Chapter 21 Elowen
ELOWEN
Dawn arrives slowly, as though the sun itself hesitates to rise over what remains of Briarthorn.
We did not travel far during the night. The marsh swallowed us beyond the village road while the fire devoured Briarthorn behind us, and neither of us slept as the blaze climbed into the sky. Long after the screaming stopped, the glow of the burning village still stained the clouds above the reeds.
When the flames finally began to fade, I turned back toward the road.
Threxian tried to stop me.
I came anyway.
The first light creeps across the horizon in pale gray streaks, illuminating the thick smoke still drifting above the village like a funeral shroud.
The fires have finally burned themselves out, leaving behind blackened skeletons of buildings that once stood proudly along the marsh road.
What remains of the square is little more than a wasteland of charred beams and smoldering ash, the air heavy with the bitter scent of burned wood and something far worse beneath it.
I stand at the end of the ruins and stare. My mind refuses to accept what my eyes are seeing.
This was once a village.
The same narrow streets where I carried baskets of herbs to patients’ homes now lie buried beneath splintered timber and collapsed roofs.
The apothecary where I spent countless evenings grinding medicine for feverish children has been reduced to a jagged pile of stone and blackened shelves.
The bakery where warm bread once scented the morning air stands hollow and broken, its roof gone entirely.
Everywhere I look, smoke rises from places I once knew. Places where people trusted me. The realization settles heavily inside me.
I did this.
The thought does not come with panic anymore. The terror that fueled the firestorm has burned itself away along with the village, leaving behind something quieter and far more suffocating. Guilt.
My boots crunch softly against ash as I take a slow step forward into the ruins. The ground is still warm beneath my feet.
Pieces of charred wood shift beneath the gray dust that now blankets everything, and each step sends thin clouds of ash drifting upward into the morning light.
The silence of the ruined square feels unnatural after the chaos of the night before.
Only the quiet crackle of cooling embers breaks the stillness.
I pass the remains of the cooper’s shop. The place where I once treated his wife’s infected hand after a splinter festered beneath her skin.
My throat tightens painfully.
The memories come uninvited. The laughter of children playing near the well. The smell of fresh herbs drying in the summer air. The quiet gratitude in people’s voices when a fever finally broke after days of worry.
All of it is gone. I walk deeper into the square. Movement catches my attention.
Several villagers have begun returning to the ruins, drawn back by the same terrible need that pulled me here.
They gather cautiously among the surviving stone walls near the chapel, wrapped in blankets or clutching whatever belongings they managed to save before fleeing into the night.
Their faces are gray with exhaustion, their eyes hollow from hours spent watching their homes burn.
When they notice me approaching, the quiet murmuring stops. Every gaze turns toward me. There is no anger in their expressions now. Only fear.
The silence does not last long. At first the villagers say nothing, watching me the way people watch something dangerous that has not yet decided whether to strike again. Their fear hangs heavy in the air, thick as the smoke drifting through the ruins.
Then the whispering begins. Not loudly. Not openly. Just quiet murmurs that carry easily across the shattered square in the fragile stillness of morning.
“I told you it was witchcraft,” someone mutters hoarsely.
Another voice answers, low and shaken. “That wasn’t witchcraft. You saw the demon.”
“I saw the fire.”
“That thing came out of the sky.”
My stomach tightens as their words drift toward me through the ash-filled air.
A man standing near the broken well rubs his face with trembling hands.
“My brother’s house is gone,” he says quietly. “It burned in minutes. There wasn’t even time to get the animals out.”
A woman beside him shakes her head slowly, her eyes fixed on me.
“It followed her,” she whispers.
“It started when she came here,” another voice adds. “First the fires. Then the demon. Then… this.”
A child’s frightened voice cuts through the murmuring.
“Is she going to burn us again?”
The question silences the group instantly. The mother pulls the boy closer to her side, her gaze flicking nervously toward me before she lowers her voice.
