The flames crackled on the wood, sending coils of smoke twisting into the night air. Ash sat with his knees drawn to his chest, the scorched rabbit untouched at his side. Across from him, the elf assassin licked the last bits of meat from her fingers with a feral sort of grace. Her eyes, pale as frost under moonlight, held no warmth.
He swallowed, breaking the silence. "You were saying something about how humans broke the peace in the world."
"So, what about it?" She replied coldly.
Ash raised his voice. "Why won't you tell me anything?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she leaned back against the tree trunk behind her and closed her eyes, as though his question were a passing breeze.
Ash's fingers tightened around his knees. "You said something about gods… about dragons. About the balance of the world."
"I did." Her eyes slid open, hard now. "And I won't say more."
"Why not?" He asked, his voice low and heavy.
She snorted, low and dry. "Because I don't share sacred truths with strangers. Especially not humans."
The words stung more than he expected.
Ash lowered his head. "So that's it? You think I don't deserve to know, because I'm human."
She didn't respond, but he caught a flicker in her gaze—a small, grim sort of bitterness.
"Then why did you save me? I'm a nobody right."
She looked at him for a long moment, as if weighing the truth behind his voice. Then she shifted her weight and turned away, beginning to loosen the belt from her waist.
"Why do you worship a god of the moon?" Ash asked, changing the subject.
That question, at least, paused her hand.
He thought she might ignore him again, but after a beat, she muttered, "Because the moon watches the forgotten."
Ash blinked. "What does that mean?"
She turned her head slightly, so her long white braid swayed like a rope of silk. "We moonstruck are descended from the pale goddess who watches when the sun turns its back. She grants us clarity when all else is shadow." She shrugged. "It is… the essence of what we are."
"Moonstruck…" Ash echoed. "Is that what your people are called?"
"We were." She hesitated. "Long ago."
That final phrase sat heavy in the air. Long ago— like a world Ash had never known.
He looked at her hands, slender and calloused from blades, resting on her thighs. He remembered something odd about them, and now it nagged at him. "You only have four fingers," he said quietly. "I saw that earlier. Is that normal?"
She nodded, unsurprised by the observation. "Every magical creature is born with four."
"But… why?" He asked, confusion written over his face.
"It is how we were shaped. Magic leaves its mark." She flexed her fingers slightly, like she was remembering something she had forgotten. "Only humans and a few Fae abominations bear five."
Ash frowned. "So that means…"
"That you were born outside the balance," she said, and the words cut deeper than any blade. "You could say that's one reason why humans fall outside the grand scope of things."
He didn't speak after that.
The silence between them lengthened, filled only by the hiss of the dying fire and the rustle of wind through skeletal trees. She stood, tugged her cloak tighter around her, and without another word, climbed swiftly up the trunk of a nearby tree, vanishing into its upper shadows.
Ash stared up after her. "You're really going to sleep up there?"
A faint voice drifted down. "Better than the dirt."
Ash looked at the cold ground beneath him, still caked with old ash and blood. His back ached just imagining lying on it. "What about me?"
There was a long pause.
Then she spoke, "There's always the fire."
The reply felt like a dismissal and a challenge at once.
Ash turned toward the flame. It had shrunk to a dull glow, but it was still warm— still alive. Unlike his village. Unlike Tomas.
He wrapped his arms tighter around himself and lay on his side, close to the embers. The heat licked at his face, and he let it.
As his eyes drifted shut, memories surged, Tomas grinning with soot on his nose, Orric muttering as he fixed the broken roof of the houses, the scent of pinewood and stew and old forge smoke— gone, all of it.
He pressed his palm to his chest where the ember had burned that strange dream into him the night before. Was it really there? The last flame?
He didn't feel like an heir to anything. Just a lost, village boy, sleeping in the wild in the presence of someone who if she wanted him dead, could do it in the blink of an eye.
But the ember hadn't lied. The memory of its heat still pulsed faintly, just beneath the skin. Like a secret heartbeat.
They say fire brings comfort. But tonight, all it did was remind him of what had been burned away.
His breath slowed. He could hear the fire crackling. The leaves swaying in the cold nights air. The silence of a broken world.
Then, slowly, mercifully—
Sleep took him.
Up in the trees the elf lay back her sights on him. Her fingers traced her dagger's curve, not out of intent, but habit— the instinct of a blade bred for purpose. Yet now it's purpose wavered.
Through the night she did not sleep, all she could do was breath. Her mind lost in thought.
She opened her mouth and spoke in whispers, "Solspire is still a long way away, I pray to you Selunara mother of the moon and eternal calm give me strength. Give him strength, because he'll need it."