Chapter 103
The road of ash stretched like a scar across the land.Unnatural. Unbuilt. Unwilled.It simply was.
Where it passed, crops withered.Birdsong ceased.Even the wind dared not cross it.
Eliendara stood at the village edge, fingers twitching against her staff.
"It's not walking. It's thinking forward."
Kael stared at the road's edge.
"You mean it's imagining its path into existence?"
Vaern's voice was quiet but certain.
"No.It's remembering it."
Far beneath the surface, in a void untouched by flame or fate,Tharos watched.
It had no eyes.
It had never needed them.
Its mind unfolded in ripples of ancient silence, touching every ember in the world.
And when it found flame—it didn't fear it.
It simply studied it.
Then…forgot it on purpose.
Back above, Kael suddenly gasped, choking on air.
He clutched his chest.
The fire in his core flickered—then vanished.
Not extinguished.
Erased.
Eliendara screamed his name.
Vaern caught Kael as he collapsed, cradling him as his aura dimmed.
"This is what it does…" Vaern whispered.
"It doesn't kill us."
"It writes us out."
The fig tree began shedding its petals in reverse—not falling,but rewinding.
Its roots curled up from the soil,undoing their own history.
Even the cradle where the child of hope once laywas now… empty.
As if no one had ever been born there.
Eliendara raised her hands, chanting in an ancient dialect of the god-script.
Her magic sputtered.
Her light fractured.
And the symbols on her skin faded into ash.
"It's consuming concept," she whispered."Not power. Not matter."
Vaern gritted his teeth.
He stared eastward, where the ash-road pulsed like a heartbeat.
"We were fire."
"But now…"
He clenched his fists.
"We'll have to become something more."
In the void beneath the world, Tharos finally spoke.
Not aloud. Not in thought.
But in absence.
And every fire in the world dimmed for one second.
Just one.
But long enough…
for doubt to take root.
🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 104: What Flame Cannot Touch
Kael stands on the brink of being forgotten by the world itself.
Vaern must dive into the fading ember of his brother's soul,facing the very idea of erasure.
And beyond it all, Tharos waits—not as an enemy…
but as the undoing of meaning itself.