“Don’t look at her,” she murmurs.
But the boy is already staring. His wide eyes hold the kind of frightened curiosity children reserve for things they do not yet understand but know they should fear.
A few of the villagers shift uneasily as I pass. Some step backward. Others lower their gaze entirely, unwilling to meet my eyes.
The quiet rejection settles over me like another layer of ash. I expect the tears to come. They do not.
Somewhere between the first roof collapsing and the moment the village square turned into a storm of fire and screaming voices, something inside me seems to have burned away along with the rest of Briarthorn.
The grief is still there, heavy and suffocating in my chest, but it feels distant now, like a wound so deep the nerves around it have stopped responding.
My eyes sting from smoke and sleeplessness, yet no tears fall.
I think of the people who lost everything last night, of the homes that once stood along these streets, of the children who used to run laughing between the market stalls while their parents shouted half-hearted warnings from the doorways.
I should be crying. I should be falling apart beneath the weight of what happened here. Instead there is only a hollow quiet spreading slowly through my chest. The kind of quiet that follows after a storm destroys everything in its path.
I walk through the ruins as though my body has forgotten how to feel anything else, the ash crunching beneath my boots while the reality of what I have done settles deeper with every step.
Somewhere inside me the guilt is screaming. But the rest of me has gone completely numb.
I recognize nearly every face among them. I had once been part of this place. Now I move through it like a ghost haunting its ruins.
A man near the edge of the group mutters something under his breath that carries farther than he intended.
“She brought the demon.”
Another voice answers quickly.
“No. The demon brought her.”
The difference hardly matters. My heart squeezes painfully as the murmurs ripple through the survivors like restless wind.
Somewhere behind me someone whispers a quiet prayer. Not for the dead. For protection. From me.
And as the words settle into the smoke-filled air, I realize with sickening clarity that the village no longer sees the healer who once walked these streets with baskets of herbs.
They see the thing that burned their world to the ground. A woman I once helped deliver her first child stares at me with trembling hands clutched around the shoulders of her daughter. A man whose broken leg I set two winters ago watches me as though I might ignite again at any moment.
No one approaches. The distance between us feels wider than the entire marsh. I lower my gaze and continue walking.
Ash swirls softly around my boots with each step as I cross what remains of the square, unable to meet the terrified stares lingering on my back.
Then I see him. Ravik Keld sits on a fallen beam near the edge of the ruins where his farm road once began.
His clothes are stained with soot and his shoulders sag beneath the weight of exhaustion that seems to have hollowed him out completely.
The fury that once twisted his face has vanished entirely.
He looks… broken.
His gaze lifts slowly to meet mine. I brace myself for hatred. Instead I find something worse. He is terrified of me. Not the wild panic of last night. A quieter kind. The kind people reserve for monsters.
I want to tell him I am sorry. The words rise in my throat but refuse to leave my mouth.
Because what apology could possibly exist for something like this?
My legs suddenly feel too weak to hold me upright.
The guilt presses down on my chest like a physical weight, threatening to drag me to my knees in the middle of the ruined square.
My vision blurs slightly as I struggle to breathe past the crushing realization that every burned beam and shattered roof surrounding us traces back to the same terrible truth.
I did this.
The thought loops through my mind again and again until the world begins to tilt around its edges.
Then movement breaks through the fog of my thoughts. Threxian steps forward beside me.
I had almost forgotten he was there, his presence so unwavering through the lifeline that it feels like part of my own heartbeat now.
The hell power that once blazed through him during the firestorm has quieted into something controlled and watchful, his wings folded loosely behind his back as the villagers shrink away from his towering form.
But he does not look at them. His attention remains fixed on me.
Slowly, deliberately, he lowers himself to one knee in the ash before me. The motion is so unexpected that for a moment I forget how to breathe.
A demon.
A wrath demon.
Kneeling.
His gilding eyes lift to meet mine.