Ashes That Speak

The flame had gone silent.

In the aftermath of battle, blackened ruins steamed under the dying glow of the sky. Elías stood still, foamy blood dripping from his scythe, chest rising and falling as the last echoes of the fight faded into the ash-choked air.

No one spoke.

Lirien limped forward, her arm scorched, the crimson of her coat darkened by smoke. "Elías…" she muttered, her voice rough, "did you hear it? The whisper. Before they died."

He nodded. "They said a name."

"They screamed it," whispered Jonah, crouching to inspect one of the Flamebound corpses. "It wasn't pain. It was reverence."

Mordrath.

The name lingered in Elías's skull like a coal pressed to memory.

He turned his gaze to the far end of the ruined street. There, just beyond the broken gates of a cathedral swallowed by flame, stood a statue half-melted by divine heat. Its eyes were gouged out. But its mouth... its mouth was open, as if mid-prayer, mid-scream, or perhaps both.

"What is this place?" muttered Nara, tightening her grip on her chainblade. "Every ruin we pass… it remembers us."

Elías walked slowly toward the cathedral.

And then the ash began to speak.

Whispers rose from the rubble — voices disjointed, not carried by wind, but memory. Children crying. A priest chanting. Screams. A bell tolling endlessly.

He froze. The others followed, weapons half-raised, faces drawn.

From beneath the cracked stones, a shape began to emerge.

Long limbs, too many fingers. No eyes, but dozens of mouths stitched shut. A creature shaped from the collective trauma of the dead.

"Ashling," said Lirien, barely audible. "A soul-beast."

Jonah stepped back. "It's made of their memories. It knows who we are."

The Ashling moved with reverent slowness, not to attack — but to kneel before Elías.

And then, from within its many mouths, one voice escaped — not as words, but as meaning:

> "You carry the Scythe. The Unforgiven Flame bows to the Forgotten Reaper."

Elías's fingers tightened on the weapon. "I never asked for this."

The creature bowed its head deeper. "It does not matter what is asked. Only what is taken. And you… have taken everything."

He stepped closer.

"Where is Mordrath?" he asked.

The Ashling trembled. Its mouths opened in harmony, exhaling one singular phrase:

> "Beyond the Garden of Wounds. Through the Throatless Gate."

The cathedral behind it shuddered. The stained glass—though shattered—glowed briefly in impossible color, forming an image none of them could understand.

A serpent eating a sun. A man holding his own head. A door made of bone, swallowing a world.

"I don't like this," muttered Nara. "It feels like we're being led."

"We are," said Elías. "But maybe for once… that's the only way forward."

He walked past the Ashling, entering the cathedral. The others followed, reluctantly. Inside, the world shifted.

The pews were bones. The altar was a heart, still pulsing. And above it all, a great mural painted in blood stretched across the ceiling — showing Elías, in silhouette, scythe in hand, standing at the center of a spiral of worlds.

Jonah gasped. "That's you."

"No," said Elías. "That's who they think I am."

And from the shadows behind the altar, a voice spoke — soft, but ancient:

> "We have waited long, Reaper. The Garden thirsts. And the Gate opens."

Elías turned, eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"

From the dark stepped a man — or what once was a man. His body was sewn with scriptures, skin flayed into ribbons bearing names of the dead.

"I am the Last Herald," he said. "And your path is carved in scar."

He lifted a hand, and the wall behind him peeled open, revealing a spiraling stair of roots and teeth.

"Go. The Garden of Wounds remembers your name."

Elías looked back at his companions. All bore the same expression — fear, awe… and something deeper. A question none could yet voice.

Still, they followed.

---

At the bottom of the stairs, a door pulsed — flesh wrapped in metal, symbols burned into bone. It opened without touch.

The air was thick with memory, and bleeding trees lined a path of skulls.

> "This is no garden," said Nara.

> "It's memory," said Jonah. "It hurts."

And indeed, as they walked, they each felt themselves unravel. Visions of their past surfaced — things they had buried.

Elías saw the village he never remembered burning in reverse. His mother smiling — then her face melting into ash. His own hands holding the scythe… as a child.

"I've… been here before," he whispered.

From the trees, whispers answered him. Yes.

He turned to them. "Then tell me — what am I becoming?"

And they answered, as one:

> "You are becoming what the gods once feared."

---

Question for the Reader:If you carried a weapon that remembered every death it ever caused…

…would it be you who wielded it, or would it eventually wield you?