They didn't get far.
The streets of Ashwick had become a labyrinth of chaos and death.
Stumbling out of the square and into a nightmare. The panic had spread from the town center like ripples in a pond, washing through the streets, turning neighbors into enemies, turning fear into violence. Everywhere—people fighting, fleeing, dying. The Imperial guards had drawn swords and were cutting down anyone who came near, their blades rising and falling in mechanical efficiency. Blood sprayed across the cobblestones. Bodies crumpled. The screams of the dying mixed with the screams of the living until it was impossible to tell them apart.
The townspeople were fighting back with whatever they could find—sticks, stones, kitchen knives, bare fists against steel armor. A blacksmith swung a hammer at a guard's head, caving in the man's helm with a sound like a bell being struck. A woman stabbed a soldier in the back with a butcher's knife while he was occupied with someone else, driving the blade between the plates of his armor and twisting. A group of miners used pickaxes and shovels, their tools meant for breaking rock now breaking bone.
Chaos. Madness. Hell itself brought to earth.
And above it all, rain began to fall from the sky.
The first drops came slowly, pattering against the cobblestones like tears from heaven. Like the sky itself was weeping for what was happening below. Then the sky opened up and rain poured down in sheets, cold and relentless, driving into Petro's face and plastering his hair to his skull. Thunder rumbled overhead. Lightning flickered on the horizon. The storm had been building all day, and now it unleashed its fury on the town.
Within seconds, soaked to the bone. The rain ran into eyes, blurring vision. It filled mouths when trying to breathe, cold and tasting of ash. It turned the streets into rivers, washing blood and bodies toward the drains.
"We need to go!" Suzanne shouted over the chaos, her voice barely audible above the screaming and the roar of flames.
Spinning in a circle, looking for an escape route. There wasn't one. The main streets were packed with fighting—guards and civilians locked together in brutal, bloody combat. The side streets were choked with fleeing people, trampling each other in their panic to escape.
Behind them, the square was burning. The execution platform was on fire. Buildings on every side were catching, flames leaping from roof to roof despite the rain. The smell of burning wood and burning flesh filled the air—that sickly sweet smell that would never be forgotten, like pork roasting but wrong, fundamentally wrong. Underneath it, the acrid bite of smoke, the chemical reek of burning wool and leather.
The priest's body was still twitching on the cobblestones. The flames had died down but they hadn't gone out—they smoldered inside him, glowing through his blackened flesh like embers in a fire. Not screaming anymore. Not moving. But not quite dead either.
Where Hank had stood, there was only empty space. The boy had vanished into the panicking crowd, taking his terrible power with him. But the damage was done. The sight of the priest burning alive had broken something in the mob. The terror had turned to rage, and the rage had turned to violence.
The guards were trying to restore order. They'd formed into defensive lines, shields raised, spears out. But there were too many townspeople and not enough soldiers. The crowd was beyond reason, beyond fear of death. They were fighting with the desperate fury of people who had nothing left to lose.
"This way!" Pulling Suzanne toward a narrow alley between two buildings.
Running through it, splashing through puddles of rainwater and something darker. At the other end, emerging onto a side street just as a woman ran past, her dress on fire. Screaming, slapping at the flames, but the rain wasn't putting them out. One of those blue flames, like the priest. She crashed into a market stall and kept running, spreading the fire behind her.
Jerking Suzanne in the opposite direction.
Rounding a corner and nearly colliding with a knight dragging a woman by her hair. The knight's sword was red to the hilt, dripping in the rain. Seeing the children, he raised his blade.
"Heretic spawn," he snarled.
Frozen. This was it. After everything—after reaching Suzanne during the executions, after the priest burning, after the chaos—they were going to die here. In an alley. At the hands of a blood-drunk knight who saw children as enemies.
But before the knight could swing, a man tackled him from behind.
It was the baker—a big man with flour still dusting his blood-spattered apron. No weapon but weight and surprise. The knight went down hard, his helm clanging against the cobblestones. The woman scrambled away, sobbing.
The baker grabbed a loose cobblestone and brought it down on the knight's head. Again. Again. Again. The knight's helm dented, then cracked, then caved in. Blood sprayed with each impact. The baker's face was twisted with rage, teeth bared, more animal than man.
When the knight stopped moving, the baker looked up at Petro and Suzanne. His eyes were wild, lost somewhere they couldn't follow.
"Run, children," he said. His voice was hoarse. "Get somewhere safe. Hide."
He didn't wait for their thanks. Picking up the dead knight's sword—a proper weapon now—he ran back toward the square, roaring challenges at the guards he found there.
