Ember's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Ember came to the village to find an apprentice, and she walked into a panic. Her travelling days were nearly done. The runes on her staff had grown dim, and the warnings she carried needed younger hands to hold them. She needed one worthy student before the road ended. Instead, she found people screaming in the square. A gray rot crept up the fences and doorframes. It turned good wood soft and black. A mother dragged her children from a crumbling house. Men beat at the blight with shovels, but it spread under their feet. No one could stand still. Ember could not judge anyone like this. She could not even hear herself think. She climbed the old stone tower at the village edge. Rune bands circled its weathered sides, carved long ago by a keeper like herself. From the high window she watched the square. One figure did not run. A girl knelt by the worst of the blight, pressing a glowing fern against the rot. The fronds shimmered. The black crept back an inch, then swallowed the fern whole. Ember knew the girl. Elara. Her apprentice, once, before Ember judged her unready and left her behind. The girl looked up and saw her in the window. Her jaw tightened. "You came back," Elara called. "To watch me fail again." "I came to work," Ember said. She came down the tower steps. The panic pressed against them both. Ember could not carve while people shoved and wailed. She needed them still. She pulled her carved wooden map from her pack. Its border held a hundred old runes. She set the blade to a blank space in the wood. "Hold the people back," she told Elara. "Give me a clear breath." Elara did not argue. She spread her arms and shouted for the villagers to stand behind her. They listened to the girl who had not run. The square went quieter. Ember cut a calming rune into the map. The lines took light. A low warmth spread outward. The screaming dropped to murmurs. Shoulders loosened. The villagers stopped and breathed. Now Ember could think. She studied the blight in the sudden calm. She saw what the panic had hidden. The rot did not spread at random. It climbed toward the old tower, drawn to its glowing rune bands like a moth to flame. The ancient carvings were feeding it. "It wants the tower," Ember said. "Every rune in this village calls to it. Including mine." The calming rune on her map flickered. The blight on the nearest fence turned, black veins reaching toward the warm light in her hands. She had quieted the people. She had also shown the blight a brighter meal. Elara stared at the creeping rot. "Then you didn't stop it," she said. "You fed it."