Morning wore a gentler face than it had any right to. Mist lay along the hedges, and the low slopes of the valley held a cool that felt like a hand on a fevered brow. Ashen woke before the birds, listening for the wrong quiet and finding only the small creaks of a barn deciding…
By midmorning the light had the thin brightness of tin worn smooth. Mist lay low in the troughs of the fields and broke apart when the sun touched it, not with the hunger of old weather but with ordinary reluctance. Ashen carried a spade over his shoulder and a coil of twine under one arm,…
Morning came without a bell. Light seeped in through the cracks between the boards and laid thin bars across Ashen’s face. He woke with the heavy stillness of someone who has slept safely and doesn’t trust the feeling. For a long moment he did not move. He listened to the grain settle in the loft,…
The plain ran flat and colorless, a single thought stretched to the edge of sight. Ashen walked until the wind remembered how to move again. It came in small, uncertain breaths, nudging dust into eddies that dissolved before they could become shapes. He let it play over his face, tasting the grit, half convinced it…
For a long time he only breathed and listened to the echo of the revelation inside his ribs. The noise of it was quieter now, but quieter the way the sea is quiet once you have gone under and the pressure itself becomes sound. The towers that had risen in light were fading back into…
The mouth in the sky inhaled, and the world leaned with it. Ashen’s knees locked. Every instinct begged him to fall flat and let the wind take him, but pride or terror—he couldn’t tell which—held him upright. The air roared past, full of whispers that had no direction. His clothes flapped against his skin; his…
The light broke around him like a wave that did not choose a shore. Ashen stumbled across the torn edge of the wall and into air that tasted bright, metallic, almost sweet, like the first bite of fruit after a long winter. His eyes seized against the white. When they learned to see again, he…
The door exhaled once, then widened. Ashen felt the air move across his face—thick, damp, the smell of stone after lightning. He stepped forward because stillness here was worse than walking. The new chamber was smaller, yet it felt endless. Its floor dropped in terraces that disappeared into shadow. Threads of light, thin as veins,…
The door did not open. It thinned. Stone became surface, surface became skin, skin became cold breath. For a flicker of time the world narrowed to a membrane against his fingertips and the sensation of something vast leaning close from the other side. Ashen did not push. He did not have to. The tower took…
The black circle was still spreading when Ashen ran, the earth behind him cracking like ice beneath fire. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. Every step he took only made the ground sound less like ground and more like breathing. The mist swallowed him whole within minutes. The air thickened until it seemed to drag…
Ashen ran until the world lost shape. The land beyond the wall wasn’t a place. It was an echo stretched too thin, color scraped away until only grey and the suggestion of weight remained. The mist clung to him, thick as breath, whispering in voices that had no throats. Sometimes they used his name. Sometimes…
The fires burned until morning.The wind dragged smoke across the plain, heavy and bitter with iron. Nothing of the Watch remained except their masks, a dozen black faces staring sightless at the sky. Mira stood among them while the camp buried its dead. The work was quiet. No one spoke to Ashen. No one looked…
The mist hit the wall like surf against stone. It had weight to it, a kind of pressure that made the lungs forget their work. Shapes ran within it—some almost human, others too tall, too thin, too wrong. When the first one reached the barricade, the iron groaned. Ashen moved before thought could catch him….
