inkandember

[inkandember]

Ash-Born

(a short fantasy story by Ink & Ember)

He hadn’t planned to stay. That was the first mistake.

The village didn’t have a name worth remembering. A few narrow paths, a crooked well, and a roofless chapel stitched into the roots of a ridge. It wasn’t on any maps. That’s what made it safe for a while.

He’d been there three nights. Slept in a barn. Worked with his hands. Didn’t speak unless spoken to. Paid for quiet with quiet. He hadn’t cast since the river. Six days now. Not even a spark to keep the cold off. But holding it in had grown harder with every hour. It bled out of him, subtle, but there.

It affected the world around him, twisted the mana in the air. Animals kept their distance. Shadows moved when they shouldn’t. Fires flickered uncontrollably, like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to burn or not. He told himself he’d be okay. That it was fine. Once he rested, he’d have control again.

He sat leaning against a cobbled wall, out of sight and some distance from the people of the village. With eyes half-closed, he took whatever rest he could while keeping vigilant, or as vigilant as possible. How many days had it been since I last slept? he wondered.

The wind shifted suddenly, carrying with it a strange warmth and an acrid stench. Woodsmoke not the kind that came from cooking or resting. This was too dry. Too hot.

What’s going on? he thought as he rose to his feet. As his head cleared the wall he’d been resting against, he saw it. The village, once quiet, green, and still, was now ablaze. It looked soaked in lava-light, the peaceful warmth turned to something violent and red.

He heard screaming in the distance. Faint, but real. He doesn’t remember deciding to run. It was the screaming, he thinks. He couldn’t turn his back on that. He had to do something. So he took off toward the village as fast as his body would let him.

He hadn’t been far from the village when he stopped to rest, so it didn’t take long to get back, but what he saw would be carved into him for the rest of his life. It was a massacre. Bodies lay scattered across the ground.

He saw the old man who’d helped him to his feet when he’d first arrived, the one who offered him water, no questions asked. Now he lay still, eyes open, chest torn wide by something that hadn’t been made by blade or beast.

Magic, he thought. It was magic that did this. He heard voices in the distance and moved toward them, cautious, each step dragging. He couldn’t look away. So much death, and for what? These people had been kind. They’d helped him. Left him be. They were just trying to live.

Then he saw it.

A small mound, half-buried in dust and ash. He froze. A sick weight dragged through his spine. No he thought. He dropped to his knees and turned the little body over.

It was the girl.

The one who had offered him a flower when she found him resting beneath the tree. Just a few days ago. She had smiled like he was something soft and safe. Now her eyes were closed, and her hand was empty. Something broke inside him.

The voices sounded again closer now. The heat from the fires, the crackle of magic in the air, the stench of blood and burning flesh it all pressed down on him like a storm raging behind his eyes.

He stood, slow and silent. His body ached with every movement, but it didn’t matter anymore. Something had shifted the exhaustion, the fear, even the restraint it all fell away, hollow and useless. All that remained was the choice in front of him.

He walked purposefully toward the voices, no longer hiding. The fire roared, but he could hear them, their words carried to him on the current of magic that hung thick in the air.

“The freak should be here. It’s where they told us to go,” one voice muttered.

A second, a woman replied flatly, “We just have to make sure no survivors remain. Just in case.”

Then she laughed, short, sharp, and joyless. The kind of sound that didn’t come from amusement, but from certainty. Through the haze of smoke and shifting flame, he saw them clearly now, three figures, their silhouettes framed by fire.

One held a wand, sharp and lacquered like a noble’s toy. Another leaned on a staff etched with cruel geometry, its tip glowing sickly blue. The third rested a long, curved blade across one shoulder, the steel humming with bound enchantments.

They stood before a crumbling home, someone’s home, whispering something he couldn’t hear. Then they raised their focuses in unison.

The house shuddered. The walls collapsed inward with a thundercrack of magic, burying the structure in dust and screams. He heard them, the ones inside, calling for help.

But before he could move, before he could even think, the one with the sword strode forward and plunged their blade through the wreckage. One by one. No hesitation. No mercy.

By the time he reached the edge of the road, they were already dead. The sword mage turned slightly, catching sight of him at last. The woman with the staff noticed the shift in his posture, followed his gaze, and saw him too.

