Chapter 2: Ash Beneath the Flame
Morning in Alderidge came reluctantly, dragging with it the bitter stench of overcooked broth and soot-streaked skies. Fog still clung to the gutters, but the illusion of peace had returned. Bells rang from the towers of the Church of the Verdant Flame, calling the faithful to morning sermon. The pyres were already lit—great tongues of fire reaching toward a god who never listened.
Adam stepped out of the Iron Latch, his cloak dry now, his boots polished with faint ash. His presence, like always, went unnoticed by the passing crowd. To them, he was no more than a lowborn traveler—perhaps a fallen scholar, or a tradesman between jobs. Someone beneath interest.
That was his strength.
That was why he would win.
He walked with no particular urgency, yet every step led toward purpose. The journal pressed against his ribs beneath his cloak—a heartbeat he trusted more than his own. Its pages carried names, but more than that, they carried weight.
Names were power.
Erase a name, and history stutters.
Speak it, and something wakes.
He stopped at a fountain near the Verdant Square. Cracked lions wept trickles of rusted water into a pool green with moss. A group of pilgrims passed by, whispering prayers in the dialect of the northern hills. One woman touched the water reverently, as if it held Ignaris' blessing.
Adam watched. Not with interest, but calculation.
He'd once seen a god drink from a man's spine. It hadn't looked divine.
---
His destination that morning was a stonework hall set into the base of the old archives, a place known by few as The Hollow Vault. During the Reformation, it had been sealed—claimed heretical by the Church. But all things forbidden are merely hidden. And Adam had already memorized the layout from stolen records weeks ago.
A single servant entrance stood behind a stack of decayed crates. No guards. No holy sigils. Not even a warding rune.
Because the Church didn't believe anyone would dare enter.
Adam did not dare.
He simply did.
He stepped into the passage.
Darkness embraced him like an old friend. The air was thick with dust and disuse. Stone walls groaned with the age of centuries. As he moved deeper, a pressure built—not magical, but psychological, as though the air remembered screams.
That was good.
That meant the place was real.
---
He reached a chamber lined with broken statues and ash-scattered floors. Charred bones rested near the edges—forgotten by time, preserved by silence.
In the center stood a pedestal of black marble.
He approached, cautious.
Upon it lay a single plaque, scorched but legible. Script carved in a dialect older than the Church itself.
He ran his fingers over the etched name:
VALTERON.
He whispered it aloud.
The stone cracked. Just slightly.
Not from magic. From memory.
Valteron—the forgotten Watcher, consort to the Hollow Breath, condemned for teaching mortals the truth of death.
Adam felt nothing. But something old stirred.
He opened his journal and wrote the name beneath the others.
> VALTERON — Keeper of the Forgotten Dead.
As he turned to leave, a noise echoed down the corridor.
Footsteps.
Too light for guards.
Too quick for clergy.
He didn't hide. He simply stood and waited.
A figure entered the hall—a boy, maybe fifteen, with a messenger's satchel and ink-stained hands. Freckled. Thin. Wide-eyed.
He froze at the sight of Adam.
"You're not—you're not supposed to be here."
Adam said nothing.
The boy's hands trembled. "Are you a... thief? A cultist?"
"I'm a librarian," Adam said calmly. "I'm cataloguing forbidden history."
The lie was smooth. Not because it was clever, but because he meant it.
The boy blinked. "But... that's heresy."
"Is it?"
A long pause.
Then, softly, "Can you teach me?"
Adam tilted his head slightly.
"What's your name?"
The boy hesitated. "Tallis. Tallis Grey."
"You'll return here in three days," Adam said. "If you're brave."
Tallis nodded.
Adam vanished into the dark, leaving no footsteps behind.
---
By the next day, whispers had begun to spread among the lowtown scribes.
That a figure in black had been seen near the sealed vault.
That a pageboy had fainted in the archives and muttered a forbidden name before waking.
That something in the flame-church felt… different.
None of them said "Valteron." None dared.
But fear has a smell. It always does.
And Adam had planted it like a seed.
---
At the Iron Latch, he sat across from Nella Crowl, sipping lukewarm broth.
Her son, barely seven, no longer coughed.
She didn't ask how.
She just stared at Adam with wary eyes.
"You didn't charge me for it," she said.
"No."
"Why?"
Adam looked at her. "I don't deal in coin. I deal in balance."
She narrowed her gaze. "What happens when that balance tips?"
Adam said nothing.
Because she wouldn't understand.
And she didn't need to.
---
Later that night, he returned to his room and opened the journal again.
He added one new name.
> Tallis Grey — Potential seed.
