Chapter 3: The Flood of Ashes

Elinalise kept her head down and let the current of people carry her forward. The river road was more of a shallow trench now, filled with a slow-moving sludge of humanity and mud. They moved without talking much, their footsteps a dull shuffle on the wet ground. It was easier to be part of this, honestly. A single person trying to cut their own path would attract attention. A piece of flotsam in the stream was just more debris.

Up ahead, the South Gate came into view. It was an ugly, functional arch of black stone, meant for trade carts and livestock. Now it was framed by Grenville soldiers standing on the wall-walks above. They looked down on the refugees with the bored vigilance of men watching cattle. Their wolf-crested banners hung from the parapets, dark against the grey sky. The city’s own dragon sigils were gone, probably already hacked down and burned.

The line slowed to a crawl as it approached the gatehouse. She could see why. A checkpoint had been set up just inside the arch, a crude barricade of overturned wagons and spiked timber. A few soldiers stood there, stopping people at random. They weren’t searching for anything specific, from what she could tell. They were just establishing that leaving was a privilege they controlled. One soldier yanked a bundle from an old woman’s arms, spilling patched clothing into the mud before tossing it back to her with a laugh.

Elinalise’s hand drifted to her side, where the silver seal lay hidden. If they decided to search her… but they wouldn’t. She looked like all the others—filthy, hollow-eyed, carrying nothing of obvious value. The real danger was in standing out. The internal heat was a constant presence, a low pulsing warmth that had settled deep in her abdomen. It hadn’t spiked since she left the castle, merely maintaining a steady, uncomfortable simmer that made her skin feel too warm inside her cloak.

She shuffled forward with the others, keeping her gaze on the ground a few feet ahead of her boots. The smell of the crowd was overwhelming now: unwashed bodies, wet wool, and the sharp tang of fear-sweat all mixed with the ever-present scent of wet ashes from the city. A child whimpered somewhere to her left, the sound quickly shushed by a weary parent.

As she got closer to the gate, she could hear the soldiers’ voices clearly.

“Move along, nothing to see here,” one was saying, his tone flat. He poked at a man’s sack with the butt of his spear. “What’s in there?”

“Bread, sir,” the man mumbled. “Just some stale bread for my family.”

The soldier grunted and waved him through.

Elinalise was next. She kept her shoulders hunched, making herself look smaller. The soldier in front of her was young, his face still smooth beneath his helmet. He looked tired.

He glanced at her, his eyes sliding over her grimy cloak and tangled hair. “Alone?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He stared for a second longer, then shrugged and jerked his thumb toward the opening beyond the barricade. “Go on then. Keep moving once you’re out, don’t loiter.”

She slipped past him, her heart thudding once against her ribs before settling back into its frantic rhythm. Just like that, she was through. The open road stretched ahead, a muddy track leading south between fields that had been trampled by armies. The forest was a dark line on the horizon, maybe half a day’s walk for someone in good health.

She joined the flow again as it spread out beyond the choke point of the gate. People began to move faster here, as if putting distance between themselves and the walls would grant some safety. Their pace was still slow though, weighed down by exhaustion and whatever pitiful possessions they’d salvaged.

Elinalise tried to match their speed, focusing on placing one foot in front of the other. The forest was the goal. Get to the trees, find cover, then figure out what came next. That was the logical plan. She had water from the river still soaking her slippers, but no food. The seal was her only real asset, and she couldn’t exactly trade it for bread at some roadside inn.

The curse-warmth chose that moment to shift.

It wasn’t a gradual thing. One moment it was that familiar simmer, an unpleasant but manageable background sensation. The next, it clenched.

A sharp, twisting cramp seized her low in the gut, so sudden and vicious that her breath punched out of her in a silent gasp. Her legs buckled instantly, refusing to hold her weight. She stumbled sideways out of the stream of pedestrians, colliding hard with a crumbling stone wall that lined this section of the road.

The impact jarred up her arm and shoulder. She barely felt it over the internal spike of agony. She clutched at her stomach through the layers of fabric, her fingers digging into the rough wool of the cloak as she pressed against herself. It felt like something alive was trying to twist its way out from inside her, a knot of pure heat and pressure that stole all the strength from her limbs.

She sagged against the wall, using it to keep herself upright while her vision swam with grey and black spots. The world tilted alarmingly. The sounds of shuffling feet and distant voices blurred into a meaningless drone.