“There he is,” she said with a cruel smile. “You made us get our hands dirty.”

Her words meant nothing. After seeing the kind little girl, something in him felt strangely hollow, and yet the rage still surged beneath that emptiness, bubbling up like it had nowhere left to go.

He exhaled softly, long and slow, trying to tame it. Trying to hold it back one last time. But it was too late. The little girl’s smile played in his mind once more.

I know I need answers… but not from them, he thought. Not from heartless, cruel fanatics like this. He was done running. Done hiding ,if this was the outcome.

Innocent lives, destroyed, simply because he chose to rest here. They chose this path. I’ll walk them to the end of it. His control had been fraying for days,and now, he let it snap.

Magic flooded through him like floodwaters through shattered stone. It wasn’t rage that guided it, but clarity. Precision. He wanted them to feel it, to understand what it meant to be powerless in the face of something they couldn’t bind, couldn't leash, couldn’t even name.

The wind died. The ground split in slow, deliberate fractures beneath his feet.

The one with the wand raised it instinctively, but the spell backfired, ripping through their own arm in a flash of screaming light. They fell, clutching a limb that no longer obeyed them.

The sword mage charged, reckless, confident, but shadows clung to their feet, thick and alive, until they couldn’t move. The ground beneath them softened, then swallowed them whole without a sound.

Only the woman remained. She turned to run. He didn’t let her. The air around her thickened, not just with force, but with intent. Light bent. Sound vanished. Time itself seemed to hesitate.

Then her eyes met his. Something in him reached out, something deeper than spellwork, older than focus magic, and touched her mind.

In a blink, she was somewhere else.

The sky above her was split with cracks of burning starlight. The earth pulsed like it was breathing. The village lay in ruins around her, not as it was, but as she had made it. She saw the child standing before her, offering a flower, one that dripped with blood.

Then came a fear that wasn’t hers. An old man’s face. And many, many more ,ones she barely remembered, blurred behind flames and screams.

She screamed as their fear consumed her, their final moments becoming her prison. Only now, she felt every drop of pain she had inflicted.

She dropped, unconscious before she hit the ground. He stood in the silence that followed, the weight of what he’d done settling slowly over his shoulders.

His knees gave out as the last of the magic slipped from his body. He hit the ground hard, hands buried in scorched earth, lungs scraping for breath that wouldn’t come easy.

He didn’t understand what he’d just done not fully. The magic had moved on its own, deeper and stranger than anything he’d ever touched.

He sat there, the smoke curling past him, unsure if he’d stopped something… or started it.

I write stories stitched from starlight & sorrow — follow if you’d like to read more.

[inkandember]

The Quiet Road

The road didn’t lead anywhere anymore. Grass grew thick between its stones, and if you stood still enough, you could hear birds nesting where bricks once held firm. Nature reclaimed everything around you, moving quietly, deliberately, as if you weren't even there.

It was the kind of road people forgot. the sort that made you wonder why it had ever been built at all. But I still walked it. Sometimes I stopped, id pluck a weed and roll it between my fingers until it released its scent, bitter and earthy, threaded with minty freshness.

Today, something different caught my eye a coin pressed into the mud. Rust had rendered its face unreadable, but along its edges lingered what looked disturbingly like dried blood. I pocketed it anyway. Even forgotten things have stories, after all, and I've always been good at listening.

In the eerie silence that followed, a whisper drifted through the trees, softer than wind but clearer, purposeful. The coin suddenly felt cold, stealing warmth from my palm. I turned slowly, instinctively aware of being watched from the tangled undergrowth.

Eyes, silver-bright and ancient, blinked open in the shadows. A creature emerged, elegant and otherworldly. It moved on four legs, its form somewhere between stag and wolf, crafted from swirling shadows and threads of moonlight. It tilted its head slowly, its gaze fixed on the coin trembling in my hand.

"You carry memory," it growled softly, its voice resonating deep within my chest. "Do you offer it freely, or must it be taken?"

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[inkandember]

Welcome to Ink and Ember

I’m a fantasy writer. My work leans into quiet strangeness, gods half-remembered,ghosts, spirits, demons, eldritch things, and forces that have long since lost there names to time.

I post original short fiction here. I also take commissions if you’d like something written just for you.

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