The night had settled heavy upon the city, draping its ruins in veils of smoke and shadow. Elira moved cautiously through the cathedral's broken doorway, her pendant still glowing faintly against her chest. Behind her, the crimson flame upon the altar continued to burn, unwavering, like an eye that refused to close. She glanced back once, feeling its gaze upon her even as distance stretched between them.
Outside, the silence of the streets pressed in. No voices of memory stirred this time, no echoes of laughter or sorrow. Only the hollow sigh of the wind moved through the avenues, tugging at torn banners and scattering brittle leaves across the stone. The bells had ceased, leaving her alone with the sound of her own footsteps.
Yet solitude did not mean safety. Elira could feel it—the city was watching.
She turned down an alley where the walls leaned close together, their stones blackened by flame. Her cloak brushed against them as she passed. At the far end, the alley opened onto a courtyard. In its center stood a tree, its trunk cracked and hollow, its branches twisted into claws. Once, it must have been beautiful, for she could see carvings etched into its bark—spirals, runes, names perhaps. Now, though, it stood as a corpse, lifeless but not forgotten.
She approached it slowly. The pendant grew warm again, faintly at first, then stronger as she reached the tree's roots. There, half-buried in ash, something glimmered. She knelt, brushing the soot away with careful fingers, until she uncovered a shard of glass. Its surface shimmered with inner light, though no flame touched it.
The moment her skin met the shard, the world quivered.
The courtyard filled with light, not fire this time but silver, cold and pure. The tree stood tall and whole, its branches alive with blossoms that glowed faintly like stars. People gathered beneath it, their hands pressed to its trunk in reverence. She could hear their voices—low, melodic chants rising together in harmony. The air itself vibrated with their song.
A figure stepped forward from the gathering. Cloaked in white, their face hidden beneath a hood, they reached out to touch the blossoms. Their voice, when it came, was soft yet carried across the courtyard with undeniable strength:
"Guardians of ember and root. Witness, for the veil thins. The fire remembers. The ash remembers. We must remember."
Elira's breath caught. The words struck her like a chord long silent. She wanted to move closer, to see the figure's face, but the vision trembled. The blossoms fell as embers, the chants broke into whispers, and the silver light guttered out. The courtyard was ruin again, the tree hollow and dead. Only the shard of glass remained in her hand, faintly aglow.
She held it tightly, feeling its pulse match her pendant's.
Then came the sound.
It was faint, almost imagined at first: a scraping, like stone against stone. Elira froze, listening. It came again, louder this time, from the shadows at the edge of the courtyard. She rose to her feet, her heart pounding. The glow of her pendant flickered, warning her.
From the darkness emerged a shape. Its form was human, and yet not. It moved with jerking, broken motions, as though its limbs were bound by unseen strings. Its body was cloaked in soot, its face obscured. Where eyes should have been, two faint embers burned.
Elira stepped back, clutching both pendant and shard. The thing tilted its head, the embers of its gaze fixing upon her. It made no sound, yet the air around it grew heavy, pressing down on her chest.
She whispered, almost to herself, "What are you?"
The figure twitched, then took a staggering step forward. The embers in its eyes flared.
Without thought, Elira raised the shard. Light burst from it, silver and fierce, slicing through the shadows. The figure shrieked—a sound like breaking glass and burning wood—and staggered back. For an instant its form wavered, as though it were smoke clinging desperately to shape. Then, with another burst of light, it scattered, dissolving into ash that swirled and vanished into the wind.
Elira stood trembling, the shard glowing hot in her palm. Slowly, its light dimmed, though it did not fade entirely. She looked down at it, then at her pendant, and knew the truth: the city was not abandoned. Something lingered here, twisted and bound to its ruin.
She slipped the shard into the pouch at her belt and drew her cloak tighter around herself. Her path was clear, though perilous—she had to follow the memories, to gather what fragments remained. Only then might she understand the veil, and why the embers still burned.
Above, the stars flickered faintly through the smoke, like distant watchers.
And Elira walked on, deeper into the ash-laden city, the whispers of the past following in her wake.
The alley twisted again, narrowing until the walls seemed to lean inward, suffocating the path. Elira's footsteps echoed unnaturally, as if the stone itself resented her passage. Her pendant pulsed with a quiet urgency, like a heartbeat seeking to be heard. She paused at a collapsed archway, peering through the gaps.
Beyond, the street opened into a plaza shrouded in mist. Shapes moved just out of clarity—tall and indistinct, as if the fog itself had gathered them from memory. Elira's breath hitched. The shard at her belt tugged insistently, its faint glow guiding her forward.
A sound carried over the mist: the soft, hollow ringing of metal. It grew, rhythmic, like footsteps—but not her own. She froze, straining to place it, and the fog shifted. From its depths, a figure emerged, taller than a man, draped in tatters of blackened cloth. Its head tilted unnaturally, a mask of cracked silver hiding what should have been a face.
"You walk where the dead linger," it said, voice low and metallic, each word vibrating in her chest. "Why do you disturb what has been forgotten?"
Elira gripped the shard. "I… I seek answers," she said. Her voice sounded small against the heavy silence, but the figure cocked its head, listening, patient and unyielding.
"You seek… truth," it murmured. "But truth is not given. It is carved from the fire of memory—and ash does not forgive."
The mist swirled, coalescing around the figure, and Elira felt a pull, a tug at her mind. Flickers of visions flashed behind her eyelids: a city once alive, streets lined with laughter, markets humming with life, a child dropping a toy, a woman calling her name. Then the smoke, the fire, the screams—all swallowed by shadow.
The figure stretched out a hand, long and skeletal, toward the shard at her belt. "The fragments… they call to you. Do you hear them? Do you understand what they demand?"
Elira swallowed hard. The shard pulsed in response to the figure's motion, a silver thread weaving between them. She took a step back. "I—I will follow them," she said, voice trembling. "I will remember."
For a heartbeat, the figure was still. Then it inclined its head and slowly retreated into the mist. Its words, almost lost to the wind, lingered in her ears: "Remember, or the embers will consume you…"
The plaza fell silent. Only the faint glow of the shard marked her path, illuminating the ruins with a soft, unwavering light. The pendant at her chest flared once more, a signal, a pulse of life amid the dead.
Elira moved forward, the air thick with unspoken warnings. Somewhere deeper in the city, she knew, the next fragment waited, humming with memory and fire. And as she walked, the shadows shifted at the edges of her vision, whispering her name, coaxing her ever onward.
The night was no longer empty. It was listening.