Dawn was nothing but a wound in the sky.
Among the folds of the mist, the earth breathed ash and dust.
Kael Dren wandered aimlessly across the dead southern plains, where the trees looked like charred sculptures.
The child slept wrapped in a gray cloak — a fragile body held by a man who had long forgotten the meaning of hope.
The wind whispered like a voice that refused to die.
With every step, Kael felt the weight of silence — a heavy, ancient silence, woven from questions without answers.
It had been three days since he fled the burning temple.
Three days without water, without words, without faith.
Even in sleep, the child breathed a faint glow that drove away scavengers. His skin seemed to absorb the darkness, as if the world itself rejected or feared him.
Kael did not know whether it was a gift or a curse.
At sunset, he saw an abandoned camp: blackened tents, bone-made crosses, remnants of fire and prayers carved in stone. He recognized the symbols — the seal of the Order of the Pure Flame.
His former brothers.
His stomach twisted.
He had shared wine with them, prayed with them.
And killed with them.
Now they hunted him like a demon.
And perhaps he was one.
He laid the child on the ground, wrapped in a blanket, and began to search the ruins. Among the debris he found bodies turned to dust, their faces barely recognizable. One of them still wore the pendant of the Order — a bronze flame.
Kael knelt.
For an instant, he remembered the fervor that had once consumed him: the desire to purify the world, to serve the gods, to save the human soul.
All lies.
All fire misdirected.
The air shifted.
A whisper.
A crack.
Something moved in the fog.
Kael drew his sword, the blade wrapped in black bandages that pulsed with a life of their own.
Then he saw them — figures sliding out of the shadows, covered in ash and wearing masks made from the tanned skin of the dead.
The Ash Men.
They were the remnants of the Pure Flame: fanatics who had inhaled the smoke of their burned temples, turned into voiceless creatures. They breathed through cracks in their flesh, and dust spilled from their mouths each time they tried to speak.
Kael stepped back.
He knew what they were — inquisitors like him, consumed by their own devotion.
One of them stepped forward.
A guttural sound rose from his throat, barely human.
"Dren… traitor…"
The word broke apart, as if the air itself refused to hold it.
Kael tightened his grip.
The child, still asleep, began to tremble.
The tallest of the Ash Men raised his hand. He carried the torch of the Pure Flame — but its fire was black.
When he lifted it to the sky, the wind stopped.
Kael struck first.
His sword sang, slicing lines of shadow from the air. The first man fell, shattering into a thousand fragments of dust that scattered in a silent spasm.
The second lunged with a spear of bone, but Kael turned, cutting his throat. Instead of blood, glowing ash poured out.
The others charged, fearless and soulless.
They were many — but Kael was faster, sharper.
Each blow was a memory of his past; each death, a confession.
When the last one fell, Kael dropped to his knees, gasping.
His hands trembled.
The air was thick with gray dust that had once been human flesh.
The child watched him from the ground, awake, eyes like two moons.
He didn't cry.
He didn't speak.
He only looked, as if judging him.
"They weren't men," Kael said, his voice cracked. "Not anymore."
The child tilted his head.
"Neither are you," he replied.
When night fell, Kael lit a small fire.
The smoke rose straight up, unmoving, as if the air itself feared to breathe it.
The child sat beside him, hands stretched toward the flame.
"Why do you kill, if you hate killing?" he asked.
Kael took a long time to answer.
"Because sometimes, killing is all that's left of us."
"And what will remain when there's no one left to kill?"
"Then… perhaps I'll find peace."
The child looked at him with a sadness far too old for his age.
"Peace is for the dead."
Kael looked away.
He knew it was true.
Before sleeping, the inquisitor cleaned his sword. As he did, he felt the blade tremble, as if it breathed.
Between the bandages seeped a gray light — the same light that emanated from the child.
For the first time, Kael felt fear.
Not of the enemy.
But of himself.
The northern wind returned, carrying the echoes of the voices he had killed.
Among the whispers, he heard an ancient prayer he thought forgotten:
"Those who serve the flame will, in the end, burn."
Kael closed his eyes.
The child was asleep again.
And the world outside kept rotting slowly beneath a sky that had forgotten how to dawn.