Burnscar Firecrest's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Burnscar spread the stolen tome across the forge's iron surface, her hooves scraping against soot-covered stone. The pages showed celestial whales, broken treaties, lies about spirits who only wanted peace. She needed to understand the merchant network first—who traded, who profited, who still lived. Her flames cast dancing shadows as she traced routes between the harbor and merchant quarter with one claw. The third building from the harbor was ash now, but others remained. She would need to mark each location, document every transaction, map the flow of silver that paid for centaur parts. This was how revenge began—not with fire, but with lists. But lists weren't enough. She needed witnesses, voices from before the slaughter. Burnscar pulled a black wax candle from her satchel, its surface studded with purple gems that caught her flame-light. The old ways taught that such vessels could reach spirits buried deep in the earth. She carried it outside to a flat stone near the forge. Three circles of ember-prints marked the ground around it. Burnscar lit the candle with a breath, watching purple smoke curl upward. She waited, patient as she'd been for three hundred years, for the ancient ones to answer. The smoke twisted and formed shapes—fragments of memory, whispers of testimony. Centaurs teaching children songs beneath whale-blessed skies. Merchants meeting in secret, spreading fear like poison. The spirits showed her what she needed: proof that humans chose greed over peace, chose lies over blood oaths carved in sacred bark. Burnscar let the candle burn down to nothing, absorbing every detail into her memory. Now she had her first witnesses. The path to justice was forming, one careful step at a time.