Ashwalker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The Ashwalker stopped at the edge of the lava river because the pull in its chest had gone quiet for the first time in a thousand miles. Ten feet of cracked black stone, wrapped in a cloak of burning ash, it stood over churning tar and molten rock. Pale hands broke the surface and sank again. Skeletal faces rose, screamed without sound, and slid back under. The Ashwalker had followed the pull across the dead waste to find whatever still lived. The pull had led here, to a river of the drowned, and then it had died. Behind the Ashwalker, its footprints cooled into a trail of black glass that ran to the horizon. On the far bank stood a cathedral of basalt and obsidian, its windows lit from within by fire. Spires clawed at the ash-choked sky. Something inside that building had pulled the Ashwalker across the world and then let go. The Ashwalker understood then that the last living thing in the Scorched Depths was not waiting to be found. It was waiting to be answered. The Ashwalker had walked because it believed stopping was death. Now stopping was the only way across. It stepped onto the river. The surface held for one step, then split. Molten rock climbed the Ashwalker's legs and cooled against the black stone of its body. Hands caught at its cloak and burned away. The Ashwalker did not sink. Each footfall pressed the flow down and froze it into a plate of glass. A bridge formed one step at a time behind it. When it reached the far bank, it turned and looked at what it had made: a road of cooled obsidian across the river of the drowned, wide enough for a procession, hard enough to hold a mountain. The Ashwalker climbed the steps of the cathedral and pushed open the doors. The nave was empty. No priest, no rival, no living thing. The pull was gone because there was nothing left to pull toward. The Scorched Depths had one walker left, and it had just built a road no one else could cross. The Ashwalker knelt at the center of the empty hall and pressed both hands to the floor. Cracks opened under its palms, filled with light, and cooled. It would forge a throne here, from the same glass it left behind with every step, and it would rule the only kingdom a dead world could offer: a kingdom of one.