A Light Meant For No One

In the soil, I remembered love.

You wake in the soil. Not above it. Within.

Your mouth is filled with ash and roots.

You do not breathe, for you do not remember how.

The sun is not where you left it. It is lower now; closer, tired and watching.

You feel its heat in your bones, but you do not warm.

You are being remembered.

There is a name under your tongue.

Not yours. Older.

When you speak it, the worms in your skull begin to sing.

You join them. You have always known the melody.

You run. The sky is screaming, and the heavens are giving birth to fire.

There is beauty amidst the horror.

You clutch their hand in desperation, pulling them along behind you. You do not remember when you first took it, only that you have never let go. Their name is a familiar rhythm behind your teeth, well used, well loved. You do not say it, you fear doing so will shatter it.

The streets of Xurathel are glowing now; holy light cascading through the temple spires like molten judgement. Somewhere to the east, the priestesses of Ishara are singing. You hear them as they are set ablaze, their mournful symphony burning away into screams.

You remember it clearly.

Long ago, beneath the boughs of the great trees, the scent of ghost orchids floated upon the air, as you danced beneath the moon and stars at High Spring. The same priestesses had swung their censers, the air warm and filled with the delicate scent of crushed moon blossom. You offered your praises to the Earthmother; celebrating her verdancy with fertility rituals of your own, enacted beneath luminous Nurrian skies. You had both been so young then, joyous and full of hope. A love that burned bright and beautiful, like the Veil itself, a constant, reassuring flame in your heart.

Even then, you spoke of children, not as some future, abstract dream, but a certainty.

“I’ll teach them to shape clay”, you said.

“And I’ll teach them to read the stars,” said they.

That was the future you held between you; soft and sacred. A voice, buried deep within your mind, tells you that to resist the coming storm is futile. That you should find a quiet place to lie down and accept your fate, face the oncoming oblivion in each other’s arms.

You reject the voice.

Instead, you run, pulling your love behind you, passing through empty sandstone streets. Most of Xurathel's people had fled the city already. More had perished. Pausing beneath a crumbling portico, you see the sandstone etched with prayers that no longer hold their shape. Your chest heaves inhaling air thick with embers and the scent of burning oil. They lean into you, too tired to speak, breath rattling in your ear. Across the plaza, a priest you recognise stumbles from the doorway of the shattered Church of Continuance. His robes are half-gone, eaten by the flames. He falls to his knees and begins to pray. You used to walk past that temple every eighth-day. Your beloved liked the murals; gold and indigo, tracing the threads of time like rivers. They said it made them feel safe, the idea that nothing was ever truly lost.

The priest does not pray to the new-born god. You cannot hear his words, but you know the cadence. A Firstborn hymn, dedicated to the Watcher. His voice rises, steady and defiant, singing until the fire finds him. Until his song gives way to screams.

Your beloved squeezes your hand. Their eyes do not leave the ash where he kneels.

“We should go,” you say.

“Not yet,” they whisper. “Let him finish. Let us be his last witness. He was good to us.”

It does not take long.

You pass beneath the gates, rushing through the markets where the nomadic Sarakar used to sell sunfruit, gathered from the shimmering grasslands of the south. The twins used to love them; fingers sticky, cheeks sun-warmed, juice running down their chins as they laughed. You always bought too many.

There is nothing left now. Only statues with melted faces, cracked cobbles and charred remains. You see others, running from the golden fire. They shepherd their families through the red-hued streets. You make eye contact with a father who had slowed to catch his breath. He carries a daughter. He nods at you, no hope in his eyes. It is simultaneously a silent farewell, and a shared hope that you both might live to see a new dawn.

You both hurry onwards, continuing on your path through the market. You feel an intense, blistering heat, behind you, then the crash of your body against the cobblestones as your beloved tackles you into an alleyway. A solar flare scours the street behind you. The smell of burning flesh fills the air. The briefest of screams, cut short.

Another family who will never see tomorrow's dawn.

“Do you remember what you said?” your beloved murmurs, their forehead resting against yours. They look tired now. So very tired.

“I said a lot of things.”

“Not that night. The night the stars fell. The night we wove the garland. When we bled into the cup.”

You swallow. Those words seemed apt, now.

“I said, ‘I will hold you through the breaking of all things. I will find you even if the world burns.’”

“You did,” they smile. “You always said impossible things.”

You smile, but it’s broken.

I meant it, you think. I still do.

But you say nothing. Instead, you get to your feet, holding them tighter as the sky begins to break, collapsing into each other’s arms like you were made for this ruin. As if this burning world was created for just the two of you.

Their lips taste of salt, smoke and loss.

You kiss them like you believe there will be something beyond all this.

You do not.

They let out a sob, raw, involuntary, and afraid. “Do you think we’ll make it?”

Silence is your answer. The white ash that covers their face is streaked with lines from their fallen tears. Gently, you brush one away. You gaze at them, forcing yourself to remember every contour and ridge of the face that is so familiar, so beloved by you, to engrave it into the stone of your memory, imprint it into the sinews of your body. You clutch their face in your hands, holding them close to your chest. You remember their voice in the candlelight, soft and certain as they recited the Hymn of the First Flame.

“We are not forgotten,” they whispered. “We are the Cherished. The Starwalker sees us. He loves us.” 

You believed them. You both believed. You wore his glyph around your neck, an eleven-pointed star carved from riverstone. The god who taught the winds to sing. The god who bled to birth the Firstborn. The god who wove the protecting Veil from starlight and thought.

Somewhere above, Mahagos descends. This new light falls like purifying scripture through broken glass. Within your chest, you feel a deep dread rising, but you are not at the end, not yet.

You are beneath the fig tree again.