Taking Suzanne's hand and running.
Not knowing where to go. Just knowing they had to move, had to get away from the fighting, had to find somewhere safe. Feet carried them automatically through streets walked a thousand times, dodging between buildings, cutting through alleys, following paths worn into memory from years of living on these streets.
Stumbling down one alley and then another, feet splashing through water and blood. The rain was coming down harder now, turning the streets into rivers that ran red with the blood of the dying. Everything was gray and cold and wet. The world had lost all color, reduced to shades of ash and crimson.
They passed a burning building—what used to be the tanner's shop—where people screamed for help from upper windows. Silhouettes visible through the smoke, arms waving, voices raw with terror. A woman was trying to lower her child from a second-story window, but the rope she'd made from bedsheets wasn't long enough. The child dangled ten feet above the ground, crying, while flames licked at the window frame above.
Wanting to stop. Wanting to help. Wanting to do something.
But there was nothing to do. The flames were too high, the building too far gone. Even as they watched, part of the roof collapsed inward, sending a shower of sparks into the rain. The woman's scream cut off abruptly. The child fell.
Turning away. Kept running. Couldn't look. Couldn't think about it.
A mother lying dead in the street, her dress soaked with rain and blood, a sword wound in her chest. Two children knelt beside her—a boy maybe four years old, a girl maybe six—crying and shaking her and begging her to wake up. "Mama! Mama, please!" Their voices were high and thin, lost in the roar of the storm. Their mother's eyes stared at the sky, seeing nothing.
The children were alone. Afraid. Their mother was never getting up again.
But couldn't stop. Couldn't help. Had Suzanne's hand and that was all that could be managed. If stopping for every person who needed help, would never make it out. Would die here in these streets, and Suzanne would die too.
Had to keep moving.
Three guards beating an old man in a doorway. The man was curled in a ball, arms wrapped around his head, while the guards kicked him in the ribs, the back, the legs. "Please," he gasped between blows. "Please stop. I'm just a cobbler. I was just trying to get home. I haven't done anything wrong."
The guards didn't stop. They kicked him until he stopped moving. Then they kicked him some more, until his body was just a broken thing that had once been a person.
Didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Had to keep moving.
***
Turning down another street and nearly running straight into a group of townspeople dragging a guard from his horse.
The man was young—barely older than a teenager—and terror twisted his face as rough hands pulled him down. His armor was battered, his helm knocked askew. Trying to fight, trying to draw his sword, but there were too many of them.
"Murderer!" a woman shrieked, clawing at his face. "You killed my husband!"
"Please—" the guard gasped. "I'm just following orders—"
"Orders!" A man spat in his face. "You burned our Duke! You executed our families! Orders!"
They beat him to death with their bare hands. Frozen, watching as fists and boots rose and fell. The guard's pleas turned to screams, then to whimpers, then to nothing at all. His blood mixed with the rain on the cobblestones.
When they were done, the mob left his body broken in the street and moved on, hunting for more guards to kill.
Suzanne pulled at Petro's arm. "Come on!"
***
Two streets over, they found a young mother trying to shelter her infant in a doorway. The baby was wailing, a thin, desperate sound that cut through the chaos. The woman rocked it desperately, tears streaming down her face, begging it to be quiet.
"Shh, shh, please, my love, please be quiet—"
A guard appeared at the end of the street, his sword red with blood. Hearing the crying, he turned toward it. His eyes were empty, dead. He'd killed so many people today that one more meant nothing.
"No!" The woman clutched her baby tighter. "Please, she's just a baby!"
The guard raised his sword.
Wanting to look away. Wanting to run. But feet wouldn't move. Standing there, frozen, as the guard brought his sword down.
The woman screamed. The baby stopped crying.
The guard wiped his blade on the woman's dress and walked away.
Suzanne sobbed, her face buried in Petro's shoulder. Hollow. Empty. Something inside had broken. It couldn't be fixed.
They kept moving.
***
In an alleyway, a group of children no older than Petro huddled around a dead woman. It took a moment to realize it was the schoolteacher—a kind woman who'd sometimes given scraps of food when she saw him begging. The children were her students, orphans she'd taken in after their parents died in a mining accident last year.
Now she was dead, a spear through her chest, and the children were alone.
One of them—a boy with red hair and freckles—looked up with wide, terrified eyes. "What do we do?"
Mouth opened but no words came out. What to say? What advice to give? Just another street child, just another survivor trying to make it through the day.
"Hide," finally managed. Voice sounded strange. "Find somewhere safe and hide until it's over."
The boy nodded. Gathering the other children—there were four of them—they disappeared into the shadows of the alley. Hoped they would make it. Doubted they would.