And below it, a single line:
> Let them look away. Let them forget. Let them burn.
---
Adam woke well before dawn.
The Iron Latch still slumbered, its common room silent but for the drip of ale-stained rafters. Nella's boy, curled in a cot behind the kitchen, breathed easily. Adam passed him without a glance.
He didn't feel pride in what he'd done—curing the cough. That would imply attachment. He simply ensured the boy lived. There was more to be done with him alive than dead. Even a child could carry a message, plant a fear, spark a chain reaction.
Outside, the city was darker than night should allow. The moon hung sickly above the bell tower. The air had that brittle edge—too quiet, like the world had forgotten how to breathe.
Perfect.
He walked east, away from the cathedral heights and noble terraces, into the industrial ward known as Sinderrow—a place where forges never cooled and soot covered every window like mourning cloth. The people here didn't look up. They worked. They bled. They died. And no god wept for them.
Here, Adam sought a man named Orwin Marn, once a priest of the old flame, now a heretic in exile. According to Remlen's notes, Orwin had survived a purge six years ago by pretending to be dead. He lived now among coal-haulers and chimney boys, scraping parchment with burnt fingers.
Adam found him at the back of a coal shed, surrounded by broken wheels and barrels filled with rusted nails. His robes were tattered, his beard half-burned away. But his eyes were sharp.
They met Adam's gaze and narrowed.
"You're not Church," Orwin rasped.
"No," Adam said. "That's why you'll talk to me."
Orwin laughed—a dry, hollow sound. "Talk to you about what? You come for prophecy? A sermon? Or just to gawk at the fallen?"
"I come for names."
The laughter died.
Adam stepped closer. "Tell me what they tried to burn from your memory. Tell me about the sermons never written down. The gods not worshipped. The names you dare not even whisper in sleep."
Orwin looked past him, into the ashes of a dead fire. "I don't know you."
"No," Adam agreed. "You don't."
He pulled a small scroll from his cloak. Unrolled it. On it were four names—written in the old runes. His penmanship was perfect.
Ignaris. Valteron. The Hollow Breath. Seraphine of the Rootless Flame.
Orwin recoiled.
"I buried those names," he hissed. "The Church took my tongue for speaking them!"
Adam nodded once. "But your tongue grew back. Didn't it?"
Silence.
Orwin trembled. "You think you're a prophet, then? Come to collect my madness like alms?"
Adam leaned in.
"I'm not a prophet," he said. "I'm what comes after them."
---
They spoke for hours in hushed tones, the sun rising unnoticed behind clouds of smoke and soot. Orwin spoke of fire-gods with hollow names, of statues torn down and temples sealed beneath stone. He whispered of the Grave Choir, the sect that had once worshipped the Hollow Breath through silence and sleep—killed off in West Droune when the Verdant Flame rose to dominance.
Adam listened. Memorized. Wrote nothing until he returned to his room.
When he did, he added:
> Orwin Marn – Survived the purge. Knows the Third Tongue. Unstable but useful.
> Grave Choir – Western sect. Rituals linked to dreams and silence. Potential key.
And then, a line beneath it all:
> When the Choir sings again, gods will tremble.
---
That evening, Adam sat once more in the Iron Latch's corner table, quietly eating bread too stale for dogs. Nella watched him from the kitchen, her eye narrowed. Another traveler tried to engage him—an off-duty guardsman from the city watch named Halven, red-faced and already drunk.
"You got the eyes of a killer," Halven slurred, pointing. "Or a priest. Either way, I don't like it."
Adam didn't look up.
"Oi," Halven barked. "You deaf, too? I asked you a question, outsider."
Adam raised his gaze.
The red-black eyes met Halven's—and in that moment, something cold passed between them. The kind of chill that makes drunk men suddenly remember their mortality.
Halven stepped back.
"Sod it," he muttered. "Creep."
He left.
Nella approached a few minutes later and refilled Adam's cup with hot water. "You didn't blink," she said. "Most men do when Halven gets mouthy."
Adam said nothing.
Nella leaned in. "You ever kill a man?"
Adam glanced at her.
Then calmly: "Yes."
She stiffened.
And walked away.
---
That night, as the rain returned to Alderidge, Adam stood at his window and watched the street below. A funeral procession passed—priests of Ignaris carrying torches, chanting songs of rebirth. The dead man on the litter was wrapped in white, his hands charred from some holy punishment.
They said Ignaris purged sin through fire.
Adam had watched whole villages burn for less than a whispered doubt.
He hated gods.
Not because they were powerful.
But because they were petty.
Because they thought power was right.