The ash clung to Kael's tongue like old lies.
He crouched in the skeleton of a house that had once smelled of bread and soap.
Now it stank of wet charcoal.
Night pressed on the broken rafters.
The wind turned every hole in the wall into a mouth that breathed cold into the room.
Somewhere beyond the rubble, a goat bleated once and went quiet.
Somewhere else, a baby cried… then didn't.
The fire had eaten the village too fast—
Too fast for the rain to matter.
Too fast for the men to come back from the fields.
Too fast for the old to stand and run.
Kael's hands were black up to the wrists.
He wiped them on his tunic anyway.
The stains only spread.
His fingers shook.
Not from fear—fear he understood.
This was different.
This was his body refusing to accept there was nothing left to find.
He had searched every corner that still had corners.
The well.
The granary.
The tanner's shed.
He had pried up beams with a broken door, only to find steam and mud beneath.
"Nothing," he told the darkness.
Saying it aloud made it true.
Saying it aloud made it bearable.
He should go.
The raiders—the ones with the white banners and stitched sunbursts—would come back at dawn.
They'd count their flames and their dead.
Kael had no wish to be either.
The sensible thing was to slip south through the scrub, cut across the dry creek bed, and keep walking until the smell left his hair.
But sensible wasn't what he did.
He climbed what was left of the baker's oven and stared at the chapel at the edge of the square.
Its steeple had fallen like a spear through the roof.
The door hung open, ribs of iron pointing at the street.
The chapel had a cellar.
Brother Malen had kept winter turnips there…
And the village children had dared each other to sneak down, touch the stones, and swear they felt them breathe.
Ash rasped under Kael's sandals as he crossed the square.
He carried a coil of rope that was more knot than line, a bent nail hammered into a hook, and a pocket knife too dull to shave a splinter.
Tools had a way of becoming precious when the world stopped pretending to be kind.
He paused at the threshold and listened.
The night was not silent.
It was loud with absence.
No ox breathing slow.
No mutter of dice from the inn.
No cough from Old Ressa's chest.
He stepped inside and let the dark take him.
The nave was a wreck of benches and beams.
Moonlight cut through the holes in the roof, silvering the ash like snow that had lost its mind.
Kael moved careful—the way hunger teaches you to move when quiet is worth more than gold.
Behind the altar, half hidden under the priest's bookshelf, he found a trapdoor with a ring of iron.
He braced his feet and pulled.
The wood groaned.
A nail screamed.
When it finally swung open, the sound was wet enough to make his skin crawl.
Cold air breathed from below.
He let the rope down, tested it, and slid into the dark.
The cellar smelled of dirt and iron and old turnips.
His hair brushed the damp ceiling.
Shelves were smashed.
Shards glittered like teeth.
At the far end, the wall was wrong.
Smooth in a way stone never is unless men suffer to make it so.
Black as night water.
Veined with silver lines too perfect to be cracks.
Kael reached out.
The air above it felt colder, like a bucket of well-water held forever above his skin.
He touched it.
The cold bit deep.
He pulled back—then leaned in when he saw a mark glowing where his palm had pressed.
A little circle pulsed.
He pressed his hand again.
Something in the slab turned—like a key.
The cellar went silent.
The silver veins lit one by one, chasing each other until the whole slab glowed.
It wasn't a wall anymore.
It was a door pretending to be rock.
Kael stepped back, knife in hand.
"Who's there?"
The slab opened—
Not with hinges, but like water deciding to become air.
Beyond was a space larger than the cellar, larger than the chapel, larger than the square.
Nine great circles burned faintly in the dark.
Between each, three smaller rings waited.
A book sat on a pedestal in the center.
Leather-bound. No title.
It waited.
Kael looked back at the rope.
He thought of leaving.
He thought of the goat's cry, the baby's silence, Brother Malen's bread.
Then he walked to the book and opened it.
The first page was blank.
The second held a single line:
If you can read this, you are late.
From there, the diagrams began…
Circles within circles.
Lines drawn from palm to heart.
Nine great rings, each with three smaller ones between.
A symbol waited at the bottom—his own hand.
He set his palm on it.
The world flipped.
First Circle: Initiation. Stage One—Awakening.
Shadows moved at the edge of his sight.
When he breathed in, they leaned closer.
When he breathed out, they held.
Not bad.
Not safe.
The book turned its own page.
Stage Two—Affinity.
Stand with your back to the light. Count your breaths. Choose the shadow that chooses you.
Kael chose his own shadow.
By the seventh breath, the cold rose into him.
What do you want enough to change for?
"I want to stop running."
His voice didn't shake.
"I want men with sunburst banners to look behind them."
The book approved.
A small knot of shadow swirled above his palm.
Dense as smoke that had learned patience.
Stage Three—Anchoring.
The first spell you bind will bind you.
Kael shaped the shadow into a thin line, linking palm to stone.
A Fil of Darkness—simple, functional.
The book dimmed.
First Circle—complete. The Second is locked. Price: a life.
Kael's mouth went dry.
"Whose?"
Silence.
He closed the book gently.
The shadow coiled back into his palm.
Above, footsteps crunched in the square.
Men.
Not afraid of the dark.
The chapel door groaned open.
Kael whispered to the shadow, "Let's see if you can keep me alive."