14. Chapter 14
T hump. Thump. Thump. The sound came steady, rhythmic, like a heartbeat echoing through the brittle bones of the house.
The boy stirred, lashes fluttering in the pale hush before dawn. Hunger gnawed at his insides, a dull, familiar ache. He hadn’t eaten since midday yesterday. Stale bread and crumbling cheese, barely enough to fill a palm. For dinner, only broth. Water, really, with the memory of vegetables.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His stomach gave a hollow growl in reply.
He kicked off the threadbare cloth tangled around his feet, no thicker than gauze, hardly worthy of the name ‘blanket’ and sat up. Beyond the warped windowpane, a rooster’s call broke the silence, distant and strange, like a sound from another life.
Then—
A cry.
From downstairs.
Not loud. Not shrill. But sharp enough to cut through the fog of sleep .
He was already moving, shoving his cap over his unruly curls, heart thundering to a tune too fast, too wild. The narrow stairs creaked beneath his bare feet as he flew down, nearly stumbling on the final step.
And then the world stopped.
His mother, crumpled on the floor, weeping with her face in her hands.
His father, pale and hollow-eyed, standing frozen.
And his sister…
She stood by the wall—no, pressed to it. Her head thudded against the wood. Again. And again.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Blood streaked her temple, soaking through her nightdress in slow, red rivulets. Her skin had turned a ghastly gray. Dead-leaf gray.
The boy didn’t need to ask.
The illness.
It had found them.
A guttural sob tore from his mother’s throat. “How could the gods forsake us like this?”
Darkness fell.
A board of wood slammed across the window from the outside.
Then another.
And another.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
“No!” his father roared, voice ragged with something the boy had never heard before.
Real fear. “My boy’s not sick. Please, he’s not—”
From beyond the wall came a cold voice: “The Veil is sealed. None shall pass.”
Steel on wood. Hammers striking home. Each blow a nail in their coffin. The boy trembled. “Pa… they’re not really going to leave us here, are they?”
He waited for a smile, a soft hand on his head, a gentle lie. Something. Anything.
But his father only looked away .
“I’m sorry, my son,” he whispered, and turned to pull his sister from the wall. She shrieked, inhuman and feral, and slashed at him with clawed fingers. He caught her wrist just before her nails could score his cheek.
His mother had gone quiet.
And then she began murmuring something beneath her breath, something the boy only half remembered, yet the words stirred deep in his chest, like a sleeping ember.
“Ash to air, wing to flame,
Guard the lost, forget no name.
Though bound and broken we remain…
Let the last flame wake again.”
He remembered now. His mother used to say these words when they passed the scorched ruins of their neighbors’ homes. When the smoke still clung to the wind and the ash scattered like black snow.
His lips moved without thinking, joining hers.
“May flame find kin, and stone remember…”
Again they whispered it, a litany against the horror creeping in. His mother pulled him into her arms, kissed the crown of his curls, and pressed his face to her chest.
“Ash to air, wing to flame…”
The heat came first, radiating from the floorboards. Then the smoke, thick and choking.
The house groaned.
The fire had come for them.
“Guard the lost, forget no name…”
It moved faster than anything he could have imagined. Like it knew. Like it wanted them.
Like it had always been waiting.
“Though bound and broken we remain…”
Flames danced across the ceiling, hungry and bright. The boards groaned. His sister shrieked. His father held her tighter.
And his mother just rocked him, whispering the final line into his hair as the world turned to cinder.
“Let the last flame wake again.”
And in the end, there was no pain.
Only heat.
Only light.
Only the quiet, terrible beauty of the fire that claimed them all.