The cramp held for what felt like minutes, though it was probably only seconds. It ebbed slowly, leaving behind a throbbing ache that radiated outwards, making her muscles feel weak and trembly.

She leaned her forehead against the cool, rough stone of the wall, breathing in shallow pants through her nose. Her legs were shaking now in earnest, barely supporting her weight. A fine sweat had broken out across her brow and upper lip despite the chill in the air.

Okay. Alright. This was new.

The heat had been constant since last night, an unwelcome companion she was learning to ignore through sheer willpower. This was different. This was an active attack, a physical declaration that her body was no longer entirely hers to command.

She made herself take a deeper breath, though it shuddered on the way in. She needed to assess. That was what her training said to do in a crisis: assess your resources and your liabilities.

Her legs were weak. Her hands were trembling where they still pressed against her abdomen. Her vision had cleared mostly, but everything had a slightly unsteady quality to it, like looking through warped glass. And inside… inside she could feel that coiled heat waiting. It wasn’t gone. It had just retreated to its earlier state. The potential for another cramp felt palpable now. A loaded weapon pointed at her own spine.

The physical mark of it. Crell’s words came back unwelcome and precise. A feverish agitation. A permanent discomfort.

It felt like more than discomfort. It felt like a brand. A signal fire lit under her skin. Walking among these people with their normal aches and exhaustion, she suddenly felt grotesquely visible. Surely everyone could see it. Surely they could sense this wrongness burning at her core. Every Grenville soldier would spot it from a hundred paces. It was a beacon calling out: here is the cursed one. Here is the last Dragonheart.

The flow of refugees continued past her on the road. No one stopped. A few glanced at the girl leaning against the wall looking sick. Their eyes held no curiosity. They had their own miseries. They moved on.

She pushed away from the wall cautiously. Her legs held. Barely. They felt like overcooked noodles. The idea of walking for hours across open fields toward that distant forest line seemed ludicrous suddenly. A fantasy spun by someone who still owned their own flesh.

If another cramp hit like that while she was in the middle of an open field… She wouldn’t just stumble. She would fall. She would curl up in the mud until it passed. And on this road crawling with Grenville patrols checking for “loiterers” or anyone who looked suspiciously like they might be someone worth hunting… Capture would be inevitable.

Or worse. Maybe she wouldn’t get up at all. Maybe the next spasm would be worse. Maybe it would simply empty her onto the road like a sack with its bottom cut out. Her body would fail before her will did. That seemed like exactly the kind of elegant cruelty Crell would appreciate.

She couldn’t reach the forest. Not today. Probably not tomorrow either. Trying would be suicide by cramp or by sword.

The realization settled over her with a weight that was almost physical. It pressed down on her shoulders as she stood there on the roadside while strangers trudged past. All her momentum from the castle escape—the cold resolve, the sharp clarity of her vengeance—it crashed against this simple biological fact. Her body was broken in a new and specific way that didn’t care about oaths or seals or justice.

She needed to stop moving. Right now she needed shelter more than she needed miles. She needed a place where she could let this weakness happen without an audience of enemies. Somewhere to wait out whatever this curse decided to do next.

But where? The city behind her was occupied territory. The fields offered no cover. The forest might as well be on another continent.

She had nothing. No allies. No safe houses. Just a stolen seal and a curse that felt like it was trying to carve its initials into her bones from the inside out.

Elinalise lifted her head, looking back toward the city walls she had just escaped. The grey smoke still rose in thin tendrils against the sky. Somewhere in that ruin was what she needed: four walls and a hiding place. Finding it without getting caught would be another problem entirely.

But walking away right now wasn’t an option anymore. The road forward was closed. All that remained was to turn back into the ashes and see what could be salvaged from them.

She couldn’t go back through the gate. That would be asking for trouble she couldn’t afford. The soldiers there had just seen her leave. Returning would make her memorable, and being memorable was the quickest path to a cell or a noose. There had to be another way back inside, a gap in the chaos they hadn’t sealed yet.

The decision formed slowly, a practical adjustment to the facts laid out before her. She needed shelter. She needed to sit down somewhere that wasn’t a muddy roadside. She needed maybe a day, maybe two, to see if her body would stabilize or if this was just her life now—a series of debilitating spasms punctuating a constant, feverish ache. She couldn’t get those things on the open road. They existed only behind the walls, in the wreckage they hadn’t fully cleared.

