Torch and Rumor

They said it was a spark.They said it was wind.They said it was a careless cook.

They said a lot of things—but all of them ended with Darin's name.

The fire broke near midnight. Not in the fireline or near the cookwagons—but near the quartermaster scroll tent. Supply crates blackened. A full ledger chest scorched. Three rations lost. One old spear snapped in the heat.

It didn't spread far.

But it spread loud.

Raive pulled Darin aside at dawn.

"You didn't light it," Raive said flatly. "But they think you could've."

Darin didn't flinch. "Why?"

"You embarrassed a house name. You broke trial without noble blood. Some lads still think that's heresy."

"That's not heresy."

Raive shrugged. "It is if they hum it enough."

The slander started soft.—"Fire-born, not field-born."—"He wins trials, loses carts."—"Maybe the blood on his blade wasn't Yarik's."—"If you want warm bread, follow Darin. If you want no fire at all, follow him too."

By the second night, Darin couldn't walk past a tent line without silence blooming behind him.

By the third, someone left ash inside his boot.

Dren said nothing. Harl muttered curses. Raive stayed distant.

That morning, he walked into the clerk's ledger tent without being called.

The same clerk from Chapter XX. Sand-skinned. Still sour.

"I want a fire log."

"A what?"

"Everyone blamed. Everyone cleared. Everyone questioned. I want it copied."

"Why?"

"Because this is what they do to men who don't burn."

The clerk blinked.

Then, slowly, pulled a blank scroll and began writing.

Darin stood silent the whole time. Never asked for his own name to be cleared.

Only for others to be remembered.

Later, a whisper passed through camp.

It wasn't about fire.

It was about a man who stood still while his boots smoked, and said nothing to defend himself—because the truth would float up, slow and real, like ash on morning wind.