Story 1134: Faces in the Smoke

The chimney hadn’t smoked in a decade.

Not since the Ash Hollow Fire, when most of the hamlet burned under a blood-red moon. They said the blaze had been unnatural—spread against the wind, burned cold to the touch, and left behind no bones. Just soot, black and bitter.

Now, after all this time, the old chimney in the ruins of Ash Hollow Inn was puffing smoke once more.

And the faces had returned with it.

Merrin Faye, a traveling herbalist, was the first to see them.

She had come seeking solitude, hoping to spend the night among ruins where no one would bother her. The bones of the inn stood quiet, its stone hearth the only structure still intact. Her fire crackled warmly, its smoke trailing lazily into the gray sky.

She sat beside it, sipping elderflower tea, when she saw the first face.

It appeared not in the fire—but in the smoke.

A man’s face, mouth open in a silent scream, his skin charred and flaking. His eyes wept ash. Then it vanished.