadn't taken more than fifty paces when the growl snapped through the air.
Stand still? Why?
He should be searching for gems. Or checking the woman. A slave was meant to work—wasn't that the rule? What kind of reward was standing still?
He didn't dare look back. The soldier had not given permission.
But the way he'd spoken—stand still—there was something sinister curled inside the words, something oily and wicked.
Peter should have been safe. He had found a pristine gemstone, a crystal that shifted through every shade of pink and violet. That alone should have pleased them. Yet the tone of the soldier's voice crawled under Peter's skin, sparking an unease he could not shake.
He took a step—an instinctive, terrified inch toward the woman's corpse.
"What's the matter?" the soldier growled. "Stay still, boy. I feel like having a bit of fun."
Peter heard the faint metallic rack of a rifle being cycled. He knew that sound—too well.
No. He wouldn't.
Why would he?
Peter had done his job. He'd found a gem worth praise. Why—why—
A thought struck him a moment before instinct took over. He jolted in to the dirt, stomach-first, just as a drifting bullet hissed past above him. The air filled with the sharp scent of cordite, and something hot grazed the tip of his ear.
This wasn't about the woman.
This was his game.
The soldier hadn't sent him to check if she lived—he'd sent him out as a target. A test shot. A little morning amusement to see if he could hit the boy at distance.
Peter's fingers dug into the ash and grit. Every muscle was stiff with cold and terror, but he knew he couldn't remain where he was. He had to move—and fast. He needed cover. The soldier was working the rifle again; Peter could hear the next round being chambered, the soft needle-snap that meant another bullet would come.
Right then, he jerked upright and sprinted for the only shelter in sight, desperate to outrun the bullets. One hissed past his shoulder. He twisted, zigzagging through the ash-field, legs slipping, lungs burning, eyes fixed on the single patch of cover ahead.
Another shot struck the ground beside him.
He threw himself behind the woman's body.
Her face came into view — frozen blue, like her child's. Her eyelids trembled. She was still alive.
What cruelty, Peter thought. Wouldn't it have been kinder if the mother had died with the child?
She had curled her body around the infant, trying to give what little warmth she had left to the life already lost. Her tears had frozen on her cheeks. Tiny blood vessels had burst beneath her skin, leaving thin red lines that crept down her face and onto the child's still features. A smear of blood darkened the baby's closed lips — the mother could give no milk, and the child had refused even her blood.
Another bang.
The woman's chest burst open, and she collapsed.
Peter dropped with her, mimicking her fall, tucking himself between her body and the ash, hidden from the soldiers' line of sight. He pressed himself flat, hardly daring to breathe.
More than anything, he needed the soldier to believe his bullet had found its mark.
"Oh-wee, I got him! I got him good!" the soldier shouted, his voice cracking with excitement.
"Hey, boy! You still alive? Raise your head, and I'll give you a clean death if you are!"
Peter didn't move.
He didn't blink.
He barely breathed.
Beside him, the woman's mouth opened. From somewhere deep in her failing lungs came a whisper, thin and fraying:
"I… see it now… the fields of green…"
She never finished.
A second bullet cracked through her skull, and silence swallowed her voice.
Warm droplets splattered across Peter's face at the impact. He squeezed his eyes shut—but he forgot his mouth. Something touched his tongue. Salt and iron. A sweetness beneath the brine.
He knew that taste.
He didn't recognize it at first in his panic, but the scent made it familiar. He had tasted this before—licking blood from his own wounds as a child. This was no stranger to him.
He tried to swallow the bread crumbs that had risen in his throat, but they came back up, mixed with the woman's blood, a smear of brain, and tiny bits of bone. He forced them down again, choking on the bitterness.
His stomach heaved. His intestines twisted in disgust.
Peter curled himself tighter against the woman's body.
Was it his fault? Had he somehow caused her death?
She was dead now—dead with her child—but her breath had been leaving her since last night. His survival hadn't changed her fate. She had been doomed the moment she set foot on this soot-stained plain. They all were. Their true purpose here—no matter what the soldiers shouted—was not to mine diamonds.
Their purpose was to die.
His father had named it perfectly, in the insult that cost him his life: "Grand Executioner sucks flaccid cock."
