The Witness of Ashes

The riverbed was a scar of cracked mud and bleached stones, and you moved along it with your back to the smoke. The charred banner was a dead weight against your ribs, wrapped tight under your tunic, and the survivor's words—they burned the granary with the families inside—were a raw edge in your throat you couldn't swallow. Dust clung to your boots. The thorn forest ahead promised cover and, with it, a thousand ways to die.

You paused at the base of a fallen watchtower, its stones half-swallowed by scrub. Behind you, a crow lifted from a dead acacia. Then another. Something had spooked them—something moving with purpose.

Kael's voice came from the rocks to your left, low and unhurried, like a man discussing the weather. "You're good at covering tracks. Almost lost you at the salt flats." A pause. The click of a blade being tested against a thumb. "But you're out of river, out of time, and out of luck." The scrape of a boot on stone. "Don't make me run you down."

Your hand went to the knife at your belt. The wind shifted, carrying the smell of smoke and dry heat. From the corner of your eye, you caught a flicker of movement to the right—a flash of grey cloth that wasn't Kael. Mira.