The train to Backlund took four days.
And three sleepless nights.
Elaric rode third-class, wedged onto hard wooden benches among laborers, small merchants, and families fleeing rumors of war along the northern border. The carriage stank of unwashed bodies, sour tobacco, and coal smoke that crept through every seam like a living thing.
Clack—clack—clack.
Each jolt of the wheels hammered the same truth into his bones:
He was no longer hidden.
He kept his head down, hood drawn low. The tarot deck lay wrapped in cloth beneath his shirt, pressed warm against his ribs. The ember in his chest burned low and steady—never flaring, never resting.
A reminder.
Survival had a cost.
During the long stretches when conversation collapsed into exhausted silence, Elaric tested the limits of what he had become.
Ember Seer was not a pathway of brute strength.
It was subtler.
Crueler.
Fate Glimpse revealed itself to be no simple trick of prophecy. When he focused on a person—or an object tied to a dying possibility—visions came in layers. Overlapping threads. Futures that flickered like candles in wind.
Some burned bright.
Some guttered.
Some were already ash.
The stronger the hope—or despair—the clearer the vision.
And each glimpse shaved a sliver from his own ember.
Leaving the hollow deeper.
Spark Ignition had grown more obedient. He could coax flames no larger than a match head into existence, guide them along surfaces like curious insects, or extinguish them without leaving scorch or smoke.
Once, when a pickpocket brushed too close in the aisle—
Fff.
A spark bloomed on the man's sleeve.
The illusion of empty hands shattered.
A knife flickered into view.
The thief went pale—and vanished at the next station.
Ashen Whispers were worse.
Anything that had burned left echoes.
Old fires murmured faintly. Fresh ashes spoke clearly.
In the coal tender, Elaric heard the distant screams of trees felled a decade ago. In a man's cigarette, the ghost-memory of a letter burned in rage—ink curling, words never read.
And then there was something new.
Something he hadn't dared explore in Dunhill.
When he allowed himself to sink deeper into the ember's rhythm, a fourth sense stirred.
Ember Sense.
Not sight.
Not sound.
Pressure behind the eyes.
A warmth that pulled.
Lives about to end.
Hopes on the verge of collapse.
Secrets smoldering beneath calm faces.
On the second night, the pull became unbearable.
Across the aisle sat a woman dressed in mourning black. Middle-aged. Spine rigid. A small wooden box rested on her lap, clutched as though it might escape.
To everyone else, she was invisible.
To Elaric—
She burned.
A candle reduced to its final stub.
He tried to look away.
The pathway throbbed inside his chest.
Preserve.
Never let it die.
He was so tired.
But refusal hurt worse than use.
Elaric crossed the swaying car and sat beside her.
"Your husband," he said quietly, his highland accent softened by travel. "He was ill a long time."
She stiffened.
Did not turn.
"The box," he continued. "His ashes?"
Her fingers tightened until her knuckles went white.
"I can hear him," Elaric whispered. "Faintly. He's afraid you'll forget the promise you made."
That did it.
She turned—eyes red, sharp with suspicion.
"What devilry is this?" she hissed.
"No devil," Elaric said. "Just someone who knows what it is to lose everything in fire."
He touched the lid.
Ashen Whispers surged.
A man's weak voice. A sickbed. A promise spoken between coughs—to scatter him in the sea off East Backlund, where they'd met as children.
Grief had been heavier than travel.
Elaric withdrew his hand.
"He doesn't blame you," he said gently. "He just wants to go home."
The woman wept without sound.
That night, at a coastal junction, she slipped into the dark. From the window, Elaric watched her walk toward the distant crash of waves, box held close.
The ember flared.
Warm.
Almost grateful.
The hollow didn't fill—but it stopped growing.
For a while.
Backlund greeted him beneath a pall of yellow fog.
Brick and iron rose like a living organism. Chimneys belched smoke into the mist from the Tussock River. Steam whistles screamed. Gas lamps flickered like dying stars.
Humanity pressed in from every side.
Elaric stepped into chaos.
Trier was still weeks away—but if a new Tarot Gathering existed, its echoes would reach Backlund first.
So he listened.
For two days he wandered the East Borough slums, sleeping in doorways and abandoned warehouses. Coins came from discreet readings in taverns. Food from luck and kindness.
The city's dying embers were everywhere.
Addicts.
Children coughing blood.
Old soldiers missing limbs.
Each one tugged at him.
He helped where he could.
A spark burned through a factory lock before fire claimed the night shift.
A glimpse warned a woman of a client who carried more than coin.
Each act hollowed him further.
By the third night, the pressure was unbearable.
He sat in the back room of a dockside pub called The Smoldering Hearth.
Ironic.
The tarot deck moved smoothly beneath his fingers, crimson threads in the artwork glowing faintly to his altered sight.
A three-card spread.
Past.
Present.
Future.
The Hanged Man.
The Tower.
Death—upright.
The stevedore's face drained of color.
"Change," Elaric began carefully. "Violent. But not the end—"
He stopped.
Ember Sense screamed.
Someone was watching him.
Not idly.
With recognition.
In the shadowed corner sat a woman in a high-necked black gown that did not belong here. A veil hid her face. Her presence bent the room around her.
On the table before her lay a single card.
Justice—upright.
But wrong.
The scales were replaced by flame and ash.
She rose.
Conversation died.
She crossed the room and stopped before him.
"You read well," she said. "But you miss the larger pattern."
From her pocket, she produced an envelope sealed with black wax.
The mark was an inverted Hanged Man.
"For the Ember Seer," she murmured. "From the Gathering."
The world felt distant.
Muted.
Elaric took the envelope.
It was warm.
Inside lay a single card.
The Fool.
Not blank.
A boy walked along a cliff's edge, lantern in hand. Within it burned a dying crimson ember. Behind him, curtained figures watched.
On the back:
Bridge of Three Spires.
Midnight.
Three nights hence.
Come alone.
The Hanged Man waits to turn right-side up.
The woman was already leaving.
"What do you want with me?" Elaric demanded.
She paused.
"We want what you carry," she said softly. "Whether you give it willingly… or the world takes it in fire."
Then she was gone.
The pub resumed its noise as though nothing had happened.
But the hearth roared higher—flames twisting into doors, fools, burning threads.
The ember in Elaric's chest pulsed.
Hard.
Something vast had noticed him.
And on a fog-shrouded bridge, in three nights' time, he would meet the first of the new Tarot.
The dying spark had drawn moths.
Now it remained to be seen—
Which would burn first.