The flames had spared his flesh, but not his soul.
Rael had not spoken in days.
He wandered beyond the corpse of his village with ash still clinging to his cloak, crusted into the seams of his armor. Each step left prints in soot, as though the earth itself refused to forget. Behind him, the wind carried nothing—no birdcall, no voice, no echo of what once had been.
He walked because stopping meant remembering. And remembering meant breaking.
But the world did not pause for grief.
---
The next village lay hidden behind two ridges, surrounded by yellow hills and tangled with wild plum trees. It had a name—Braymoor—but the people there rarely spoke it aloud. Names attracted attention. Attention brought soldiers.
Rael arrived at nightfall. He collapsed beside the edge of a dried-up streambed, too weak to speak, too proud to beg. A shadow found him there: Deyn, a boy near his age, lean and sharp-eyed, with the walk of someone used to silence.
Rael woke in a barn, his wounds bandaged in rough linen. The scent of straw and goat dung clung to the air. His blade—warped from heat—rested beside him, untouched.
"You're lucky," Deyn said, seated nearby. "Another hour and the crows would've claimed your eyes."
Rael didn't thank him.
He didn't speak at all.
Only on the third morning did he whisper, "Where's my cloak?"
Deyn tilted his head. "You mean that blood-colored rag? It's drying by the fire. Smells like death."
Rael nodded. "Leave it there."
---
Braymoor was not safe. No place was. But the people here were clever in their desperation. They planted in circles, disguised fields with thickets, trained children to mimic bird calls as warning signals. They had no soldiers—only old blades rusting beneath floorboards, and old men who still remembered how to hold them.
Rael began to help. Quietly. Without question.
He mended walls. He fed goats. He followed Deyn into the hills with sacks of barley and helped bury them in stone-lined pits—hidden caches meant to deceive tax collectors.
One night, as they crouched behind bramble bushes, shoving wrapped grain into the earth, Deyn asked, "Why do you do this?"
Rael's fingers paused.
"Because they burned everything else."
---
Whispers spread like infection.
From west of the ridge came word of villages that had refused the grain quotas. Of banners not bearing the sigil of Yvard, but of a new emblem—a shattered crown set aflame.
"They say it's just bandits," Deyn muttered one night. "But they're organized. Tacticians. They strike patrols, sabotage caravans, vanish before the horns sound."
"Who leads them?" Rael asked.
"No one knows. Some say he wears red."
Rael did not flinch.
---
His grandfather lived in the edge-house of Braymoor, surrounded by rusted armor and the smell of boiled roots. Old Veyr, once of the Royal Legion of Embrith, now half-blind and quarter-sane, carved birds out of driftwood and muttered war poems to himself.
But when Rael came, the old man grew quiet. Clearer.
"Did she burn?" he asked.
Rael nodded.
Old Veyr grunted, as if the answer had been inevitable.
"They burn what resists. That is their way. Yvard builds no monuments. It only razes and replaces."
"You fought them."
"I fought beside them. Once."
Rael stared.
"We were told it was peace," Veyr rasped, "but it was conquest with better manners."
---
One evening, as smoke curled from the hearth and shadows fell long across the dirt floor, Veyr beckoned Rael closer.
"You heard about Fen Dral?"
Rael shook his head.
"It was a river-kingdom, small but proud. Built on trade and song. When they refused the war-tax, the Eastern Legion surrounded them. They held for thirty days. Then the fire came."
Rael frowned. "And they all died?"
"No," Veyr said, voice hollow. "Some surrendered. The rest burned."
He reached into a wooden box and pulled out a blackened coin. Melted at the edge. The crest was barely visible—a harp broken in half.
"They were like us," the old man said. "They had fields, children, hope. They believed their spirit would protect them."
Rael clenched his jaw.
Veyr fixed him with one milky eye.
"Remember this: Those who fight are burned. Those who bow die slower."
Rael whispered the words back, as if carving them into memory.
---
Soon after, the tax riders came.
Five this time. Two scribes, three soldiers. Their colors were duller, their eyes more tired. They did not ride like conquerors, but like butchers on a routine.
The villagers met them with masks of humility and baskets of hollow grain sacks.
Rael stood in the shadows of a half-finished stable, watching.
Deyn appeared beside him, face taut.
"They'll search," he said.
Rael nodded. "Where's the nearest cache?"
"North hill. Past the thorn trees."
Rael was already moving.
They reached the ridge just as the riders began sweeping the village. Rael dropped to his knees, shoving fallen leaves over the burial site, covering stones with roots. The sacks were deep—untouched—but if found, they'd be charged with withholding tribute.
Which meant fire.
Voices echoed in the wind. A horn sounded. The search had begun.
Rael grabbed a broken branch, smeared dirt over his arms, and looked to Deyn.
"If they come this way," he said, "tell them I stole it."
Deyn blinked. "What?"
"They won't burn the village for one boy."
"You're insane."
Rael didn't answer. He just waited.
But the riders never reached the north hill.
Something spooked them—a noise, a signal, maybe fate. They turned south instead, harassed a drunk shepherd, then rode off with two chickens and a sack of spoiled oats.
The village lived another day.
That night, Deyn found Rael seated beside Old Veyr's house, staring into the hearth.
"You were serious," Deyn said.
Rael nodded. "They don't burn villages. They burn symbols."
"And you think you're a symbol?"
Rael didn't reply.
---
Weeks passed.
Rael trained in silence—practicing with wooden spears behind barns, rebuilding strength in his limbs, tracking game through shadowed woods. The fire had stripped him, but what remained was sharper.
At night, he listened.
To whispers of rebellion. Of a man in red who fought with no flag, no crown, only fire in his eyes and dirt beneath his nails.
"Some say he was a farmer," a traveler whispered once.
"Some say his mother died in the flames," another muttered.
Rael said nothing.
---
One morning, before the sun had fully climbed, Old Veyr called him close.
"The wind is changing," he said.
Rael frowned.
The old man placed a rusted gauntlet in Rael's hands.
"Your father's."
It was heavy, cold, and cracked at the knuckles.
"He wore it the day he died," Veyr continued. "You should wear it the day you begin."
Rael didn't understand.
Veyr smiled.
"You're not a boy anymore. And the fire you carry won't wait."
Rael bowed. For the first time.
Then he stood, dawn breaking over his shoulder, and walked down the path leading west—toward the whispers, toward the blood, toward whatever waited beyond fear.
---
The fire had not ended him. It had whispered.
And now, he would answer.