Before the sky decided if it was morning or still a lingering memory of night, the wind had already chosen its side. It blew low, hugging the ground. Falazahr walked among the bonfires, which she herself had ignited and imposed her will upon.
The Winter Flame—as she had named the blue fire burning in her right palm—flickered slowly. She now used this light, not for ignition, but for the inverse. She bent over each fire, and with gestures of her fingers, the heat was extinguished. When she grasped a piece of wood, she noticed it was frigid, almost like ice, despite never having touched it. As she squeezed, the wooden structure crumbled into ash. The Blue Flame did not burn; it weakened structures. This was likely what had happened to the Stone-Hide. It became frail.
She pondered. The horizon opened into a vibrant, intense orange as dew covered the leaves of the trees. The forest released a thick, humid vapor, saturated with the pungent scent of moss. The village, quiet in its deep slumber, with its simple huts of straw and coarse leather, seemed to follow the grave, steady rhythm of Falazahr's steps, as if the lives of those people depended on her passage.
She stopped before the last bonfire. It was the largest—the mother-fire, in the center of the world's first human settlement, around which everyone had knelt the night before and murmured her name. Falazahr. Falazahr. As if it were a spell that kept them alive.
In that instant of near-silence, a scream reached her ears. It originated from afar, cutting through the air. It was a child's voice—the only child in the village.
— Falazahr! — The voice cracked in half before arriving whole. — Falazahr!
She turned slowly. There was no haste in her shoulders; there rarely was. The child came running from between two huts, small feet slapping the soft earth, hands open as if trying to clutch the wind.
It was Niu.
She had given her that name because she thought it was beautiful; in truth, the Matriarch had heard it from a bird's song. Niu stumbled, and Falazahr caught her by the shoulders before she fell. The girl's shoulders trembled; there was mud on her knees and leaves caught in her short hair, and in her eyes was something Falazahr knew well—that kind of fear that is not learned but born.
Falazahr, her voice low and calm, spoke:
— Breathe. — Her left hand, the one not holding the flame, touched the nape of the girl's neck. — First, breathe. Then you can speak.
The girl inhaled. She tried. She swallowed a sob with a foul taste.
— They... — Niu held onto Falazahr's leg. — They are lying down. But not sleeping. They are lying down incorrectly.
Falazahr did not blink. There was no word in Niu's small mouth for dead, because no one had needed that word yet. No one had died in the village since the first day. But now the word was awakening.
— Incorrectly how? — Falazahr asked.
— Their eyes are open — Niu averted her gaze from Falazahr, fixing it on the ground, then the sky, anywhere but her. — And... — she swallowed hard — there is a frightening color on them. On the face. On the neck. A color whose name I do not know.
Falazahr knelt slowly, until she was the girl's height. The Winter Flame in her right hand receded further, shrinking into a spark—as if respecting the moment, or as if fearful.
— Can you take me there?
The girl nodded. Then shook her head in denial. Then nodded again.
— I can, but I am scared! — she whined.
— I know. — Falazahr said, caressing her face with the back of her fingers. — No one wants to witness such a thing.
Behind them, the village began to stir. The day commenced with its steady routine, a morning ritual that seemed to demand a renewed acceptance of existence from every resident. It was from one of these huts, the third on the east side, that Heridor emerged.
He appeared stooped, because the hut had a low entrance and his body was tall. First came his right shoulder—the whole, intact shoulder—and then his left, the orphaned one, the shoulder where the arm was gone. The stump was apparently healing.
Heridor straightened up, inhaling the morning air that engulfed him. The smell was of dew, ashes—though there were almost none—and something else: the blue fire had an odor different from a common flame. That was when he saw her.
Falazahr crossed the village boundary, entering the forest, with little Niu leading the way. They moved in silence or with such a minute sound that it was absorbed by the morning mist. Falazahr's dark hair fluttered down her back.
Heridor narrowed his eyes.
There was something intriguing about that scene, and he felt it before he understood. It was the way Falazahr walked—not like someone going to solve a problem, but like someone going to confirm one. It was the way Niu looked back every three steps, as if she feared the village ground would vanish behind her.
And it was the timing. Falazahr did not leave the village at dawn; she extinguished the fires. It was her new ritual, her near-prayer, and she never interrupted it. If she was interrupting it now, it was because something, somewhere, was burning brighter than the fire.
Heridor stared at the stump, almost as if conversing with his lost limb, awaiting a decision from it. He finally pulled his shoulders back and began to walk. Not behind them, not exactly. Just toward the same blind spot in the forest where they were heading, keeping his distance, doing what he had learned since coming into the world: walking on the fringe.
The forest welcomed Falazahr and Niu with its characteristic hospitality—perhaps disinterest or even menace. The lower branches drew away as if they had a will of their own. The soil, covered by a thick, damp layer of brown leaves, acted as a soft mattress. With every stride, their feet sank slightly, releasing an intense aroma of upturned earth.
The Winter Flame grew again in Falazahr's right hand. Not much. Just enough to illuminate two spans ahead, with that light that was neither yellow nor white, but the blue of a still lake. Where the fire approached, the leaves seemed, for an instant, to freeze. They did not truly freeze—it was only an impression. But the impression sufficed to make the woods a different place than it was a minute before.
Niu stepped forward, her small feet finding, without hesitation, the path she had already taken once that morning. Falazahr observed the girl's back—small, thin, and clearly tense. The path descended. Slowly, then more sharply. Falazahr realized they were heading toward the stream side—the west side of the forest, where the trees were taller and the trunks thicker.
She was familiar with that part of the forest, having walked there alone days earlier. She had appreciated the tranquility and the way the Winter Flame, specifically in that location, chanted—a subtle, almost inaudible sound, as if acknowledging the place. The memory made Falazahr frown.
— Are we close yet? — Falazahr inquired, her voice harsher than she intended.
— There is the crooked log — Niu said, pointing ahead. — After the crooked log, there are the stones. After the stones, there are them.
Them. The plural fell upon Falazahr like a pebble in a puddle. How many were them, exactly? Niu had not given a number, and Falazahr, now, realized she had not asked. Why? Perhaps because, somewhere within her, there was already an answer. Perhaps because the answer was of a kind she preferred to discover firsthand, and not with a child's words.
Then, the curved trunk appeared. It was a tree that, defying the very logic of life, had decided to grow sideways, in a grotesque, submissive bow to the earth. And immediately afterward, there were the stones—three giants covered in a dark-green, almost black moss, arranged in a perfect triangle, as if a deity had tried, and miserably failed, to create a form there. And, to seal the dread of the scene, past the stones, the bodies of the two men were waiting.