Ashes on the Wind

The inn sat at the edge of a nowhere town, its windows fogged from the heat of stew pots and the chill of mountain air. The Hunter stepped inside, shaking dust from her coat. Her boots ached louder than her bones tonight.

There was no fireplace, just a stove fed by coal and bark chips, casting long shadows across warped floorboards. She didn’t care. She had walked for four days and two nights since her last mark. The world beyond was smoke and ruin, and she didn’t come here for warmth or kindness. She came for silence. Or maybe the kind of noise that numbs silence — music, ale, footsteps, clinking steel.

She sat at the bar and gave a nod. The barkeep, used to strangers, slid her a mug without words. The ale tasted like copper and burnt wheat.

In the far corner, a boy played a quiet tune on a battered string-fiddle. A soldier nursed a broken arm by the wall. A pair of lovers laughed too loudly near the back, still young enough to believe they were immortal.

Then, from her left: “You walk like you’re carrying a grave.”

She didn’t look. “And you talk like you’re trying to get punched.”

He chuckled. “Easy, Hunter. I meant no harm.”

That word — Hunter — caught more attention than she liked. She glanced sideways. Middle-aged, nondescript. Clothes made for travel. Not a threat. Yet.

“Then drink your drink,” she muttered, “and let me mourn in peace.”

“Mourning who?” he asked, too casually.

She turned to face him fully, eyes like flint. “You have the look of a man who knows already.”

The man offered a slow nod. “I was at Ember Ridge.”

Her heart cracked. That name hadn’t been spoken aloud in over a year. Not since the outpost burned to ash — not since the flames swallowed the last of the Old Guard.

“You knew Marcus?” she asked, voice dry.

“I did,” he said. “He died saving a group of scouts. Dragged two of them from the blaze before he went back for a third.”

She clenched the rim of her mug. “And he didn’t come out again.”

“No. But I saw him smile before the roof fell in.”

It took everything not to let her face crumble. Marcus had smiled like that — recklessly, like a promise. Her husband. Her friend. The one man who had believed in redemption even after seeing the worst of the world.

“Why tell me now?” she asked.

“Because you’re the one walking across the borderlands killing every last person who flew the Scorched Flag,” he said softly. “They say you slit the throat of the Black mouth Captain with his own blade. That you leave coins for the children of the mercenaries — but none for the mercenaries themselves.”

“I’m making the world quieter,” she said. “Less people to scream.”

He nodded. “But even a Hunter needs to know when she’s done.”

“I’ll be done,” she said, “when his name stops echoing in every ruin I pass.”

They sat in silence. The boy’s fiddle stopped. The soldier had left. The lovers were gone. Only them, and the barkeep, and the sound of wind scraping shingles outside.

The man stood. “You’re not the only one who lost him.”

She looked up sharply.

He pulled something from his pocket — a worn token with an insignia carved in brass: a wolf’s head ringed in fire.

“Marcus gave this to me when he made me promise to find you if he didn’t make it.”

She reached out with shaking fingers. The metal was cold, but it stung like heat.

“He told me to tell you one thing,” the man said, then leaned closer.

And whispered:

> “Live. Not for revenge. But for the world we dreamed of.”

She closed her hand around the token like it was her last breath.

He was gone before she opened her eyes.