Supplies would be a problem too. Her stomach was a hollow pit, and the weakness in her limbs wasn’t just from the curse. She hadn’t eaten since… she couldn’t actually remember. Sometime before the feast felt like a different century. She needed food and clean water. Scavenging in a conquered city was dangerous, obviously, but so was fainting from hunger in a ditch.

Elinalise pushed off from the wall fully, testing her weight. Her legs held, though they still felt unreliable. She turned, not back toward the gate, but parallel to the wall, moving away from the main flow of refugees. She kept her pace slow, trying to mimic the shuffling gait of the truly exhausted. A few people glanced at her moving against the current, but their eyes were too dull with shock to hold any real suspicion.

The city wall was a long, dark scar of stone to her right. It was punctuated by drainage outfalls and the bases of old guard towers. About a hundred yards from the South Gate, the ground sloped down toward the river again, becoming a tangle of brambles and dumped refuse. The wall here was older, its stones more weathered and uneven. She remembered something from one of the endless architectural briefings—a section where the medieval fortifications had been repaired haphazardly after a flood centuries ago. The repairs were weaker.

She picked her way down the slope, her ruined slippers slipping on the wet grass. The river smell grew stronger here, a damp green scent undercut by rot. At the base of the wall, half-hidden by thorny bushes, was a dark gap where several large foundation stones had shifted outward. It wasn’t a proper breach; it was more of a hollow, wide enough for a child or a very determined animal to squeeze through. Water trickled from it, adding to the mud.

Elinalise knelt, ignoring the damp that immediately soaked through to her knees. She peered into the darkness. It smelled of wet earth and decayed leaves. She couldn’t see how far back it went.

It was a terrible idea. But all her ideas were terrible now. This one at least had the advantage of not involving Grenville soldiers looking her in the face.

She pulled her cloak tighter and got onto her hands and knees. The opening was even tighter than it looked. The rough stone scraped against her back as she wriggled forward into the damp blackness. For a few horrible seconds she was completely enclosed, blind and stifled, with the weight of the city wall above her.

Then her hands met empty space ahead, and she tumbled forward into a shallow, muddy channel on the other side. An inner drainage ditch, long since clogged with silt and weeds. She was back inside the walls.

She lay there for a moment in the mud, catching her breath. The curse-heat gave a low pulse, as if annoyed by the exertion. She sat up slowly, wiping muck from her hands onto her already filthy cloak.

She was in a narrow service alley between the outer curtain wall and the backs of warehouses. It was deserted. The sounds of the refugee column were muted here, replaced by the closer drip of water and the distant call of a crow.

Okay. Shelter. Somewhere hidden, somewhere unlikely to be patrolled immediately. Not a standing house—those would be occupied or looted. Not a cellar—too obvious.

Her memory sifted through lessons and overheard fragments. Local lore. The city wasn’t just castles and markets; it was stories people told. Old Kella used to gossip about all sorts of places while brushing her hair. Places where young couples met in secret. Places where thieves stashed goods. Places where people prayed to gods that weren’t officially sanctioned.

There was a story about the Riverwalk District. Before it became a merchant quarter, it was a shanty town built on marshy land where the river bent. The original settlers, fishermen and ferrymen mostly, had built a small shrine to their local river deity—not one of the great elemental spirits, just a minor god of safe passage and good catches. When the district was gentrified centuries later, stone buildings went up over the old wooden shacks. The shrine was supposedly sealed inside one of the new cellars, forgotten by everyone except in tavern tales.

The Riverwalk District had been hit hard during the attack. It was close to the main gates, valuable property. It would be a ruin now.

A ruin with forgotten spaces inside it.

It was as good a guess as any. Better than wandering aimlessly.

Elinalise got to her feet again. She oriented herself using the position of the wall and the faint smell of the river. The Riverwalk District was northwest from here, toward the city’s heart but skirting the main avenues.

She started walking, keeping to the narrowest alleys she could find. The orderly devastation near the castle gave way to more chaotic ruin here. This was where the fighting had swept through, not where it had been meticulously concluded.

Signs of recent battle were painted on every surface. A shopfront with its door splintered inward, the interior dark and ransacked. A cart overturned and burned to a blackened skeleton, its wheels still smoldering faintly. In one alley, she had to step over three bodies curled together in death. They wore no armor, just simple tunics. City militia maybe, or just people who tried to defend their street. Flies were already gathering.

