The ruins of St. Brigid's smoldered for three days and three nights. Smoke curled upward like incense to a god long forgotten, while the city whispered of witchcraft and blasphemy. Some claimed lightning had struck. Others swore the Devil himself had walked through the nave. Yet all avoided the blackened stones, as though the fire had left behind something unholy.
Esther, however, could not stay away.
On the fourth night, cloaked in shadow, she returned to the wreckage. Horace padded silently at her side, his paws unsoiled by soot, while Morrigan circled above, her cry sharp against the moon's pallid glow.
The cathedral lay in ruin. The great spire had fallen, its bones scattered across the nave. Stained glass lay shattered, saints reduced to fragments of color glimmering in the ash. The air still stank of smoke, yet beneath it lingered another scent—iron, sharp as blood.
Esther's amulet throbbed against her skin as though urging her onward. She stepped carefully over charred beams, the ashes crunching beneath her boots. The silence was heavy, oppressive. Yet in it, she felt a pulse. A voice waiting to be heard.
She knelt at the altar's remains, where stone had split and blackened. Laying her hands upon it, she whispered words of opening—old words, the tongue of her foremothers.
The ground trembled faintly.
And then the whispers began.
They did not come from the air, nor from the stones, but from the ashes themselves. Countless voices, murmuring as one, rising like smoke around her ears.
"Esther Harrow… daughter of covenant… child of shadow and flame…"
Her breath caught, yet she did not flinch. "What do you ask of me?"
The voices swelled, overlapping, too many to discern until one rose clear, sharp as a blade:
"The fire you set has broken their circle. But the Watchers are not undone. They gather, they bind, they prepare for the offering."
Esther's blood ran cold. "Offering?"
"Blood for blood. Flame for flame. They will take what you will not give."
The ashes shifted, curling upward, forming the shape of an eye that burned red against the night. Horace arched and hissed, Morrigan shrieked and beat her wings, scattering the ash. But the voice pressed on.
"You must descend, Esther Harrow. Beneath the city, where stone remembers and roots drink deep. There lies the truth of your line… and the weapon that may yet save it."
The ashes fell silent, the glow fading. Only the ruin remained, lifeless once more.
Esther rose, her hands black with soot. Her heart thundered, but clarity sharpened her resolve. Beneath the city—the catacombs, the tunnels whispered of in drunken taverns, where bones lay stacked like books upon shelves.
The Watchers would hunt her, yes. But the ashes had spoken. Her path was downward, into the underbelly of the city, where truth and terror slept side by side.
She drew her hood tight and turned away, the last embers of the cathedral crackling faintly behind her.
The ashes had spoken. And she would obey.