Chapter 24 – Ashes of Morning
Psalm 97 : 3 (NIV)
"Fire goes before Him and consumes His foes on every side."
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The noon sun was high, but the village square felt hollow. Light lingered thick and yellow over the stone well where the villagers gathered to draw water. A faint, bitter smoke still drifted in the air—not the pleasant scent of cooking fires, but something sharp and burnt. The very stones of the ancient altar, where the terrible thing had happened, were cracked. They no longer roared; they only held a ghostly, weak glow, like coals almost dead. It was the quiet that comes after a great storm, a peace that feels less like safety and more like shock. No one knew if the chaos was truly over or simply gathering its breath to strike again.
Slowly the people of Mahogany Village gathered. They moved like sleepwalkers, drawn to the center of their home by a deep, shared need. Some whispered prayers into their sleeves, their voices trembling like dry leaves. Others simply wept—silent tears mixing with dust on their cheeks.
Elena stood near the well, a still point amid the confusion. She wasn't weeping. The Canticle lay open in her palm, its worn leather cool against her skin. Her eyes followed the holy lines, yet her thoughts were fixed on the man lying near the altar.
Teuwa lay a few paces away. His robes were burned and clinging, his breath shallow but steady. The staff he had once lifted to call false fire lay splintered in two beside him—broken like a bone.
Regbolo moved through the crowd with quiet purpose. He and Ye guided the villagers to sit, keeping the young away from the ruins. They brought cups of cool water to parched lips. Everyone understood now what the elders had once meant when they said miracles could wound as much as they healed. They had seen the fire of true light, fierce and blinding. Now they had to learn how faith might breathe again after it had burned so bright.
The altar remained the terrible heart of the square. Its carvings pulsed faintly—thin lines of light creeping like veins, trying to drink life from the ground. Elena had told them the fire would consume what was false, and the altar bore that truth. Those glowing veins were marks of the Veil, the dark craft that had tried to steal their sight.
She raised a hand toward the altar, stopping a young man who reached out to touch the light.
"Stay back," she warned. Her voice, though tired, carried clear. "Do not go closer. Look at what remains."
The villagers stilled.
"These symbols," she said, pointing to the faint glow, "are lies carved in stone. They are traps for your eyes. They want you to think they still hold power—that they are sacred."
She reminded them of Margaret, the woman lost to witchfire. "Do you remember her ashes? The flame that mimicked warmth? It looked like comfort, and it led only to ruin and death. These glowing lines are the same deceit. They are cold. They do not save."
Elena lifted the Canticle higher, sunlight gilding its edges. She did not preach; she spoke simply, as one who names truth to cleanse a wound.
> "Every lie shall meet its maker."
The air tightened with her words. Then the runes dimmed, flickered, and died. The altar was only stone again—cracked, lifeless, harmless. The people let out a long, slow breath they hadn't known they were holding.
A low sound broke the silence. Teuwa stirred. He groaned, eyes fluttering open to the crowd staring down. He tried to lift the broken staff, his voice a dry rasp.
That single movement shattered the fragile calm.
"He brought the darkness!" someone cried.
"The fire should have taken him!"another shouted.
"Let him pay for our fear!"
The crowd began to move forward, their fear turning into a terrible, hungry need for justice, a demand for punishment that would clean the slate.
Elena stepped between them and the fallen man. Small, yet unyielding, she became the barrier.
"Stop!" she commanded. Her voice did not shout, but it was like the ringing of a single, powerful bell. The crowd halted, their anger stopped cold by the memory of the night's great terror and the one who had brought the true fire.
"Vengeance is the devil's reward," she said, meeting their eyes. "The flame spared him. Do not think your hands can burn purer than the fire of the Lord."
A woman near the front sobbed. "But he lied to us, Elena! He tried to burn you! He brought the witches to our home!"
"Yes," Elena said softly. "He did all that. But he is a man, not a stone. The Light chose to leave breath in him. If the Light has left breath, it is not ours to take."
She turned to Regbolo and Ye. "Take him to his hut. Give him water and rest. He is not to be harmed. Let him live to see what truth might still survive in his heart."
The murmurs were uneasy. They had wanted a clean ending, not mercy.
Micah stepped forward, voice worn but steady. "Elena is right. Even the flame spares what truth may yet redeem . If the Lord wished him dead, he would be ash right now. We show mercy not for his sake, but to prove we are not what he was—full of hatred."
Heavy silence followed. Then Regbolo and two others lifted Teuwa carefully and carried him toward the edge of the square. The crowd watched, their anger draining into sober quiet. They wanted vengeance; they received a lesson instead.
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Far away, deep beneath the Roots of Vareth—a labyrinth of caverns under the northern forest where the Veil once burned strongest—the surviving witches reeled. The backlash from the broken ritual had struck them like a lash of fire. They had tried to draw the village's life, and when true flame answered, the power had turned back upon them. It burned through their veins like ice.
Mirror shards littered the ritual floor, glittering like fallen stars. Their bone altar glowed with hairline cracks, each pulse threatening to shatter it. The air reeked of sulfur and despair.
Ashley, the handmaiden once reborn through shadow, knelt beside Margaret's urn. Her arms trembled from pain, the skin blistered with the sting of divine fire. She looked down into the gray dust. In the bone-white glow of the altar, she saw something impossible—faint gold threads woven through the ash.
The Matron's voice came not from her body but through the altar itself. The stone mouth moved with a dry hiss, carrying the sound across the chamber.
"Silence your whining," the Matron thundered. "He failed. The vessel was weak. But the Fire remembers—so will we. The light cannot win while one shadow breathes."
Ashley flinched. The words scraped across her mind like iron. Yet the gold threads shimmered again, soft and stubborn. For a heartbeat she felt warmth—real warmth—rising from the ashes. The memory of what Margaret had been before corruption. The first seed of doubt pierced her.
She dared to whisper within: What if the Matron is wrong?
Her burned hands hovered above the urn, trembling between obedience and awakening.
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Back in Mahogany, the clouds finally broke. Noon light poured clean and heavy through the clearing, striking the well until it gleamed like new silver. The heat was honest now.
The villagers, still weary, knelt—not in fear, but in relief. They weren't begging for rescue; they were offering thanks for what had already come.
Elena closed the Canticle. The sound of its cover shutting seemed to echo through the air, final and full. Holding it to her chest, she looked over the faces of her people—tired, soot-streaked, alive.
"Today," she said quietly, "we walk through flame and are not consumed. The enemy used fire to frighten us; our God used fire to cleanse us. We are bruised, but not broken. We have seen both darkness and light."
Ye nodded from beside the well. He crossed to the small wooden bell tower, took the rope in both hands, and pulled.
The bell rang once—clear, bright, sure. Not a call to prayer, but to rebuilding.
At the sound, people stirred. Buckets of water were fetched, the soot scrubbed from stone, the square slowly returned to life.
Regbolo stood near Teuwa's hut, keeping quiet watch. His brow was heavy with thought. He knew that mercy given must be guarded; repentance, if it came, would come slowly.
From the mountain's crest to the west, faint tendrils of dark smoke drifted back into the forest. The witches still breathed. Their power was wounded, not gone.
But over Mahogany the light held steady. After the long night and the trembling morning, the village of Astra finally inhaled—a deep, fragile breath that smelled of pine, dust, and hope.
The work ahead would be hard: the work of healing, of rebuilding, of living with the mercy they had not wanted but had been given first.