: The Face Beneath the Ash
Smoke still rose from the ruins of the southern towers, curling into the sky like forgotten prayers. In a world trying to move forward, there were places that still stood still—where the whispers of the mirror creature had taken deep root.
Wale stood at the edge of one such place.
The village of Theralune had once been a haven for scribes. Its towers were grown from living trees; its streets were carved in spirals, symbolic of the ongoing tale of time. But now, it was silent. Not abandoned—just still, as if frozen mid-sentence.
Grey crouched by a ruined well, fingers tracing strange marks scorched into the stone.
"They're writing again," he said quietly.
Wale joined him, frowning at the loops and symbols. "That's not a native script. That's... mimicry."
Chris came up behind them, torchlight casting long shadows. "You mean someone copied the old words?"
"Copied them... or recreated them from fragments," Wale said. "But badly. Like trying to rewrite truth from memory after a dream."
"Could it be the creature again?" Chris asked.
"No," Wale said after a long pause. "But it could be what it left behind."
They entered the heart of Theralune just before dawn.
The buildings seemed intact, untouched by war. But every surface—walls, doorframes, even furniture—was covered in scratched words. Sentences repeated. Names looped. Phrases corrected, then corrected again.
Each attempt slightly more distorted than the last.
Chris read aloud: "'The man in the ink saved us.' Then... 'The ink became the man.' Then... 'The ink is what we are.'"
Grey's grip tightened on his blade. "This is a shrine."
"No," Wale said grimly. "It's a mirror."
In the town square, a figure waited.
Wrapped in dark parchment robes, face obscured by a cracked mask shaped like Wale's own. The figure stood silently, arms open as if in welcome.
"I've been waiting," it said in a dry whisper.
Wale stepped forward. "You're not the creature."
"No," the figure agreed. "I'm the remnant. The memory it left behind when it died."
"You're lying."
The figure tilted its head. "Am I? Or is that what you need to believe?"
It called itself "Ash."
Not a name. A title.
The aftermath.
It spoke in fragments, weaving its speech with scraps of stories and broken truths. And the longer it spoke, the more the villagers appeared—men and women cloaked in scribe-robes, eyes distant, lips moving in silent recitation.
They weren't possessed.
They were committed.
To a rewritten world where the mirror creature hadn't died.
Where it had ascended.
Where Wale had become it.
Ash gestured to the walls. "They remember you. They love you. But they do not see you as you are. They see what they need. A monster with a reason. A lie that saved them."
Wale's voice was ice. "You're building a religion."
"I'm preserving a truth you destroyed."
The confrontation came quickly.
Grey moved first, sword flashing through the air—but Ash didn't flinch. The villagers stepped forward instead, bodies moving with eerie precision. Not in defense, but in pattern.
A living script, encircling the square.
Chris unleashed fire—not to burn them, but to disrupt the formation. Wale leapt toward Ash, drawing the Memory Blade.
"You wear my face," he growled. "But you don't carry my burden."
Ash raised a hand.
Wale froze.
Not physically—narratively.
His movements slowed, like he was caught mid-page in a story being rewritten.
"You bound your power to truth," Ash whispered. "But I bound mine to belief."
And belief, as it turned out, could bend reality.
Chris shouted his name, breaking the silence.
Grey shattered a warding sigil with a thrown dagger, freeing Wale from the stasis.
"Keep him talking!" Chris yelled. "His power feeds on silence!"
Wale regained his stance, panting. "You built your lie from pieces of me. But you forgot something."
Ash tilted its head. "Oh?"
"I'm not afraid of being hated," Wale said, stepping forward. "I'm afraid of being remembered wrong."
He swung the blade again—not at Ash, but at the carved symbols on the ground.
Memory bled from the stone. The spell circle broke.
Ash screamed.
And the villagers blinked as if waking from a deep sleep.
The battle didn't last long after that.
Ash faded into smoke, whispering as it vanished: "You may kill the falsehood, Wale. But you cannot silence the need for one."
The villagers were dazed, ashamed. Some wept. Others fled.
Chris knelt beside a child who had drawn Wale's face in chalk.
She wiped it away gently. "Time to write something new," she whispered.
Grey kicked the ashes where Ash had stood. "It won't be the last remnant, will it?"
Wale shook his head.
"No. But next time... we'll be ready."
That night, they didn't light a fire.
They sat beneath the stars, letting silence reclaim something sacred.
"Do you think this will ever end?" Chris asked.
Wale considered it.
"No," he admitted. "But maybe that's the point."
Grey raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
Wale leaned back, arms folded behind his head.
"If truth was easy, it wouldn't need protecting. If stories didn't fracture, we wouldn't need to keep rewriting them. Maybe we're not meant to win."
Chris looked at him, puzzled. "Then what are we meant to do?"
Wale smiled.
"Endure."