The stars had not returned.
Even after a week, the sky above Naaren's Fold remained empty—just a sea of dark ash, flecked with dull, motionless light. It was as if the world held its breath, watching us, waiting to see what shape we'd take.
So we shaped each other.
Mornings were quiet. David and I would walk the perimeter while Eve listened to the villagers' stories, weaving truth from superstition, myth from grief. She wrote them all down—names, dreams, omens—on brittle parchment as though they were sacred texts. Maybe they were.
Mikal trained the able-bodied. She spoke little, but her presence stabilized us, grounded our growing reputation in something practical. She kept her scars visible—proof that belief should never come without cost.
Even the old church had begun to change. Its blackened altar now bore no offerings, only names—etched into the stone by the villagers in charcoal and soot. The names of the dead. A new scripture, honest and incomplete.
And above it all, my fire glowed dimly each night—not to dazzle, not to punish, but to comfort.
It was the first time I felt less like a weapon… and more like a hearth.
But peace, even in this broken world, never comes without a test.
It arrived on the ninth night.
We heard the scream first—raw, high, cut short.
Then came the sound of boots.
David reached me before I'd even stood up. "Eastern ridge," he said.
"They're not villagers," Mikal added, already drawing her iron-blade staff. "Too clean. Too fast."
We rushed to the border—past the bone fences, past the old stones, past the outer fires that marked our quiet claim to the land. There, beneath the dead tree line, they came into view:
Six figures. Armored in scorched bronze and cloth stained with ceremonial ash. Emblems on their shoulders: the triple ember spiral of the Aelaran Reclaimers.
Each carried curved blades and lanterns filled with still-burning oil.
And at their center stood Marran.
His robes were torn, the fine silk reduced to ash-draped rags. His left arm bore a new tattoo—burned directly into the skin—a black serpent wrapped in flame.
His eyes were hollowed by zeal and humiliation.
He smiled when he saw me.
"You let me live," he called, voice rasping with smoke. "You let me walk away. Now I return to test the mercy of your flame."
David raised his blade. "This is your last chance, Marran. Leave."
"Leave?" Marran laughed. "I was born in this ash. You walk on my altar. You bathe in the blood of my sermons. You think your flicker of warmth undoes the fire I built?"
The Reclaimers stepped forward.
They bore no expressions. Their mouths were stitched. Their eyes—empty white.
Not soldiers.
Vessels.
"Marran," I said, stepping past David. "They'll kill everyone. You know that."
"Only the unbelievers," he said. "Only those who've been misled. And when the smoke clears, they will thank me for purging the rot."
"You don't want faith," I said. "You want obedience."
He sneered. "Obedience is faith. Or have you forgotten what you once were?"
Something inside me flared at that—an ember of memory, of godhood before pain. I remembered altars piled with sacrifices. Crowds kneeling not from love, but fear.
And I remembered that I had turned from that.
"I remember," I said. "And I rejected it."
Then I raised my hand.
The flame appeared—not roaring, not wild.
Controlled.
Refined.
It hovered above my palm, blue and cold, casting long shadows.
"I give you one chance," I said.
Marran spat. "You're no god. You're a doubt given shape."
He waved his hand.
The Reclaimers surged forward.
It was not a battle.
It was a reckoning.
David and Mikal stood on either side of me, blades drawn, but it was the fire that moved first. Not from my hands—but from the ground itself.
The lanterns the Reclaimers carried flared white, then blue, then folded inward, consuming themselves. The light that escaped was not flame—but memory.
Visions.
Each Reclaimer staggered mid-charge, as if caught in a dream. Their bodies slowed. Their stitched mouths opened in silent cries. One dropped to his knees and wept blood. Another tried to speak—his throat glowing with embers, voice unused for decades.
They saw me.
Not as I was.
As I had been.
And the fire judged them.
One by one, they burned—not into ash, but into light. Their forms dissolved, not with screams, but with sighs. Like sins being exhaled from their hollow husks.
Only Marran remained.
He stared at me, trembling.
"You don't kill," he said. "You cleanse."
"I remember," I said. "Even what you've forgotten."
He fell to his knees.
And I turned away.
Mikal took Marran into the old grain cellar—now a makeshift prison. He said nothing after that, only watched me with loathing and fear.
David joined me by the fire that night, and for the first time, sat beside me instead of across.
"You could have killed him," he said.
"I didn't need to."
"That's not mercy," David muttered. "That's responsibility."
"What's the difference?"
He looked up at the stars—still absent.
"One feels good," he said. "The other never does."
We sat in silence a long time.
Then Eve joined us.
She didn't ask what happened.
She curled beside me and whispered:
"Are you going to keep forgiving the people who hurt you?"
And I answered honestly.
"I don't know."
By dawn, the villagers had gathered at the old church again. They began to repaint the murals—no longer fire and thrones, but fields of glass. A place reborn, not ruled.
And above the altar, new words were etched:
"Judgment remembers. Mercy creates."
I did not write them.
David did.
And beneath it, Eve carved a third line:
"We follow the fire that listens."
And for the first time, I believed them.