Chapter Four

Morning.

If it can be called that. The sun is a dull smear behind the haze, its red eye less fierce than before.

I feel… stronger?

Not well, not whole—but less brittle. Less close to shattering. My limbs respond without protest. My lungs ache less with each breath. Yet my skin—

My skin is changing.

It flakes in places, dry as old bark, cracked and pale. I run a hand along my forearm and watch the dust fall like the ash outside.

I say nothing. There's no one to hear it.

I step outside, barefoot in the cinders, to check the planter.

No sprouts. No life. Just soil, slightly darker than the day before.

Still, I kneel.

Still, I whisper to them.

"My children," I murmur, surprised by the word. "Grow."

Back inside, I flop onto the cot, expecting only stillness and dust.

But something hard jabs my spine.

I roll off, dragging the culprit out from beneath the thin mattress—a small book, bound in leather stained dark with oil and time.

No grand title. Just a plane cover, probably a journal of whoever came here before me.

I open it.

ASH BREATHING: A MANUAL FOR SURVIVAL AND TRANSCENDENCE

What?

The first page outlines simple exercises: inhale deeply, hold for a count of seven, exhale slowly. Again. Again.

More follow—positions, rhythms, visualizations.

It reads like madness.

Who would willingly breathe this poison? Who would choose to drink in the death that floats on every wind?

I snort. It almost becomes a laugh. The absurdity is too much.

But I keep reading.

In the margins, frantic notes: "lungs burn less now," "can feel it in my bones," "the ash listens if you speak softly."

Toward the back, the handwriting changes—tighter, more focused.

A final note:

"To embrace the ash is to become more than flesh. I feel it now. I am not dying. I am shedding."

"This is the beginning of immortality."

I close the manual slowly.

The silence returns, stretching thick across the room.

I look to the window. The ash still falls. Always.

And I wonder—just for a moment—if this deranged author was right.

Was he mad? Or did he see something the rest of us never lived long enough to find?

I lay back on the cot, manual in hand, and stare at the ceiling until sleep returns.

I dream of breathing dust and becoming something else.