Still, guilt clung to Peter like frost. The woman's inner warmth—her blood, her fat—still seeped against him. The same warmth that had splashed across his visage. Shame choked him. He even felt guilty for feeling that warmth at all.
The slick mixture of blood and tissue sliding down toward his stomach made bile rise. His belly growled, loud in the silence, and he froze in terror that the soldiers might hear. But then a memory whispered from his mother's voice:
"No ear will hear what it does not fear. No eye will see what it dares not peer."
He prayed she was right. He prayed the game was over.
Yet fear pulsed in his shaking heart—fear of a third shot.
He stayed still, refusing to reveal he lived. Time passed only in the fading warmth on the back of his neck as the sun lowered. At first he had felt its touch—thin, almost kind—but with each minute the warmth weakened until nothing remained but cold.
"We have to leave; it's getting dark!" a soldier shouted.
Their voices drifted across the ash-fields, too distant to understand—except for Tonol's. Peter heard the giant sobbing, his deep voice swollen with confusion:
"Scoldiers… Pter shot… no Pter… shot, shot!"
Tonol—poor Tonol—didn't grasp what had happened. He never knew they called him slave. Never knew they used him. He was the strongest among them, the only one who could lift the gem box alone. The soldiers wouldn't shoot him; he was too useful. And he had never insulted the Supreme Executor.
Inside, he was still a child.
Peter heard another sound too—a faint, childish whimper. Lina.
He thought of her as much a sister as Rain was his own blood. And he knew he had been more of a brother to Lina than he ever managed to be to Rain.
He dared not raise his head. Not yet.
Could this be a trick? A trap to make him move?
Why did he fear death? Why cling to life here, of all places? Wasn't death the kinder option?
But it was the nature of all living things to run—from cold, from pain, from ending. Jaro had said this often.
Maybe it wasn't Peter's will keeping him pressed to the dirt. Maybe it was simply instinct.
Peter wondered what fields of green the woman had spoken of.
Were they like the woodlands he remembered from childhood?
Or like the ones his mother described in her bedtime stories—the mythic fields of the engraver Myther… Paradise Verbatim, where fairies flew instead of birds, and where the dead lived on for eternity?
Or had it simply been her final illusion, the dream of a dying mind?
Peter wished he knew.
What had the woman seen in her last seconds?
Was she now reunited with her child in those dream-fields?
And if such a place existed… could he one day see his mother's face there too?
"A paradise… after death," he whispered to himself. "Why can't we have a paradise right here?"
He could remember moments that felt like heaven—sunlight through redwood branches, warm river spray, birdsong.
If that was heaven… then this place was surely hell.
A hell in which he now stood alone.
The clinking of chains was gone.
That meant the soldiers and the slaves had left, just as the soldier had said they would.
Slowly, Peter lifted his head and looked toward the sweeping grounds.
No figures.
No movement.
No soldiers.
No one.
He forced himself to stand, his joints groaning, and limped toward the area the others had worked. He looked for footprints—though he didn't know what he would do if he found them. The soldiers would not welcome him. Only their rifles would.
He cupped his hands over his nose, trying to warm it, then tried to cover his ears—but the chain between his wrists was too tight. He could warm only one at a time. His rags had only one good pocket left; the other was little more than a hole. He stuffed both hands into the surviving pocket, sharing what little heat he had.
There were no more bullets meant for him.
But there was no more fire either.
No more food.
No more shelter.
The woman's frozen blue face was what his would look like by morning, when the far-off sun returned with its weak light. Tomorrow, if the soldiers came to sweep the fields again, they would find him curled among the black soot and ash, coated in the white dew that settled during the night and boiled away in the first light of dawn.
Something pressed between his toes. Another gemstone.
He dug it out—a larger crystal than before, glowing with a red flare in the last dim light of the setting sun.
"Why? Why did I run? Stupid… stupid…" he shouted into the empty air.
He hurled the crystal into the darkening sky.
He threw it so hard that its red gleam vanished into the horizon.
If he found enough diamonds, maybe the soldiers would forgive him. Maybe they'd spare him.
But the sun was sinking fast, and with the darkness he would find nothing.
Peter walked without direction, blaming himself, wiping the woman's blood from his face with the frayed sleeves of his rags. From time to time, he glanced at the sinking sun and wondered what it would feel like—to freeze from the inside out.
In desperation, he began to pray.