***
They passed a merchant's house that was being looted. People swarmed through the broken door, arms full of stolen goods—fabric, jewelry, coin. A fight broke out inside over a bag of silver. Someone screamed. A man stumbled out, clutching his stomach, blood pouring between his fingers.
Three steps and collapsed face-first into the mud.
Nobody stopped to help him. Nobody cared. In the chaos, human life had become worthless.
***
Near the old mill, they saw a group of men executing a knight who'd been captured. The knight was on his knees, hands bound behind his back, defiant even in defeat.
"I die for the Lord of Light!" he shouted. "You heretics will burn in the—"
The executioner—a butcher Petro recognized—brought down his meat cleaver. It took three blows to sever the knight's head. The first two bit deep but didn't cut through the spine. The knight gurgled and choked. The third blow finished it.
His head rolled across the cobblestones and came to rest against a wall, eyes still open, mouth still moving soundlessly.
The men cheered. They kicked the headless body until it toppled over.
***
Running until lungs burned and legs shook and the injured hand throbbed with every heartbeat. Running until the sounds of fighting faded behind them and the streets grew quieter, emptier, the residents fled or dead.
The fighting seemed to be everywhere. Every street, every alley, every square. No safe place in Ashwick, no haven from the violence. The entire town had become a battlefield.
Finally, familiar paths. Past the smoldering remains of the cooper's shop. Through the butcher's back room where meat hung from hooks, swaying gently in the heat from nearby fires, looking too much like human bodies in the dim light. The raw smell of uncooked meat mixed with smoke. To the alley. The hiding place. The place where the bruised hand had been nursed just two days ago.
The cramped space between the butcher's back wall and the garbage pile was still there, untouched by the chaos. Pulling Suzanne down into it and holding her close.
The rain poured down around them, washing over them, soaking them to the bone. Pressing against the wall, making themselves as small as possible, trying to be invisible.
Through the narrow gap between buildings, they watched feet pass. Running feet. Stumbling feet. Then the legs of horses, their riders shouting orders. Screams and shouts, the clash of steel on steel, the wet thunk of blades hitting flesh.
A man's voice, broken and desperate: "Please, I have children—"
The sound of a sword going through him. His body fell right outside their hiding spot. Could have reached out and touched him. The man's eyes were open, staring at nothing, rain collecting in the sockets. Twitching for a long time before going still.
The knight who'd killed him walked on without looking back.
Holding Suzanne tighter. She buried her face in Petro's chest, her whole body shaking with silent sobs. Wanting to tell her it would be okay, that they'd survive, that help would come.
But couldn't lie. Not after what they'd seen.
The night passed slowly.
The sounds of violence continued for hours. Sometimes close, sometimes distant, but always present. Screams. Prayers. Curses. The clash of weapons. The roar of flames. The thunder of collapsing buildings.
And through it all, the rain. Relentless. Uncaring. Washing blood from the streets and bodies into the gutters.
Eventually the sounds grew fewer and further between. The screaming stopped. The fighting died down. Only the rain remained, and the occasional call of guards searching for survivors.
"All traitors are to be executed on sight," a voice announced, passing close to their hiding spot. "By order of the High Inquisitor. Any who harbor heretics will share their fate."
Didn't move. Barely breathed.
The voice moved on.
***
The rain let up finally, but by that time it was deep night and freezing cold. Couldn't feel hands or feet. Teeth chattering so hard, afraid someone would hear. Beside him, Suzanne was shivering uncontrollably, her lips blue, her skin like ice.
Had to get her warm or they would die. Survive the massacre only to freeze to death in an alley.
"Wait here," whispered. Voice was hoarse from the cold, from crying, from breathing smoke. "I need to find us somewhere warmer."
"Don't..." Her voice was barely audible, her jaw trembling too hard to form words. "Don't leave me."
"I won't. I promise. I'll be right back."
Crawling out of the hole, legs screaming in protest. Cramped in that corner for hours, pressed against cold stone, muscles had stiffened into knots. Stretching, trying to work feeling back into limbs.
Emerging from the alley and looking around.
Ashwick was destroyed.
Several houses were smoldering despite the rain. Others had burned completely, leaving only blackened skeletons of timber and stone. The street was littered with debris—broken doors, shattered windows, overturned carts. And bodies. So many bodies.
Men lying in the street with swords still in their hands. Women clutching children, both dead. Guards in their crimson tabards, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Civilians in their working clothes, cut down trying to fight or trying to flee.
