# Chapter 71: The Flicker of Memory
The words hung in the stale air of the storeroom, a verdict of damnation. "Killing him." Nyra stared at Soren's face, slick with sweat, his jaw clenched in a pain he couldn't even articulate. The black plate on his arm seemed to mock them, a tombstone for his power. "There has to be something," Nyra said, her voice tight, refusing to accept the verdict. "Some remedy. A tonic. Anything." Lena shook her head, her expression grim. "This isn't a wound you can stitch or a fever you can sweat out. This is his soul, Nyra. The Cinders have turned on him, are consuming him from the inside." She paused, her eyes darting to the door as if afraid the walls themselves were listening. "There are… whispers. Of people who deal in such things. Not healers. Something older. They say there's a woman in the Sump who can talk to the ash, who knows the Bloom's poison better than the Synod. But they also say the cure is often worse than the disease."
Nyra's mind raced, a frantic gallop through a maze of dead ends. The Sump. The name itself was a curse, a place of refuse and forgotten people, a labyrinth of rotting piers and sunken alleys where the city's filth, both literal and human, collected. To go there was to invite a dozen different kinds of death. But to stay here was to watch Soren die. The choice was no choice at all. She opened her mouth to tell Lena they would go, that they would find this witch, that they would pay any price.
Before she could speak, Soren's body arched off the cot, a violent, convulsive spasm that threw his limbs into rigid angles. A strangled gasp tore from his throat, a sound of pure, animal agony. The scent of ozone, sharp and electric, filled the small room, overpowering the smell of herbs and dust. Nyra lunged forward, grabbing his shoulders to keep him from falling, his muscles feeling like knotted stone beneath her hands. Lena was there a heartbeat later, her face pale with a new kind of terror.
On Soren's arm, the solid black of the tattoo shuddered. For a terrifying second, it did not remain a dead plate of obsidian. A vein of sick, pulsating purple light, the color of a deep bruise, writhed across its surface like a dying serpent. It was a color Nyra had never seen in a Cinder-tattoo, a color that spoke not of sacrifice but of corruption. The light flared, a brief, nauseating pulse, and then vanished, leaving the black plate darker than before, seeming to absorb the meager light of the room. Soren collapsed back onto the cot, his breathing a shallow, ragged whisper. The seizure had passed, but it had left something behind. A new, more profound wrongness.
"He's burning up," Lena whispered, pressing a trembling hand to Soren's forehead. "It's not a normal fever. It's… inside."
Soren was gone. The cramped storeroom, the scent of drying herbs and Lena's fear, the weight of the blankets—it all dissolved into a maelstrom of sensation. He was falling, not through space but through time, tumbling backward into a memory he had spent a decade trying to bury. The air changed, growing thick and hot, carrying the twin stenches of burning wood and something else, something acrid and metallic, like blood on a forge. The familiar, comforting rumble of the caravan's wheels was gone, replaced by a cacophony of screams—human and animal—punctuated by the wet, tearing sound of claws on flesh.
He was a boy again, small and helpless, hiding under the warped floorboards of the supply wagon. The splintery wood dug into his back, and his lungs burned with the effort of holding his breath. Through a crack between the planks, he saw the world end. Not in a flash of light, but in a tide of grey. Ash fell like a malevolent snow, coating everything in a fine, choking powder. It gathered in the hair of the fleeing people, dusted the panicked faces of the merchants, and clung to the thrashing bodies of the caravan guards as they were torn down.
He saw them. The Bloom-touched. They were not the mindless beasts of campfire stories, but horrors of twisted flesh and chitinous plate, their forms a mockery of nature. One creature, all spindly limbs and too many joints, scuttled over the roof of the wagon, its multifaceted eyes glowing with a dim, malevolent orange light. Another, a hulking brute of fused muscle and bone, swung a massive, club-like arm and shattered the ribs of a guard who had been trying to protect his family. The sound was a wet crunch that echoed in Soren's mind, a sound he had heard in his nightmares for a thousand nights.
