Ash woke with the taste of copper in his mouth.
The sky outside was grey, but not with rain. With ash. Real ash.
He stepped out of the apprentice's quarters barefoot, eyes narrowed.
Smoke curled above the village square—thin, black, rising from behind the baker's hut.
A fire? No alarm. No shouting. Just that smell. Burnt wood. Burnt something else.
Ash jogged toward it, heart heavy with some instinct he didn't have a name for.
When he reached the source, he stopped short.
The old offering tree—withered and dead long before he ever arrived—was gone. Burned to its roots.
The earth beneath it scorched in a perfect ring.
Villagers stood around it, murmuring. No one touched it.
Master Brenn stood nearby, arms crossed, jaw clenched.
Ash stepped beside him. "What happened?"
Brenn didn't look at him. Just stared at the blackened ground. "No one knows. No storm. No wind. Just woke up and it was fire. Cold fire."
"Cold?"
"Didn't burn anything around it. Didn't spread. Didn't rise."
Ash looked at the mark. The ring.
It looked… clean. Intentional.
"Do they think it was magic?" he asked.
Brenn finally looked at him. And for the first time since Ash had come to the village, there was something in the man's eyes that hadn't been there before.
Doubt.
Fear.
"I think," Brenn said slowly, "they're starting to look at you different."
Ash spent the day under quiet stares.
The forge clanged as usual, but the rhythm felt off. Too many silences. Too few words.
When he walked to the well, people stepped back.
Not far. Just enough.
Enough to notice.
Enough to remember Elira's voice:
"You are either something very old… or something very wrong."
And as dusk fell, and the sky burned gold behind the mountains, Ash heard a sound no one else seemed to notice:
A distant rumble.
Not thunder.
Not hoofbeats.
Something in between.
Something coming.
As the sky dimmed, Ash wandered away from the square.
His feet moved on their own. Past the forge, past the fields. Toward the edge of the village, where the weeds grew thick and the stones told stories no one remembered.
There was a house there. Barely standing. Roof patched with old hides. Walls leaning like they were tired of pretending.
Inside, a light flickered.
He hesitated.
Then stepped forward.
The door creaked open before he could knock.
"'Bout time," a voice rasped.
Ash blinked.
An old woman sat by a fireless hearth, surrounded by bones and feathers and things that should not move but did. Her eyes were white—not blind. Clouded. Stormlight behind cataracts.
"You know me?" Ash asked.
She chuckled. "Don't know your name. Don't know your face. But I felt the hum, boy. Woke me from a dream I ain't had in sixty years."
Ash stepped inside. "What dream?"
She didn't answer. Just patted the stool across from her.
He sat.
The walls shifted slightly. Not physically. Not really. Just enough to feel like the room was watching him.
The old woman leaned forward, her breath thick with herbs and forgotten things. "I was there, you know. When the last one fell."
"The last what?"
She smiled. "The last storm-walker."
Ash stared. "What's that?"
She looked at him, through him. "One who breathes lightning. One who defies the wheel."
"You mean… a lightning god?"
"I mean death with eyes that burn blue," she whispered.
A silence stretched between them.
Ash swallowed. "And what happened to him?"
The woman tilted her head. "He broke the sky."
Ash went still.
"…And then?" he asked.
She leaned back.
"He was erased."
The candle flickered.
Ash stood slowly. "Why are you telling me this?"
She shrugged. "Because no one else will. They're too scared to remember. But I remember everything."
He stepped toward the door.
"Boy," she called after him.
He stopped.
"Do not go near the mountain."
"…What mountain?"
Her smile turned sad.
"The one that's been erased from every map."