First to his mother's god, Myther.
Then to his father's god, Salmo—a man, not a god at all. A professor, his father had said, but Peter prayed to him anyway. No call came.
So he pleaded to the machine-god Mekan.
And when Mekan answered with only silence, he whispered to the tree-gods the Pathers worshiped.
But even those colossal gods did not stir.
He looked back at his own footprints—a spiraling, frantic pattern carved in the ash. His breath rasped from him, uneven and frightened. So he prayed again, to anyone or anything that might listen, begging to be spared the cold death creeping toward him. He prayed as he circled the dead woman and her lifeless child, walking that twisted path like a broken ritual.
When he lifted his head, the air was still.
Sable motes clung to it, unmoving, except for a few smolderbright particles drifting in the dimming light. Yellow. Red. And shades between—colors he had no names for. From those sparks he felt something impossible: a thin, unnatural warmth.
Far away, a silhouette appeared.
A woman's shape—shapely, graceful.
Her hair glowed like the smolderbright dust, and the sight of her raised his hackles, prickling every inch of his neck. Yet at the same time, a strange hope stirred in his chest, the promise of warmth.
She hovered above the ground, not standing, her white gown torn at the hem. Barefoot, like him—but untouched by soot. She did not move, yet she waved at him.
Peter hesitated, then lifted his hand and waved back.
He took a few steps toward her…
and her image flickered, withered, and vanished.
He staggered backward in shock, lost his balance, and fell hard onto his backside. His chains clattered in the growing dark.
"Great," he muttered. "I'm seeing pictures."
He pushed himself upright with a groan and looked to the sky.
The red sun was fading, its hue bleeding toward yellow as it always did at this hour.
Behind it, the first stars were beginning to glow.
Peter saw a bright white spark sputter out of the astral rift.
The yellowish sky shifted—first pale, then deep—until it settled into a rich, impossible blue.
A ship had jumped here.
Maybe another prison vessel, like the one that had carried him, his mother, and his sister through the rifts. They had leapt from tear to tear in the fabric of space. But this… this was the first time he had ever seen the blue aftermath of a jump on this dead planet.
The sky glowed cerulean.
Even the sun was blue—blue like his sister's eyes.
And though the cold gnawed at his bones, he felt something almost like joy.
He was free to see this.
A beautiful sky.
Then he spotted it—far in the distance—a red speck dropping through the blue. A falling ship.
It plummeted like an eagle diving for its prey, and to Peter's luck—or doom—it fell close.
As it tore through the thick atmosphere, it ignited. The sky remained blue, but the vessel burned in a violent red flare, staining the air around it with heat and color. The blaze was so fierce that Peter felt its sting on his freezing nose. The wind carried a metallic tang—hot, sharp, almost electric.
The ship dragged itself downward, trailing a glowing, blood-red arc where moments earlier the sky had been clear.
It struck the earth with a shrieking roar, throwing up a geyser of ash that curled into the heavens. Within the rising storm, a remnant of fire still glowed—angry, pulsing—almost swallowed by the dark clouds except for a few beams that speared upward… and one that cut straight toward Peter's position.
Already, the sky's blue was fading back to its sickly yellow.
But now the boy knew where to go.
The fire.
He could see its sullen red chroma flickering over the distant hills.
It wasn't far—less than an hour's walk.
Faster, if he could run.
Why the ship had fallen was unknown to him, and it mattered little. All he had to do was reach the fire.
Between steps, he glanced back at the distant wreck. The stirring ashen soot veiled the flames, revealing their flare only in brief, pulsing bursts—each eruption reminding him of a lighthouse he had once seen in a study book. And though the glow intensified as he drew closer, he feared the ash-cloud might swallow it whole. So he trotted. Then ran.
But every time he ran, he could go no farther than the next hill before his breath abandoned him. He would drop to his knees, gasp at the thin, frigid air, then force himself back to his feet and walk toward the crimson lantern that burned in the dark—the inflamed ship.
He was nearly there.
It was the only light he could see.
The sun was long gone, hidden behind the mountains, leaving the world in a suffocating dusk. The fire, unchallenged, ruled the horizon.
Its swinging flare swept across the ash-fields, revealing gemstones scattered among the soot. They glimmered and gleamed—lucent diamonds flaring pristine pink, tempting red, sterile white, envious green, and even the rarest crystals of velvet night. The fields shimmered like a broken constellation.