A cart passed, pulled by two men who looked too tired to be afraid. Bodies were piled high in the cart bed—stacked like cordwood, arms and legs jutting at odd angles. The men's faces were blank, empty. Just doing a job.
They hadn't even made a dent. Bodies were everywhere. Hundreds of them. Maybe more. The entire town center had been packed with people just hours ago. Now it was a graveyard.
Walking in a daze, stepping over corpses and around pools of blood. The smell was overwhelming—burnt flesh, spilled guts, the copper tang of blood. Stomach churned but there was nothing in it to throw up. The cold air carried the stench, made it cling to skin and hair.
Passing the baker. The big man lay on his back in the middle of the street, surrounded by three dead guards. He'd taken them all with him before he died. The knight's sword was still clutched in his hand. His skull was caved in—one of the guards had gotten him with a mace before he fell—but he'd kept fighting anyway. There was a grim satisfaction in his dead face. He'd avenged his family, if nothing else.
Passing the old cobbler who'd been beaten by the guards. The man's face was unrecognizable—just pulp now, shattered bone and torn flesh. His wife would never know what happened to him. Maybe that was a mercy. One of his hands was still outstretched, reaching for the door of his shop, as if he'd been trying to crawl home when he died.
Passing the two children who'd been crying over their mother's body. They weren't crying anymore. Someone had cut their throats. They lay beside their mother in the rain, a family reunited in death. The boy's hand was still reaching for his sister's.
Passing a woman hanging from a second-story window. She must have tried to escape the fire by climbing out, but the smoke had gotten her first. Her body swung gently in the wind, a grotesque pendulum. Below her, three more bodies lay in the street—people who'd jumped to escape the flames and broken their legs, their backs, their necks on impact.
Passing a guard who'd been crucified against the side of a building. Someone had nailed him to the wooden wall while he was still alive—the blood trails showed he'd struggled—and left him to die slowly. His head hung down, chin resting on his chest. Rain dripped from his fingertips.
Passing the remains of the market stalls. Overturned. Smashed. Burned. Goods scattered everywhere—cloth trampled into the mud, pottery shattered, food rotting in the rain. A fortune in merchandise destroyed in an afternoon of violence.
Passing a horse with its guts spilling out onto the cobblestones. The animal was still alive, somehow, still breathing in shallow, pained gasps. Its eyes rolled wildly. Wanting to help it, to end its suffering, but had no weapon. Could only keep walking and try not to hear its labored breathing.
Passing bodies. So many bodies. Men and women and children. Guards and civilians. Rich and poor. The dead made no distinction. In death, everyone was equal.
So much death. Impossible to process. Seen people die before—common enough on the streets—but so many, all at once. The mind couldn't hold it. Couldn't make sense of it. So just walked, and looked, and absorbed nothing at all.
Numbness was a mercy. If letting himself feel, if letting himself think about what all of this meant, he would break. So pushed the emotions down, locked them away in some dark corner, and kept moving.
Found himself at the town square without quite meaning to go there.
The devastation was worse here. The platform was a charred ruin, the headsman's block nothing but a mound of charred wood and warped metal. Bodies were piled in great mounds, stacked with timber and set alight. The fires had mostly burned out, leaving charred remains that barely looked human anymore. The rain had made the fires inefficient—many of the bodies weren't burned at all, just scorched and wet and beginning to bloat.
The smell was terrible. The smell from the street magnified a thousand times, thick and cloying and inescapable. Gagging, bent double, but nothing came up.
And somehow, impossibly, the smell made him hungry. The roasted meat smell cutting through the death. The empty stomach didn't know the difference between pig and person.
That thought almost broke him. Standing there in the rain-soaked square, surrounded by the burned corpses of neighbors, and the stomach growled. Starting to laugh, a high, thin sound that didn't sound right at all. Then the laughter turned to tears, great heaving sobs that shook the whole body.
Crying for the Duke, who had been good to his people and died for his faith. Crying for the Duchess, who had brought blankets to the poor and screamed defiance at her murderer. Crying for Thomas the merchant and the baker's wife and all the others who'd shown him small kindnesses in a life that had offered very few.
Crying for the town, burning around him.
Crying for himself—a worthless, starving, beaten child who'd somehow survived when so many others hadn't. Who didn't deserve to survive. Who wasn't worth saving.
And crying for Suzanne, shivering and alone in the alley, depending on him when he could barely take care of himself.
Eventually the tears stopped. Eyes were raw, throat aching. Wiping face with hands that were still sticky with someone else's blood.
Had to find something. Blankets. Food. Something to get them through the night. If surviving until morning, maybe slipping out of town. Finding somewhere else to go. Starting over.
