Ashes That Speak
Job 5:12 (NIV)
"He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success."
The thunder beneath the mountain was not a storm's clap, but the grind of ancient stone against something unknown. It shook the glass on the altar and made the teeth of the acolytes chatter. Margaret, lamp held high, saw that the perfect pattern of the summoning circle had been burned away by a clean, white heat where the fire had struck. Ash, fine as dust, drifted from the empty bowl.
Ashley, her back still to the wreckage, felt the burn on her palm like an oath she had been forced to take. It was a brand, not a mark of power, and its heat felt foreign, breaking the cool, exact logic of her craft. He thwarts the plans of the crafty… The verse Elena had spoken through the void struck her mind again—not as a curse, but as defiance shaped in words.
Behind her came the uneasy movement of her acolytes, their fear loud in the silence. They were the pattern she built her power upon—flawed, useful shapes. Now they were breaking apart.
"Pick up your blade, acolyte," Ashley said. Her voice was low, sharp as a snapped wire. "If you cannot hold iron, you cannot hold the dark."
The young man hurried to obey, his face pale as chalk, but the command wasn't for him. It was for the air, the mountain, the trembling glow of Margaret's lamp. It was her way of forcing order back into a world that had just turned against her.
"The Elder's sleep is troubled," she murmured, turning from the window, her eyes sweeping over the frightened court. "Perhaps she dreamed of new light."
Margaret's knuckles whitened around the lamp's bronze handle. "High One, if the blood will not serve, the binding is broken. We should wait. We should read the stars. The sky still answers."
"The sky is cold and far away, Margaret. And the Elder does not wait for the mercy of stars."
Ashley stepped toward the altar, her silk robes whispering over the stone. She lifted the bowl of still-warm blood that Margaret had offered moments before. It felt heavy and lifeless. Not the moving heart of the craft, only a bowl of spent life.
"The light that tore through the bond was not from the heavens," Ashley said, her tone now steady and thoughtful. She tilted the bowl, letting a thick drop fall onto the center of the burned rune. It hissed and vanished at once, leaving the stone dry. "It was mortal. A voice strengthened by belief. The mountain only repeats what already lives within it."
She looked down at her gloved hand, the one hiding the burn. The truth sat cold and hard in her chest: the power had not fought her—it had rejected her. It had chosen the fire of faith over the fire of ritual.
"The girl's god is not a mountain spirit, not an old force that can be soothed or bound," Ashley said. Her eyes shone with clear, dangerous light. "She is law and order, Margaret. The purest kind of rule. And that," she lifted her chin, like a queen refusing to yield, "is a pattern even I must learn to break."
She placed the empty bowl back onto the altar.
"Go. Find the priest, and the fool he calls a friend. Tell them this—the price of disobedience is not craft, it is nothingness. The fire turned from me tonight, yes. But they will serve as its next fuel."
Margaret bowed low, the lamp's glow shaking across her face, hiding her terror for a breath. The acolytes left in silence, their steps soft against the stone, until only the faint ash and the sharp scent of ozone remained.
Ashley stood alone in the court. She pulled off her glove. The mark on her palm—silver, almost crystalline—had spread, forming a thin, delicate shape that matched the broken rune. She didn't flinch. With her other hand, she traced the pattern slowly, thoughtfully.
"Let her pray," she whispered, not with scorn, but with calm curiosity, as one might study a rare creature.
Outside, the mountain thunder rolled again—this time not a warning, but an answer.
Ashley closed her fist around the burn and smiled, a thin, cold smile.
"Then I will show her god the true measure of a curse."