Ashburn Ember's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ashburn Ember wanted one thing: to find the warlord who set the fire inside him. But he could not walk ten steps without a scream. Orange flames leaked from the cracks in his charcoal skin. Smoke seeped from his mouth. Children pointed. Merchants slammed their shutters. In the Highlands, a burning man could not hunt quietly. He could only be hunted. He had tried covering himself. Wet rags charred and fell away. Wool caught and flared. Yesterday a whole market bolted when his sleeve turned to ash. Every escape drew more eyes. Every set of eyes could belong to the warlord's spies. Ashburn needed to move unseen, or he would die before he ever found the one who did this to him. An old woman found him crouched behind a well. She did not run. She looked at his fissures the way a smith looks at a forge. "You're leaking," she said. "That's your problem, not your fire." She led him underground, into a network of worn stone passages black with old soot. The walls wore layers of scorched grime. Nothing here could burn twice. "This is where things too hot for the surface come to hide," she said. She lifted a bundle from a stone shelf and shook it open. It was a veil. Layered fabric fell in wide folds, its hem stitched with red and green patterns. It looked far too thin to hold. Ashburn shook his head. "It will burn like all the rest," he said. "It drinks heat," she answered. "Try it or stay a torch." He pulled the veil over his head. He braced for the stink of smoke. Instead the flames flattened against his skin. The folds swallowed the light. The glowing cracks dimmed to a faint red line, then to nothing. For the first time in weeks, no fire climbed off his shoulders. He breathed, and no smoke came. Then the passage shook. A roar rolled down the stone. Around the corner came a beast wreathed in living flame, its black body split by molten veins, spines of fire trailing down its spine. It fixed both burning eyes on Ashburn and stopped. "It hunts by heat," the old woman whispered. "Now it can't taste you." The creature swung its head. It sniffed the char-thick air. It could not find the one heat source it wanted. It snarled, turned, and loped back into the dark. Ashburn stood still under the veil, hidden at last. He could walk the Highlands now. He could get close to the warlord. But the beast had smelled him for one moment before the veil closed. It knew he existed. And somewhere deeper in these tunnels, it was already circling back to learn where the fire had gone.