Walking through the square, picking through the debris. Most of the buildings around the square were destroyed—burned out or collapsed—but a few were still standing. Finding a merchant's shop with the door bashed in. Inside, among the ransacked goods, a cloak that had been trampled but was still mostly whole. Dirty and wet but better than nothing.
Finding a half-loaf of bread in another shop, fallen behind a counter. Stale and soaked with rainwater but it was food.
Turning to leave when something caught the eye.
A gleam in the ashes. Near the center of the square, where the priest had fallen.
Walking toward it, stepping carefully through the debris. The ground here was warm—residual heat from the fires—and slick with blood that the rain hadn't quite washed away. Kneeling down and brushing aside the ashes.
A golden sun pendant. The priest's holy symbol.
It should have been destroyed. The priest had burned from the inside out, consumed by that terrible blue fire. Everything on him should have been ash. But the pendant was intact, barely even tarnished. It gleamed in the faint light like it had just been polished.
Picking it up. It was warm—not just from the residual heat, but warm in a way that seemed to come from within. The gold was heavy, substantial, probably worth more than ever held in a lifetime.
Should throw it away. This was the symbol of the Church that had come to purge the town. The symbol of the priest who'd presided over the executions. The symbol of everything that had destroyed life.
But didn't throw it away. Something told him to keep it. To remember. To never forget what had been seen today.
Slipping it into the pocket.
***
A voice called out behind him.
"Who are you?"
Spinning, heart lurching. A knight stood at the edge of the square, watching. But this one was different—he wore different colors than the Imperial guards. His tabard was blue and silver, not crimson. Not from the Order of Annis.
The man stood easy, with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. His beard was gray, his face weathered and lined. But his eyes were kind. Tired, yes. Sad. But kind.
"Petro," finally said. Voice came out as a croak. "An orphan."
Added the last as an afterthought. Father must be dead. The man had been in the crowd—Petro had seen him being herded toward the square with all the others. Too stupid and too drunk to get away. Too mean to surrender.
Wondered if Father Tobias was alive. The old priest had always known what Dragan was—had seen the bruises when he came to check the Church's mine ledgers, had patted Petro's head and murmured honor thy father like scripture could heal cracked bones. The mines had needed a foreman willing to work men to death. The Church had needed those mines. And so the Church had needed Dragan, and so the Church had looked the other way.
The funny thing was, numbness about father being dead. The man had only ever given him pain. But the chaos in the square—without it, Suzanne would have died on the block. She'd been standing frozen when Petro found her, lost in shock, and if he hadn't reached her, hadn't grabbed her hand and pulled her away... Didn't want to think about what would have happened.
Father had only ever given him pain.
"I am Sir Martin of Westminster," the knight said. "I'm going to ask you a very important question and I need you to be honest with me. Can you do that?"
Nodding. "Yes."
"What happened here?"
Silent for a long moment. Looking around at the bodies and the burning buildings and the devastation that had once been home. Thinking about everything seen. The executions. The priest's sermon. The Guard Captain's defiance. Hank's scream of rage and grief.
The blue fire that had erupted from the boy's body and set the world ablaze.
The Lord of Light had killed people in this town, true. The Duke. His family. The Guard Captain. All those nobles and merchants who'd followed Mithras. They'd been executed by the Church, by the priest in his white robes, by the headsman's axe.
But beyond those deaths—the priest and the guards, the chaos and the fire, the massacre in the streets—that had been caused by something else. Someone else.
By Hank.
By Mithras.
If ever doubting that there was evil in the world, that demons were real, that darkness hid behind pretty faces and smooth words—no doubt anymore. True evil had been seen today. The power that heretics wielded, the destruction they could cause, the death they could bring.
The Church had come to save them. The priest had come to purge the corruption. And a demon-worshipping boy had destroyed everything.
When finally speaking, voice was steady.
"A priest came here. To save these people. But a demon came here too."
Meeting Sir Martin's eyes.
"The demon killed them all."
The knight studied him for a long moment. His gaze was sharp, penetrating, weighing the words. Then he nodded slowly.
"An orphan, you say?"
"Yes."
"Are you alone?"
Thinking of Suzanne, shivering in the alley, waiting for him to come back.
"I have one other with me."
The knight nodded again.
"You shall come with me. It's important that people hear of this. We must know what happened so we can prepare."
Didn't dare disagree. The knight gathered him up, helped retrieve Suzanne from the alley—wrapping her in the cloak found, feeding her pieces of the stale bread. Then put them both on his spare horse and they rode out of Ashwick to the northwest.
Away from the smoke and the death.
Away from everything ever known.
Toward something new.
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