Peter found himself wondering:
Why didn't the soldiers sweep at night?
The gems were far easier to spot when their chromaflare was the brightest thing in sight. He had never seen the fields at night before—never seen how the firelight radiated outward and returned in dazzling reflections that inflamed the sky itself.
Why not search then?
The answer came to him slowly.
Maybe because it was colder.
Soldiers wore heat-generating suits.
Slaves wore rags.
Soldiers never complained about slaves freezing.
And slaves had learned to never complain at all.
If soldiers couldn't stand the cold of the day, there was no way they would endure the blistering cold of night. The same cold that now gnawed his bones.
He swallowed against his dry throat and breathed a thin warmth into his cupped fingers, pressing them over his mouth and the top of his nose.
"One more hill," Peter whispered—just as he had whispered for the past five hills.
But this hill was different.
The fire was brighter than ever.
And when he reached the crest, he saw it—the ship, broken open, burning from the inside.
He felt its warmth even from the hilltop.
He ran.
He ran with an excitement he had thought forever lost.
He ran like he had once run through the redwoods, like he had run down the path toward home after long school days.
And then his foot caught on a stone.
He pitched forward, rolled down the hill, and landed hard on his backside near the burning ship.
As he lay there, stunned and breathless, a laugh burst out of him—pure, childish, threaded through with hope and relief. He kept laughing.
The spaceship was not large—only about the size of the slave shed. Not a cargo ship, not a military cruiser. Peter stared, tracing its triangular, pyramid-like silhouette from the gaping cargo gate to the conical nose tip. Four engines—two on each short, narrow wing. Numerous windows—no, cupolas, he remembered, the word from a study book he had read years ago. Years that now felt like ages.
In that book, he had seen drawings of interstellar vessels, diagrams of engines, illustrations of models old and new. He could even name this one.
Thunder Falcon V3.
But the one in his book had looked different. Its edges softer, its plating smoother, its hull bright with fresh paint—not melting away in shimmering rivulets like this one. The ship before him looked newly manufactured, its surface glossy… or it had been, before the fall. Now the paint blistered and liquefied, dripping down the metal under the heat.
He inhaled, and the air stabbed his nose—the pyrolytic fumes, acrid and chemical, mingled with the ozone-like scent of burning steel. He coughed hard and stumbled a few steps back, away from the foul, reeking vapor.
The ship was oblong beneath the flames, and clearly customized—something built for someone wealthy. A Thunder Falcon V3 was an agile vessel, powered by antimatter—the strongest fuel known. Its pallets must have been empty, or else the crash would have annihilated everything from this hillside to the slave shed. Even the hardest gems would have shattered.
Heat glazed his skin. He shielded his face and looked up.
The ship loomed higher than the shed—three Tonols tall, by his rough measure. At its highest points the paint had already vaporized, leaving bare metal glowing faintly red.
But one mark remained untouched:
an emblem etched into the hull—seven golden daggers arranged in a circle, all pointing outward.
Peter circled the wreck, searching for a vantage point away from the choking fumes, a clearer view of the fire. He had taken no more than five steps when he froze.
A silhouette stood amid the flames.
At the cargo gate.
Inside the fire.
Unafraid of it.
He wasn't burning.
Peter felt the figure's eyes—glittering, sharp—lock onto him through the smoke.
The man wore a mask.
A mask with six straight dagger-horns crowning it.
A priest of Myter.
Peter's heart lurched. As a child he had imagined these figures from his mother's stories—had begged his father to check under his bed to be sure none were hiding there.
He stepped back, but he did not run.
If the old tales held even a grain of truth, he knew he could never outrun such a being.
Such a machine.
The figure strode out of the ship, out of the fire itself. Flames curled around him but left him untouched. He carried only a large bag slung over one shoulder and wore garments of fine fabric—fabric that had endured the blaze just as he had.
But Peter knew.
This was no man.
His mother had warned him of these heretics—the ones who worshipped three gods. They honored Myther, the deity of her own belief… and His lesser half, Myter. But they also revered a third god, the new god, the pretender:
Karina—woman, destroyer, imitator of divinity.
A god of bloodshed and ruin.
"They worship Karina," his mother had said.
