They moved east, deeper into the wound in the world. The Ashen Tract was not a place of loud horrors. It was a place of profound and unnerving silence, a quiet so deep it felt like a pressure on the ears. The sky was a uniform, joyless grey, a lid on a world from which all color had been bled. Under their boots, the ground was a fine, pale dust that looked like ash but felt cold to the touch. Every tree was a brittle, skeletal thing, their grey branches poised to snap in a wind that never came.
Sineus walked with his head up, his senses extended into the Istopis, the world’s memory-script. Here, it was a mess of tangled, frayed threads, a landscape of botched surgeries and festering wounds. Every step was a risk. Reality here had the stability of a rotten plank over a long drop; the local script held that it was only twenty percent sound. Alessandro Volpe walked a few paces to his left, his rifle held at a low ready. The inventor’s eyes were constantly moving, scanning the dead horizon, his pragmatism a small, solid anchor in the unreality of the place.
— Anything? — Alessandro’s voice was a low rasp, swallowed by the oppressive quiet.
— Just the usual noise, — Sineus answered, not breaking his stride. — The echoes of what was cut away. Grief. Confusion. Nothing with intent.
— Keep it that way, — Alessandro muttered. He paused to check the action on his rifle, the metallic scrape a small, sharp profanity in the silence. It was a habit, a piece of the everyday world he carried with him.
Sineus kept walking. His goal was simple: cross this blighted zone to reach the less-corrupted lands to the east, where they might find a new path, a new plan. The price of that passage was this journey through a landscape actively hostile to life and memory. Every kilometer was a gamble against the Blight’s chaotic influence and a direct exposure to the enemy who was now hunting him.
Then he smelled it.
It was faint at first, just a phantom scent on the still air. The smell of woodsmoke. Impossible. Nothing had burned here in years. Nothing could burn.
— Do you smell that? — Sineus asked, stopping.
Alessandro sniffed the air. He shook his head. — Nothing. Just dust and decay. What is it?
Sineus didn’t answer. The scent was growing stronger now, not just smoke, but the sharp, resinous smell of burning pine. And with it came a feeling. A dry, oppressive heat that had nothing to do with the cold, damp air. It was a psychic echo, a memory bleeding through the thin skin of the present. He felt a prickle of unease, a sense of something tailored and specific.
The landscape began to change. The uniform grey of the skeletal trees darkened, the bark turning from pale ash to a deep, flaking charcoal. The fine dust on the ground grew coarser, blacker, becoming a layer of soot that crunched under his boots. The unnatural silence was broken by a low, distant crackle, the sound of a great fire consuming a forest.
— Sineus, what’s happening? — Alessandro’s voice was tight with alarm. He had raised his rifle, turning in a slow circle. To him, the world was still grey and silent. He could not see the transformation.
But Sineus could. He saw the ghostly orange light flickering between the blackened trunks of the trees. He felt the heat wash over him in waves. He recognized the slope of the land, the specific arrangement of the burning trees, the way the smoke billowed towards a sky that was no longer grey but a sickening, orange-black.
He knew this fire.
It was the Great Fire of 1712, the one that had consumed the west wing of Bielski Manor. It was a piece of his family’s history so traumatic, so filled with loss, that his ancestors in the Lodge had ordered the memory of it excised from the family line. It was a forbidden history, a story that officially did not exist. A thread that had been cleanly, perfectly severed.
And Lucien Lacroix had found it.
The realization was a physical blow. The enemy did not just have access to records and histories. He had access to the void itself, the negative space of things that had been unmade. He could weaponize not just what was remembered, but what was deliberately forgotten.
A pull. It was a gentle tug at first, a psychic current drawing him forward, deeper into the illusion. He took a step, then another, his body moving against his will. This was not a simple echo. This was a lure. A trap built from the foundations of his own bloodline, sprung with chilling, personal precision.
— Sineus! Stop! — Alessandro’s voice was sharp, but it sounded distant now, as if shouted from across a great valley.
He tried to halt his feet, to anchor himself in the real, but the pull was too strong. The memory of the fire was a living thing, and it wanted him. It was a glowing, hot thread wrapped around his soul, reeling him in. His history was no longer a shield or a source of pride. It was a cage, and the door had just slammed shut.
He could hear the phantom screams now, the cries of servants and family trapped in the burning wing. He could smell the sickeningly sweet scent of burning paint and plaster. The heat was intense, blistering his skin, though he knew the air around him was cold. He was losing his grip on the present, his own consciousness dissolving into the century-old catastrophe.
— Alessandro! — he tried to shout, but the name was a dry rasp in his throat. The real world was a fading dream. The fire was the only reality.
He walked toward the heart of the inferno, toward the ghostly silhouette of a great timbered house engulfed in flame. He was a moth drawn to a fire that had burned out a hundred years ago. The trap was perfect. It was a lock that only his memory could open, and he had just walked through the door. He was five meters from being completely consumed, his own identity overwritten by the agony of his ancestors.
The roar of the phantom flames filled the world.
The cold, real air of the Tract was a ghost on the back of his neck.
The fire was real, and the past was devouring him.
