Content Warning: This chapter contains depictions of violence, death, and implied sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.
The debriefing room was cold.
Not the cold of winter—the cold of bureaucracy. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The table was polished to a sterile shine. The general sat at the head, his face carved from stone.
Aurelion sat to Ami's right. She sat alone in the center, her hands wrapped in fresh bandages, her face still smeared with soot she hadn't bothered to wash off.
"Casualties," the general said.
"Twelve cultists detained," an aide reported. "Nine wounded. Three dead."
"Civilians?"
"Twenty-three injured. Four dead."
The general turned to Ami. "Your team reported that you engaged cultists with excessive force. Broken bones. Fractured skulls. One man's jaw is wired shut."
Ami didn't flinch. "They were murdering civilians. I stopped them."
"You beat them into the pavement."
"Yes."
The general leaned back. His chair creaked. For a long moment, he just looked at her.
Then he nodded.
"The analysts agree that without your intervention, the death toll would have been three times higher." He slid a folder across the table. "You're being commended. Not publicly—the government doesn't want to encourage vigilante tactics. But quietly, you'll receive a commendation."
Ami didn't touch the folder. "I don't want a commendation."
"Take it anyway. You earned it."
He stood. The meeting was over.
Aurelion walked with Ami through the corridors of Central Command.
"You should sleep," he said.
"I'm not tired."
"You're exhausted."
She didn't argue. She didn't agree. She just walked.
He stopped her at the exit. "Ami."
She turned.
"What happened out there? Not the cultists. The fire. You froze."
Her jaw tightened. "I didn't freeze."
"You stopped. For a second. I saw it on the body cams."
She was silent for a long moment. Then: "I'm fine."
"You're not."
"I'm fine."
She walked away.
That night, Ami lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling.
The room was dark. The city was quiet. The turrets hummed.
She closed her eyes.
And the fire returned.
She was seven years old.
The town was called Oakhaven—not the one from the war, an older one, a smaller one. Wooden houses with peeling paint. Dirt roads that turned to mud when it rained. A church with a bell that rang every hour, a sound that had once been comforting.
She was playing in the yard when she smelled the smoke.
At first, she thought it was a cook fire. Someone burning brush. But the smell grew thicker, darker, sweeter—the sweetness of burning wood, burning cloth, burning flesh.
Then she heard the screams.
Not one scream. Many. Rising and falling, overlapping, a chorus of terror that seemed to come from every direction at once. The bell in the church began to ring—not on the hour, but wildly, desperately, a call for help that would never come.
She ran inside.
The door was open.
Her mother was on her knees. Her father was on his knees beside her. Their hands were bound behind their backs with rough rope that had bitten into their wrists, leaving dark welts.
The men in white robes stood in a semicircle around them.
Their robes were long and clean, white as fresh snow, stark against the blood that already pooled on the floor. Their hoods were tall and conical, like the hoods of old executioners, hiding their faces completely. Shadows filled the spaces where eyes should have been.
They held no weapons. They didn't need to. Their presence was the weapon.
One of them stepped forward. He carried a pistol—old, black, impersonal. The kind of gun that had been old when her grandfather was young.
The room was hot. The fire outside was spreading. She could hear the crackle of flames, the groaning of collapsing roofs, the distant screams that were growing fewer.
He pressed the barrel to her father's forehead.
Her father didn't close his eyes. He looked at Ami. His lips moved. She couldn't hear what he said.
"Don't—" her mother started.
The gun fired.
The sound was deafening in the small room. Her father's head snapped back. A red flower bloomed on the wall behind him. He fell sideways, his bound hands useless, his eyes still open.
Her mother screamed.
Ami screamed.
The man with the pistol turned. He pressed the barrel to her mother's forehead. Her mother was crying now, her face streaked with tears and snot and blood from a cut on her lip.
"Please—"
The gun fired.
Her mother fell.
The blood spread across the wooden floor, black in the firelight, seeping into the cracks between the boards.
Ami stared at the bodies. At the blood. At the eyes that were still open, still looking at her.
She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.
The man with the pistol looked at her.
He stepped toward her.
The dream fractured.
She was in a cabin. Not her cabin—a different one. Smaller. The walls were bare wood. The floor was cold dirt. A single lantern hung from a hook, casting weak light that made the shadows dance.
The air smelled of smoke and sweat and something else—something she didn't understand then. Something metallic. Something sour.
The white robes were there. Multiple sets. They stood around her, tall and silent, their conical hoods casting long shadows on the walls.
She was on the floor. Her hands were bound. Her dress was torn.
One of them knelt in front of her. His hood tilted. She could feel his breath on her face—hot, stale, smelling of tobacco and something sweet.
She tried to back away. There was nowhere to go.
She felt hands on her shoulders. Her wrists. Her legs.
Not rough. Worse. Gentle. Methodical.
She tried to scream.
No sound came out.
The dream fractured again.
She was outside. The cabin was behind her. The sky was gray, the sun hidden behind smoke. The town was gone—not burned, but erased. The houses were ash. The church was a skeleton of blackened beams. The bell had fallen and lay in the dirt, cracked, its voice silenced forever.
She was lying in the mud. Her clothes were torn. Her body ached in places she didn't know could ache. Bruises bloomed on her arms, her thighs, her neck. There was blood on her legs.
The birds were singing. The world was bright and beautiful and utterly indifferent.
She lay there for a long time.
She didn't cry. Her tears had been used up in the cabin.
She thought about lying there forever. Letting the mud swallow her. Letting the birds pick her bones clean.
But something—a sound, a voice, a memory she couldn't name—made her move.
She pushed herself up. Her arms shook. Her legs gave way twice before they held.
She walked.
She walked for hours. Maybe days. The sun rose and set and rose again. She drank from streams. She ate berries she hoped weren't poisonous. She didn't stop.
Eventually, soldiers found her by the side of a road. They were in a truck, three of them, their faces young and scared and kind.
They put her in the cab. They gave her water and bread and a blanket. They asked questions she couldn't answer.
One of them—a sergeant with kind eyes and a scarred face—sat with her the whole way.
He didn't ask what happened. He didn't ask where her parents were. He just sat beside her, quiet, solid, present.
When she finally spoke, her voice was a whisper.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Mathers," he said. "Sergeant Mathers."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere safe."
She looked out the window. At the smoke still rising from where her home used to be.
"There's no such thing," she said.
He put a hand on her shoulder. "Not yet. But there will be."
Ami woke gasping.
The room was dark. The city was quiet. The turrets hummed.
She sat up. Her face was wet. Her hands were shaking.
She pressed her palms to her eyes.
The white robes, she thought. The tall hoods. The silence.
They were a cult too. Not the same as the Embers. But the same sickness.
They burned my town. They shot my parents. They took me to a cabin and…
She couldn't finish the thought.
And no one ever found them.
She curled her hands into fists.
And now I'm fighting them again.
Different robes. Different symbols.
Same fire.
She didn't sleep again that night.