A Memory of Ashes

A Memory of Ashes

The wind blew through the skeletal remains of the old village, lifting ash into the gray sky like ghosts reluctant to leave. The ruins of stone houses still stood, stubborn against time, though blackened by flame and fractured by neglect. Smoke had long since vanished, but the smell of scorched earth lingered—a cruel perfume of the past.

Lira stepped cautiously over a crumbled threshold, boots crunching broken pottery and charcoal underfoot. Her gloved hand touched the scorched wall of what once was her family's home. She didn't need a map. Every burned stone, every shadow of a memory etched into the earth guided her with painful precision.

It had been twelve years.

Twelve years since the empire’s fire-bearers came.

Twelve years since the sky cracked open with flame, and her world—her mother, her brother, the laughter of market days—was reduced to soot and silence.

Lira had been just a child, hidden beneath a trapdoor in the grain cellar. The fire didn’t reach her. But it reached everything else.

The empire had called it “cleansing.” She called it murder.

She knelt beside the remnants of the hearth and drew from her satchel a small clay urn, wrapped in faded linen. Her fingers hesitated, trembling despite the years. Then, slowly, she unwound the fabric.

Inside was ash.

Not the ash of this village. Not the random remains of wood and stone and sorrow. No, this was sacred. The last remnants of her father, whose body had never been found but whose ring was delivered to her wrapped in soot-soaked cloth by a dying soldier who muttered only one word—“sorry”—before expiring at her feet.

She placed the urn in the ashes of the hearth and whispered, “I brought you home.”

The silence around her deepened, and the wind paused, as if listening.

“I couldn’t bury you before,” she said. “There was nothing left but what I carried.”

She took a breath and let it out slowly, letting her rage and grief unravel like smoke through her throat. “But I remember.”

From outside came the crack of a twig. Her hand flew to the hilt of the dagger strapped to her thigh.

Footsteps.

Soft, deliberate.

Not empire.

Too quiet.

Lira stood, her back to the hearth, and waited.

A figure emerged from behind the charred doorway—a man, cloaked in ash-gray robes, a staff in hand, and eyes as silver as moonlit steel.

“You’ve come far,” he said, voice rough as wind over gravel.

She didn’t lower her weapon. “Who are you?”

“Someone who remembers.”

“Do you?” she spat. “Do you remember the screams? The fire raining down from the sky? The smell of flesh and wood burning together?”

“I remember what they took. And who they feared.”

That gave her pause. “Feared?”

“The empire doesn’t destroy at random. They burn what they cannot control.”

He stepped closer, slow enough to show he meant no harm, but not so slow as to appear weak.

“They burned this place because your father refused to give them the Ember Codex.”

Lira’s heart thudded. She had heard of the Codex—an ancient book said to contain the secrets of fire itself, of creation and destruction. Her father had been a scholar, yes, but a wielder of such power?

“They feared what he taught,” the man continued. “That fire is not only a weapon. It is memory. It is life. It can be controlled by those who understand.”

Her fingers tightened around her dagger. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because you’re the last.”

His words fell like stones.

“The blood of your father runs in your veins,” he said. “And with it, the last memory of ashes.”

She looked past him, toward the empty path leading away from the ruins. She could go. She had lived a dozen years without answers, without this truth. She could bury the urn, walk away, and let the past rot in peace.

But then she saw the small cracked mirror still half-buried in the corner—the one her mother used to comb her hair. And the melted buckle that had belonged to her brother. Ghosts, silent and watching.

“No,” she said softly. “I’m not the last. We are the memory.”

The man nodded.

Lira turned back to the hearth. She scattered the ashes gently into the stones, a whisper of goodbye on her lips. Then, from her satchel, she drew a parchment—weathered, ink-faded but intact. Her father’s journal, rescued from a hidden compartment in the old floorboards years ago.

She handed it to the stranger. “Then teach me.”

His eyes gleamed with something dangerous and beautiful—hope.

Together, they left the ruins, firelight glowing not in destruction this time, but in rebirth.

Behind them, the wind lifted the last of the ashes into the air, not to forget, but to carry forward.

A memory of ashes.