CHAPTER 16: Ashes Before the Crown

The northern ridge led toward Aurelia. That was the plan.

They'd left Mirenth battered and uneasy. Bell had said it clearly: "We take the ridge. We reach the Guild. We bring reinforcements."

But plans crack like glass.

Because halfway through the pass, just before the first pine wall of the Frostgrove Forest, they saw the smoke.

Black. Thick. Not from campfires or forges. From something older. Crueler. It hung in the air like judgment, staining the horizon.

Bell didn't hesitate.

"Cid," he said, reins taut in one gloved hand. "How far off is that?"

Cid narrowed his eyes, his voice low. "Few miles, maybe. Could be a village."

Seria already had her hand on her blade, the silvered steel humming softly. "That's not a chimney burn."

Bell adjusted his grip. "We ride. Now."

Fenhollow had been a dream-place once.

A flower-town wrapped around a crystal spring, nestled in a shallow valley where birdsong never ceased and sunlight touched every window like a lover's hand. Known for healing teas, floating lanterns, and song festivals that filled the hills for days.

Bell had passed through once as a boy, remembering banners of silk, colors vibrant as flame, and the sound of bells on every rooftop.

Now it was dead.

Not destroyed — slaughtered.

The flames were recent. Some buildings still smoldered, their roofs collapsing in slow agony. The scent in the air was sickening — sweet and chemical, clinging to the lungs and staining the throat.

But it wasn't the fire that stopped them.

It was the bodies.

Laid out in a perfect spiral across the main road, each limb twisted at unnatural angles, as if arranged by a god with a cruel sense of geometry. Thirty-seven people. Some old. Some children. All barefoot. All silent.

None had weapons. None had time to scream.

"Gods…" Seria whispered. She dropped to her knees beside a child no older than ten, a girl with ash-smudged cheeks and poppy petals stuffed into her open mouth. Her eyes were still wide, still wet. As if caught mid-breath.

Cid crouched near the fountain, where the spring still bubbled — now tinged faintly red.

"These aren't raiders," he said, voice like stone. "This is theater."

Bell didn't speak.

He walked the spiral in silence, boots crunching ash. His jaw clenched tighter with each turn. There was order to the horror. Pattern. Purpose.

They found the first movement near the granary.

A masked figure.

Alone. White face. Robes of faded green stained at the hem. It moved with a strange weightlessness, like it floated just above the earth. In one hand, it held a curved dagger — the blade crusted with something thick and black. Like tar. Or rot.

It didn't speak.

It didn't run.

It charged.

Bell met it mid-lunge, steel flashing in the air. Sparks exploded where his blade met the obsidian dagger. The clash rang across the square like a bell tolling doom.

But this attacker wasn't human.

When Bell's sword cut through the figure's robes, no blood spilled — only a burst of thick, dark smoke. The thing let out a shriek, high-pitched and warbled, like glass being crushed in water — and vanished in a hiss of ash.

Three more emerged from the shadows of the barn, their masks tilting as if scenting fear.

Seria stepped forward, her hands blazing with conjured flame.

They didn't flinch.

"Cid—!" she called, flames coiling between her fingers.

Cid drew a small, obsidian-handled blade from beneath his coat, whispering something in a language none of them recognized. The sound of it made the air warp slightly.

The lead attacker froze mid-step.

Then cracked — limbs shattering into seven perfect pieces like broken pottery.

Bell caught another by the arm as it lunged, driving his sword through its chest. There was resistance, but it was like stabbing dense wax. No blood. Just a hiss as it collapsed, leaving behind a pile of smoldering cloth and ash.

"Not undead," Seria muttered. "Not alive either."

"Then what are they?" Bell spat, wiping his blade clean.

Cid didn't answer.

But his eyes were fixed on the horizon.

They found the survivor deep beneath the chapel.

The sanctuary had collapsed inward, pews crushed like kindling. Beneath the rubble, a trapdoor led to a cold cellar lit only by flickering candle remnants. Dust choked the air.

And there, in a corner, buried under broken hymnals, was a child.

Mud-covered. Drenched in blood that was not her own.

She screamed when Bell touched her shoulder, striking blindly — but her arms were too weak. She collapsed into his arms, trembling.

"I saw them," she whimpered. "They walked through walls. They sang without mouths. They… they called the sky to bleed."

Seria sat beside her, brushing the girl's hair gently from her face. "What's your name?"

"Mirra," the girl whispered.

Bell stood, carrying her carefully. "We take her with us. We don't leave a soul behind."

By nightfall, they camped on the far side of Fenhollow's blackened fields. The spiral of bodies was now just a shape on the horizon, flickering in the smoke-glow of dying embers.

The silence was too clean. Too final.

Cid was the first to speak.

"This wasn't a random attack. Someone sent those... things."

Seria nodded grimly. "This was a ritual. Blood and theater. It had rules."

Bell sat with his back to the fire, his blade lying across his knees, still faintly warm from impact. "And a warning," he muttered.

He took second watch that night.

The moon hung low and pale, a sickly thing veiled in haze. It painted the poppy fields silver, the petals shifting in the breeze like reaching fingers.

Bell stood just beyond the campfire, boots planted firm, watching the earth as though it might crack open again.

"You should sleep," Seria's voice said behind him.

"I don't think I could," he replied, not turning.

She walked up beside him, her cloak fluttering like dark wings. "This… doesn't feel like any magic I've studied."

"It isn't magic," Bell said softly. "It's something older. Something buried."

They stood in silence, breath steaming in the cold.

Then Seria said, "You said we'd go to Aurelia."

Bell nodded slowly. "And we will. But this… massacre changes everything."

"We're already in too deep."

Bell looked at her. "Are you afraid?"

"Yes," she said. "But not of them."

He looked over at her, unsure what to say.

But when her fingers brushed his, he didn't pull away.

Far from camp, deep in a glade forgotten by any living map, a circle of stone stood beneath trees older than kingdoms.

Within the ring, the figure in shadows stood before a pyre of blackened bone.

Four others knelt around it, white masks gleaming under moonlight, heads bowed in reverence.

The lead figure stepped forward and dropped something onto the fire — a single lock of golden hair.

The flame surged green.

From within the blaze, a whisper echoed, barely audible through the trees:

"The Queen waits."

The masked figure spoke only:

"The crown will return in ash and serpent."

The fire hissed.

And then, as if breathing out its last breath — it went dark.