"And those who worship bloodshed bring bloodshed."
Peter stood trembling, breath caught painfully in his throat, as the masked figure approached through the dying flames.
"I don't bite," the man said.
He reached for the boy's wrists—toward the chain wound tight around them—but Peter snapped his hands back to his sides. The priest paused, then withdrew slightly when he saw the fear burning in the boy's eyes.
"Do you need help?" he asked.
Peter said nothing.
Help? What help could a monster offer—and at what cost?
The priest studied him for a quiet moment, gaze lingering on Peter's torn rags, then on the chains. It was as if he could hear the thoughts churning in the boy's mind. Without another word, he stepped back into the fire.
When he emerged again, he carried a folded set of fabric and a pair of fine leather boots. He approached slowly and knelt before Peter.
Peter could see the man's eyes through the mask—onyx-dark with a glint of green. They looked… kind. Human. Not like the eyes of the monsters from his mother's stories.
"I must leave soon," the priest said gently. "Your clothes are torn. It's better you wear something warm. The night here is cruel."
His voice was soft. His teeth—though one was missing—were human teeth, not sharp and jagged as Peter had been taught to expect.
The priest turned and began walking toward the mountains, away from the burning ship.
Peter watched the fire.
It would last until morning.
But after that… only another night. Another cold.
And the soldiers would practice their rifles on him if they found him alive.
He had only one hope.
He searched his memory for the old prayers—his mother's prayers.
"Soothes followers of Myther to… help a hand in need," Peter whispered, trembling.
The priest halted.
"Soothes followers of Myther to raise a hand once they are in need," he murmured, completing the verse. He turned slowly, studying Peter anew—this soot-dark boy clutching fresh fabric and boots far too fine for him.
"You know of Myther," the priest said. "Yet you fear me. Why?" His head tilted. "Ah. You must worship the Other."
He took one step toward Peter.
"You have need. I will aid you. But no aid comes free."
His tone was no longer gentle. It cut like cold iron.
The shift sent a shiver tearing through Peter.
Help had never sounded so much like a threat.
"No help comes without price," the priest continued. Ash drifted lazily around them, glowing faintly in the dying light. "If you wish your will returned, your flesh unbroken, your breath still your own… then you must follow Myter in His wisdom."
He lifted his mask slightly toward the firelight.
"The old way is dead," he said softly. "And it must die for you, too."
Peter's throat tightened.
He couldn't bargain.
He couldn't protest.
To refuse would be death.
To accept would be a betrayal of his mother.
"If you wish your will returned… walk with me," the priest said, starting forward. "In fields of ray, under the sun's bliss, and among what we know of life."
He did not plead.
He did not look back.
His six golden dagger-horns gleamed faintly—silent, patient, absolute.
Peter stood frozen.
Around him, the ash drifted in soft spirals.
He looked at the clothes—a jacket, sturdy pants, and boots. Leather boots. The very thing he had once wished the ash could become. They were too big for him… but they were warm. And real.
He couldn't stay here.
But—
Maybe he could find enough gems.
Maybe the soldiers would spare him.
Maybe they'd grant him amnesty.
He lied to himself.
He knew they were lies.
He wasn't here to find gems.
He was here to die.
His life was the only tribute the soldiers ever wanted.
His mind drifted to the life he once had.
He saw home—green, bright, filled with river mist and laughter.
He saw his mother in the garden, whispering her prayers to Myther.
He saw his father, the last time, before the enforcers struck him down.
He saw his sister dancing in the fields, her voice carried by the wind.
Then nothing.
Only dark.
Only the mines.
Only chains.
He remembered his mother's last words:
"Be kind to all, for then all will be kind to you."
Words of Myther—never of Myter.
He wondered if his sister still lived.
With shaking hands, he hurriedly pulled on the boots. He tossed the rest of the fabric to the ground, then realized he couldn't remove his trousers with the boots on. So he stripped the boots off, changed into the new pants, then pulled the boots back on. The jacket was hardest with the chains restricting him, but he managed it, buttoning it crookedly, his sleeves flapping loose in the cold wind.
When he fastened the last button, he took a step.
Just one.
The priest said nothing, only resumed walking.
Peter followed.
Was it the right choice? he wondered.
The fire dimmed behind him, flickering its last breaths into the night.
To stay was death.
But was it right to leave?