The silence was heavier here than in the service corridors. It was the silence of a place emptied in a hurry. Shutters hung askew. Personal belongings—a child’s wooden horse, a cooking pot, a single shoe—lay abandoned in the middle of the street as if dropped while running.

She moved quickly but carefully, pausing at every corner to listen. Once she heard marching boots several streets over and froze until they faded. Another time she heard weeping coming from an upper floor, a low, hopeless sound that made her own throat tighten. She didn’t investigate.

The curse remained at its simmering level, thankfully. No more cramps. Just that persistent inner warmth that made her feel like she was walking around with a small furnace lit in her belly. It was distracting mainly because it was so alien. Her body kept trying to process it as a fever, but there was no illness behind it. Just magic. A permanent change.

After about twenty minutes of cautious travel, the character of the buildings changed. The timber-framed houses gave way to larger stone structures with wider streets meant for wagons. Carved signs hung broken from their brackets—a loaf of bread for a baker, a tankard for an inn. The Riverwalk District. Or what was left of it.

It was mostly destroyed. A direct hit from siege engines or magical artillery had torn through its center. Whole buildings were reduced to piles of shattered masonry and splintered beams. Others leaned dangerously, their facades sheared away to reveal empty rooms like dollhouses cracked open. The air was thick with plaster dust and the sour smell of wet, burned wood.

Elinalise picked her way through the rubble field. Finding anything specific in this mess seemed impossible. But the stories said the shrine had been in the oldest part of the district, near where the original riverbank had been before it was built over. That would be at the lowest elevation, closest to what was now a stone embankment lining the water.

She headed downhill, toward the smell of stagnant water. The destruction here was less total but more thorough. Fire had eaten through these buildings more completely, leaving blackened shells.

And then she saw it. Tucked between two collapsed warehouses was a shorter, squatter structure made of much older stone. It had no windows. Its roof had caved in long ago from the look of it, buried under fallen timbers and slate tiles from its taller neighbors. But its front facade was still partially standing—a simple archway of weathered grey blocks carved with flowing patterns meant to mimic water.

The archway was half-buried under a cascade of rubble where the building next to it had fallen directly onto it. A large section of carved stone cornice from that neighbor lay across the entrance like a giant’s discarded toy, blocking it almost completely.

This had to be it. There was no sign or marker left visible, but its placement and style fit every part of the tavern tale. A forgotten shrine sealed by progress and now buried by conquest.

Elinalise approached cautiously. The pile of rubble looked unstable. Dust still sifted down from somewhere high above. She circled around to see if there was another way in—a side entrance or a crack in the wall. The side walls were solid and windowless, rising about eight feet before disappearing under tons of collapsed roofing material.

The only way was through that blocked arch.

She set her jaw and began to work. Moving rubble alone while weak with hunger and cursed with inner fire was about as pleasant as she imagined it would be. The stones were heavy and sharp-edged. Dust choked her with every movement she made. She worked slowly at first, testing each piece before shifting it aside from what she hoped was its key position supporting the pile.

Her muscles protested almost immediately which honestly wasn’t surprising given everything they’d been through recently anyway still she kept at it focusing on smaller pieces first creating enough space perhaps for her body to slip through without bringing everything else down on top of herself.

Sweat stung her eyes mixing with grime already caked on her face after ten minutes she had cleared a narrow tunnel maybe two feet wide leading into darkness under that heavy lintel stone still above it seemed stable enough for now honestly she didn’t have much choice left but to trust that it would hold.

She wiped her hands on her cloak leaving grey smears took one last look at the ruined district behind her then dropped to her knees again crawling into the narrow gap she had made expecting nothing but more darkness and dust maybe some old bones left by animals over centuries probably just an empty chamber finally forgotten by everyone including herself soon enough hopefully not forever though

The crawl was short but claustrophobic, the weight of the debris pile pressing down on the air around her. Then the space opened up. She emerged into a small, square chamber. The darkness was complete at first, a solid thing that swallowed the faint light from the tunnel behind her. She stayed on her knees for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

Slowly, shapes resolved from the black. The room was maybe fifteen feet across. The ceiling was low and vaulted, made of the same old grey stone as the exterior. It was intact. Against the far wall stood a simple stone altar, its surface bare and dusty. A broken pottery vessel lay on its side nearby. The only other feature was a thick, central pillar that seemed to support the ceiling, though one side of it was cracked and crumbling.

