Our Names in the Ashes

The wind blew soft over the charred remains of the village. Smoke still curled like the fingers of the dead, grasping at the sky in silent mourning. Beneath the scorched earth, the bones of yesterday whispered names long forgotten, names now written only in the ashes.

Mira stood at the edge of what used to be her home, her bare feet blackened with soot. The world she knew had vanished overnight, taken not by nature’s wrath, but by the hands of men who burned for conquest. The Northern Army had come like a storm, banners flapping like broken wings, their torches lighting the night with cruel celebration.

She had escaped only because her brother, Kael, had hidden her beneath the floorboards of the old mill. He had kissed her forehead and whispered, “If I don’t come back, remember who we were.” She had waited for hours, covering her ears against the screams outside, the sound of blades, the thunder of horses. But Kael never returned.

Now she walked the ruins in silence, a ghost among ghosts.

The temple bell, blackened and bent, still hung from the fallen arch. She reached out and touched it. Cold. Like everything else now. Mira remembered the way the town used to gather here during festivals—lanterns in hand, children laughing, elders telling stories by firelight. Her mother had taught her the songs of their ancestors beneath that bell, her voice soft and strong. She could still hear it sometimes in her dreams.

But dreams were dangerous now. They made the loss sharper.

She wandered past the market square where merchants once shouted and bartered, past the well where her best friend Liora used to draw water every morning. Nothing remained but ash, wood splinters, and melted iron. Every step stirred up memories like embers.

She found Kael’s satchel near the edge of the woods, singed but intact. Inside, a single piece of parchment remained dry: a drawing she had made of their family, smiling beneath the sun. Kael had kept it all this time. She pressed it to her chest, letting the tears fall freely now. Her grief no longer had a reason to hide.

But amid the ashes, a thought sparked.

Mira made her way to the old scribe’s house, miraculously spared the worst of the flames. The ink bottles had exploded from the heat, their contents staining the walls in wild, angry strokes. But the main ledger—the book where the village’s births, marriages, and deaths were recorded—remained sealed beneath a charred slab of wood.

She pulled it free, coughing against the smoke. She turned its pages carefully, eyes scanning for names she knew—her parents, Liora, the baker’s son, the old healer. All there. Their lives reduced to ink and paper.

And then she did something she didn’t fully understand until years later.

She picked up a piece of coal from the hearth, still warm, and turned to the last page. Beneath the final official entry, in a child’s shaky script, she began to write:

Mira of Harthaven, daughter of Elen and Joran. Sister to Kael. Alive.

Then:

Kael of Harthaven, son of Elen and Joran. Brave. Lost in the flames.

She wrote every name she could remember. Those who were gone. Those who might still be wandering, like her. She filled the page, then the next, and the next—each name written in dark, smudged coal, a fragile act of rebellion against oblivion.

As night fell, Mira lit a small fire in the remains of the square. She placed the book beside it, not to burn, but to protect it. She built a crude shelter and stayed there for days, then weeks. Other survivors came, drawn by the smoke or the hope of familiar voices. They found her there, with her coal-stained hands and haunted eyes, guarding the book.

Together, they began again. They cleared rubble, rebuilt roofs, planted seeds. Slowly, painfully, the village breathed once more.

Years later, when Mira was old and the town was thriving again, a traveler asked about the worn book displayed in the new temple.

She smiled, touching its cover.

“That,” she said, “is how we remembered. That is how we kept our names from being lost. In the ashes, we wrote ourselves back into the world.”