But this time, the memory was different. Sharper. The fever had burned away the fog of trauma, leaving a crystalline, unbearable clarity. He saw more than just the monsters. He saw the spaces between them. He saw figures standing in the swirling ash, their forms stark and unmoving amidst the chaos. They wore robes the color of dried blood, the deep crimson of the Radiant Synod. They were not fighting. They were not fleeing. They were watching. Directing.
One of them raised a hand, a gesture of simple, elegant command. In response, a pack of smaller, dog-like Bloom creatures veered away from a cluster of armed guards and swarmed a family trying to flee in their wagon. The screams that followed were higher, more terrible. Soren's heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of bone. This was wrong. This was not a random act of nature, a tragic misfortune of the wastes. This was a harvest.
His gaze darted frantically, searching for his father. He found him not far from their wagon, a bastion of defiance in the collapsing world. Elias Vale was not a large man, but he carried himself with a quiet strength that had always made Soren feel safe. Now, that strength was a furious, desperate fire. He moved with a fluid grace, his shortsword a blur of silver as he parried the claw of a lanky Bloom-creature and drove the blade into its neck. Black ichor sprayed across the dusty ground. He fought not like a guard, but like a man who had everything to lose.
Then, a new figure stepped from the ash. He was not a monster. He was a man, tall and severe, his face clean-shaven and his eyes cold as a winter morning. He wore no armor, only the simple, black tunic of a Synod Inquisitor. He did not draw a weapon. He simply walked toward Elias Vale, his stride unhurried, as if he were strolling through a garden.
Elias saw him coming. He finished his current opponent with a brutal kick and turned to face the Inquisitor, his sword held at the ready. The ash swirled around them, a grey curtain for their private stage. Soren, watching through the crack, felt a dread colder than any fear the monsters had inspired.
"Stand down, Elias," the Inquisitor's voice carried, calm and devoid of emotion. "This is a sanctioned culling. Your resistance is pointless."
"My family is not a 'culling'," Elias snarled, his voice raw.
The Inquisitor sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. "Your sentimentality has always been your weakness." He raised a hand, and the air around Elias seemed to thicken, to grow heavy and still. Elias staggered, his sword suddenly feeling like a lead weight. The Gift. The Inquisitor was using his Gift. Soren watched, horrified, as the faint, shimmering aura that always surrounded his father when he used his own Gift—the ability to harden his skin to stone—flickered and died. The Inquisitor wasn't attacking him. He was… unmaking him. He was nullifying him.
Elias roared in frustration and charged, swinging his sword with all his might. But the blow was slow, clumsy. The Inquisitor sidestepped it with contemptuous ease. He reached out and placed a single, open palm on Elias's chest. There was no explosion of power, no flash of light. Just a simple, final touch. Elias Vale froze, his eyes wide with shock and a dawning, terrible understanding. The life seemed to drain from him in an instant, and he crumpled to the ground, his sword clattering uselessly on the ash-covered road.
The Inquisitor looked down at the body, his expression unchanged. He turned his head, his gaze sweeping past the wagon, and for a single, heart-stopping second, his eyes seemed to meet Soren's through the crack in the floorboards. They were pale, cold eyes. Eyes that Soren would never forget.
The memory shattered. The sounds of screams and the smell of ash were ripped away, replaced by the musty darkness of the storeroom and the frantic voice of Lena. But the image remained, burned into his mind with the clarity of a brand. The Synod robes. The cold, pale eyes. The casual murder of his father.
Soren's eyes snapped open. The fever broke, not with a sweat, but with a jolt of pure, ice-cold adrenaline. The world swam into focus: the rough wooden ceiling of the storeroom, the worried face of Lena leaning over him, and Nyra, her hand gripping his, her expression a mask of fear and relief. He could feel the frantic beat of his own heart, a drum against his ribs. He drew a ragged breath, the air tasting of dust and despair.
He looked past them, his gaze fixed on the darkness, seeing not the storeroom walls but the swirling ash of his past. The lie he had lived with for ten years, the lie that had fueled his every step in the Ladder, crumbled into dust. It wasn't a tragedy. It was an execution.
His voice was a raw, broken thing, a whisper scraped from the depths of his soul.
"It wasn't random," he gasped, his eyes finding Nyra's, locking onto her with an intensity that was almost painful. "The Synod… they killed my father."