It was dry inside, surprisingly. And quiet. The sounds of the ruined city were muffled to a distant murmur here, sealed out by tons of rubble. The air was still and cool, smelling of ancient dust and damp stone.

Elinalise let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Shelter. Four walls and a roof that wasn’t actively falling down. It was more than she’d had since yesterday. She pushed herself to her feet, her joints complaining softly.

And then another smell reached her, threading through the old-stone scent.

Woodsmoke. Faint, but recent. And under it, the sour tang of unwashed bodies and fear-sweat.

She went perfectly still.

The sounds came next. Not from behind her, but from deeper in the shrine. A low murmur of voices, so quiet they were almost below hearing. Then a shuffling movement, like someone shifting their weight on a stone floor.

She wasn’t alone.

Her first instinct was blind panic, a sharp spike that made the curse-heat flare in response. She forced it down, clamping a mental lid over it. Panic got you killed. She’d already learned that lesson.

She moved silently, edging along the wall away from her entrance tunnel. Her back found the rough stone of the broken pillar. It offered a sliver of cover. She peered around its edge toward the source of the sounds.

Past the altar, in what looked like a smaller antechamber or alcove, a faint, flickering glow painted the walls orange. Candlelight.

Huddled in its meager pool were five people.

A man in what was left of a city guard’s uniform sat propped against the wall, his face pale and slick with sweat. One leg of his trousers was torn and dark with a large, crude bandage wrapped around his thigh. Even from here, Elinalise could see the stain seeping through.

Beside him sat a woman with two small children pressed against her sides. A boy and a girl, both with wide, hollow eyes that reflected the candle flame. The woman had an arm around each, pulling them close as if she could absorb them back into her own body for safety.

On the other side of the candle were an elderly man and woman. They sat close together on a folded blanket, their hands clasped tightly in the space between them. The man’s shoulders were hunched, his head bowed. The woman stared into the flame, her expression empty.

They were survivors. Not soldiers. Not Grenville agents. Just people who had found the same forgotten hole she had.

The wounded guard said something low to the mother. Elinalise couldn’t make out the words, but his voice was strained with pain. The mother nodded, her eyes darting toward the darkness where Elinalise stood unseen.

The choice presented itself with stark clarity, right there in the shadows behind the pillar.

She could step forward. Reveal herself. Ask for help. Maybe they had water. Maybe they had food. Maybe they could tell her something about patrols or safe routes. The guard might know things. They were all citizens of her kingdom, subjects she had once been meant to protect. The impulse to go to them was a physical pull, a desperate yearning for the simple comfort of not being alone in this.

But. She looked like a vagrant. A filthy girl in a stolen servant’s cloak. Her silver-gold hair was a tangled mess of soot and grime, but it was still distinctive if you looked closely. The curse simmered inside her, a secret sickness they might sense or see in her flushed skin. And she carried a secret that could get them all killed—the seal of a dead king, and the knowledge of who had truly orchestrated the fall.

If she joined them, she brought her danger into their circle. If Grenville soldiers did sweep this district and found this hideaway, finding her with them would be a death sentence for everyone. Crell had declared her dead in the fires. Being found alive with witnesses would undo his convenient story.

And could she trust them? The guard was wounded and desperate. Desperate people did desperate things. What was her life worth to him if trading information about a stray princess could buy medicine for his leg or safety for his family? She didn’t know these people. Yesterday, they were faces in a crowd she acknowledged from a carriage window. Today, they were potential allies or potential betrayals. She had no way to know which.

Retreating was safer. For her. For them. She could slip back out the way she came. Find another hole to crawl into. Be alone with her curse and her vow. It was what Crell expected her to do anyway—to skulk and hide like the creature he thought he’d made.

The candle flame guttered slightly in a draft from somewhere deep in the shrine. The little girl whimpered and buried her face in her mother’s side. The mother shushed her gently, rocking back and forth.

Elinalise’s hand tightened on the rough stone of the pillar. Her legs ached with fatigue. The hollow hunger in her stomach twisted. The weight of the silver seal was a cold spot against her thigh.

She stood at the edge of their light, a ghost in the ruins of her own world. To step forward was to become human again, if only for a moment. To step back was to embrace the isolation of her vengeance fully and finally.

The darkness behind her felt infinite. The small circle of candlelight looked unbearably fragile. She took one slow breath, the dust tickling her throat. Then she took another.

And she made her choice.