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Chapter 2 – First Steps on the Ash Road
At first glance, the Ash Road promised nothing—a grey line running forward without end. Yet underfoot it memorized every step, turning each imprint into a new breath. Dust curled over bare stone like a thin tongue, keeping not the wind's rhythm but the rhythm of those who walked it. Aras turned the compass in his hand; the crack in the glass ran parallel to the needle, as if the direction were being carried from inside. Again he counted his breaths—three long, one short—and the wire within him briefly aligned with a deeper note beneath the road. In that instant, the road's voice slipped between his steps and stretched a word: threshold.
Lira tilted her head to listen. "Still no birds," she said, low but certain. "This silence isn't nature's—it's as though a door is open, and everything nearby is listening to it." Kovan's hand brushed the hilt of his sword; the chill of the metal clung to his fingers like a prayer in his own tongue. "Don't wait beside an open door," he murmured, as if repeating an old saying. "Those who decide to cross will ignore you."
Behind them the city shrank to a line; ahead the road rose gently. At the crest, the dust paled—like ash long buried that the sun woke for a moment. Threading through it were black, glossy lines: obsidian veins. When sunlight touched them, they abandoned their blackness, but kept swallowing light, forcing everything taken in to leave changed.
Lira plucked and released her bowstring; it sliced the air for a single syllable. "The veins are breathing short," she noted. "Quick and shallow. Someone nearby has done something—or is about to." Aras slid the compass into his coat pocket, freeing his palm. The warm point there wanted to speak to the thin cold trace creeping up his wrist. Accompany it, he thought. Don't name what you don't know; you'll lose its voice.
By midday, the road skirted a fissure—like a sentence the ground had forgotten to finish. At its edge were three stones stacked, the top marked with three chalk lines. Kovan paused, studied them, and nudged the top stone with his boot. "Whoever placed it was in a hurry," he said. "A hurried threshold isn't a threshold—it's an invitation to curiosity."
Aras listened to the dust beneath the end of the lines. Its whispers neared the pace of his breath; the wire in him drew taut for a moment. He set one foot forward—a small, decisive gesture, like the ones his father made before setting a device in motion. The dust seemed to answer, drawing out one syllable and swallowing another. Veins. Stay shallow. "Measure," he murmured along with the whisper, his voice coming less from his mouth than from his palm. Lira glanced at him—not as though she'd heard, but as though she knew why it must be heard.
Through the afternoon, the Ash Road swelled and narrowed; sometimes enough for two to walk abreast, sometimes only for a single shadow. Between warped fences, the wind carried a metallic tone. Somewhere, a bell existed—but the wind seemed to pass around it instead of striking it. "Near Karakum Pass they silence the bells," Lira said. "Sound gives away the doors' positions." Kovan dipped his head in agreement, and in warning.
By late day, Karakum Pass appeared: wind‑tossed houses, dried herb bundles at thresholds, small sacks of stones hanging from window frames. Doors closed at their approach; the slide of a bolt was like quick footsteps in a row. An old woman took chalk in hand, drew three lines on her step, then blurred them with her fingertip—as if drawing wasn't enough, and blunting them was also necessary.
"Do you carry the compass?" she whispered, eyes fixed on Aras's hands. It sounded like an oath being demanded, not a question. Aras inclined his head slightly; sometimes answering opened a door. The woman shut hers without waiting.
The square was muted. Stalls draped in cloth, incense smoke hanging reluctant in the air. Lira stopped before one stall, sniffing the scent beneath the covering. "Dried mint," she said. "Lengthens the breath." Kovan tested the rope at the well; it left black dust on his fingers. "The smoke isn't only in the air here," he frowned. "It's clung to memory."
The quiet moved like clockwork, broken only by a far‑off squeal, then stillness again. Aras checked the compass—southeast‑by‑east, toward a narrow alley behind the square. The alley wound three times before reaching a stone stair and a shut back door of the market‑house. Above the door, three lines were drawn not in chalk but in coal—deep, as if cut.
"Let's see the unseen first," Lira said, listening to the wind. "The sound's not from the north—it's from under the ground." Aras stepped toward the stairs; the wire in him called for a measure. Three long, one short. He adjusted his breathing. The first step seemed to soften when it heard the word it had been waiting for.
Then the ground shivered—distant at first, then climbing from his ankles to his spine. From the alley shadows, two smoke‑bodied creatures emerged—not just shadows, but the habit of shadow. Lira loosed an arrow; it nicked one, leaving a tear in the smoke that didn't close immediately. Kovan lunged, sword slicing the haze and striking something solid beneath.
This time, the wire in Aras didn't call to him; it was he who moved toward it. He pressed his palm to the ground, not forcing the stone's chill into the cold line in his arm—letting them speak instead. Obsidian veins below glimmered faintly, as if hearing a deep song. The light was not white but grey speaking through black. The creatures slowed where the light touched; the habit of shadow fought a new habit.
He counted. Three long, one short. The wire matched the vein's note; he turned his palm, as though easing open a latch. A fine seam of light sprang from the stone—not a crack, but a stitch. The sound beneath said only one thing: close. The forms warped; one crumpled near the ground, the other tried to retreat. Lira's second arrow pinned the withdrawing one's haze, granting it a momentary boundary; Kovan broke through that boundary with a single, sure strike.
A thicker cold ran from Aras's wrist to elbow. The wire tightened, tingling for more, numbing his fingertips. Stay shallow, he told himself in his father's voice. Measure. Threshold. Accompany. He didn't lift his hand, but didn't press harder either. The seam sealed on its own; the light withdrew; the stone exhaled.
The creatures unraveled; smoke dissolved into smoke. Only a faint soot mark remained. A door somewhere slammed. A child cried, quickly muffled. Aras rose slowly, knees heavy from holding the stone's weight.
A young man burst from a side street, dust‑coated and wide‑eyed, nearly tripping but keeping hold of the small metal piece in his hands. "Take this," he gasped. "It's yours." It was a pendant, its centre marked with the same emblem as Aras's compass—thin arc, three lines.
"Where did you find it?" Lira asked before he could catch his breath. He pointed east. "By the well. Left in the night. 'Give it to the one with the compass,' they said. I didn't see a voice, but I heard its shadow." Kovan studied him with eyes trained to spot lies. "You heard a shadow," he said. "That's a new habit of the road."
The pendant's metal was cold, with a faint pulse inside. When Aras held it near the compass, the emblem beneath the glass glowed briefly—as if two long‑distance words had met at last. The chain was short and crudely worked, but the mark was sharp, as though born of a habit, not a hand.
Backing away, the youth whispered, "The end of this road will save you… or end you." Not learned by rote—more as if the sentence had passed through him and taken shape at his lips. Lira looked between him and Aras. "Those who accept both," she murmured, "hear both later."
From the market‑house's main door came movement. It opened a crack, releasing the weary scent of incense. A figure—face unclear, gaze unwavering—spoke: "We're not open till dusk. Don't spend the night here. At night, three lines aren't enough." Kovan nodded curtly. "We'll come in the morning. Mornings keep thresholds sane."
That night they camped on a hill outside the Pass. The wind there was thinner, sharper, sifting smoke but leaving the smell. Lira sorted dry sticks into sets of three, with a pebble between each. "Fire here doesn't rush," she said. "Ash remembers. And if it doesn't, we remind it." Kovan traced a wide circle around the fire—no chalk, just the weight of intention in each step. "Passers‑by move on. Watchers stay. Don't turn your back on the one who watches."
Aras warmed the compass