You remember the old stories.

Of the Creator, the blessed Starwalker, who had now been gone for so very long. His Firstborn protected you; the Cherished, in his stead. They loved you. They cared for you. Then the Creator returned.

How could the gods let this happen? After all you had offered. After all the libations that had left your lips, and the offerings poured out onto the greedy soils of Nur. You were there when the proclamation came. When the Firstborn declared themselves sovereign.

No more intercession, no more obedience. They would protect you now. they would love you fully.

For a moment, the world rejoiced, for a moment, you believed you'd been chosen.

What came next began with silence in the high places.

The shrines of the Firstborn grew cold. Offerings dried untouched. The trees ceased to hum. You said it was a test. They said it was a sign. The priests said nothing. Then came the ashlight, and all it entailed.

The putrefying earth, the endless droughts, the bitter winters, and the Aunari.

Their steps drag. Your hand tightens around theirs. They’re slowing. Without hesitation, you take them in your arms, lifting them as you continue forward, towards the Spire. Their hands clasp behind your neck, clinging to you as they once did when you lifted them over the threshold of your home. If you can just make it to the Spire, then perhaps the Weavers could help you. Your beloved taught you the old prayer to them. Not the one that the priests approved of, but the one their mother whispered before the first light of dawn, a prayer so old the trees remembered it, even if the gods did not. You said it together that night, under the withered fig tree, praying for absolution, praying for the divine to show some inkling of mercy.

Nothing happened, but something heard. You still sang. Even when the skies cracked and the Spire turned black. You sang until the fire sang back.

You struggle with the exertion now, your aching body tired and failing. They are light now, so much lighter than they should be. You are, too.

Your bodies thinned as the famine came, as the Earthmother withdrew her blessings from Nur. You still smiled. After all, you still had each other. You still had your faith. You still had your children.

But no longer. Famine does that. It hollows. It hushes. It leaves you weightless.

You remember when they were born. Twins, as was right. A boy and a girl; blessed and bright. A hard labour, but one that ended in joy, in tears, consecrated by the whispered blessing of Mother Vorath. The priestess said it was a sign; that your love had been seen and answered, that the gods smiled upon you. You named them, one for the rivers, one for the stars. You remember holding them against your chest, still warm, their tiny hearts beating like new prayers, your fingers entwined with those of your beloved.

You were both good parents. You still sang to them when the rains failed, when the harvest withered and paled. You told them the Weavers would find a way. They never cried much. Not even at the end. When you weigh so little to begin with, it can hurt too much to keep going.

You buried your children beneath the great ossuary of Xurathel. It was a quiet ceremony, attended only by the two of you. There were not many here left alive to attend. It hurts to remember, though their names no longer come to your mind. It is as if someone else is remembering for you, dragging up the pain, but not the details. There is only the feeling of what once was. A remembrance of who you once were.

And it is agonising.

It would have been so easy to have given up then, to hold each other in your shared agonies and let your grief wash over you in great waves until you were both consumed by it. But that would not bring them back. Only ensure you left this world just as hollow.

So, you made the figures. Kneeling in ash and river-clay, you shaped them with trembling hands; two small effigies, light as breath, made in the likeness of what you remembered, or what you were afraid you might forget. Red clay for their bodies. Threads of their clothes bound with blackgrass. The ash of the hearth where they last laughed.

At dusk, you spoke their lives aloud.

One memory for each year they lived. Spoken without weeping. That was the rule. The pain had to be named before it could be carried. And when the last remembrance passed your lips, your hands broke the figures on the mourning stone. One. Then the other. Quiet cracks, like twigs underfoot. Your beloved lit the fire. In went the fragments. The threads. The braid. A pinch of soul-salt. And then, silence.

Eight days of it. Grey veils and bitter root. No words. No songs. If the gods wished, they would come to you in dreams. If not, then you would carry the silence as their final gift.

Because love demanded it.

Because grief is the shape that love leaves behind.

Because the gods still watched over you, then.

But your gods did not come.

It is close now. The sacred heat. The holy cleansing. The golden flames that erase doubt and flesh alike. You remember wanting it once. You remember singing with the others. Welcoming the birth of a new god. You remember opening the gates. You remember what came through. You do not tell them. You cannot tell them. You had never dreamed that the Creator would offer up his Cherished upon the funeral pyre of his Children. The sky burns with ashlight, cold and terrible.

The wind carries the scent of jasmine, and with it, a memory.

The psalms etched into the stone over the cenotaph, beneath which you prayed with thousands of others. Lord Taros himself had blessed your union, the Grovetender had crowned you both with twinbind and ashthorn circlets as you made your sacred vows before them. A blessed day. A happy day. A day worth remembering.

You stood barefoot before the altar of woven boughs, beneath the arch of scorched laurel and fig. The sun was high, veiled in smoke. Not from war then, but from incense; goldroot, jasmine, emberthorn, burned to call the eyes of the gods upon you. The priest did not speak. That was not their place. This was a vow given by mortals alone, to each other and to the divine, beneath no gaze but the Shaman and the Warrior. You had gathered the twinbind yourselves. Sought it in the river-cloisters where the vines curled like breath into stone. You wove them with ashthorn blooms, bright as blood, blooming only where fire had passed. You crowned one another in silence. The thorns stayed in the wreaths. That too was part of the vow.

Then came the binding.

You slashed your palm and bled into the matrimonial cup; they did the same. You both drank from it, long and deep. You pressed your palms together and the priest poured the oil of remembrance over your hands; it was sap-dark, drawn from the trees that grew in the Grove. You whispered your vows, each word sacred:

Not promises of ease.

Not dreams of peace.

But oaths to endure.

To hold through the breaking of all things.

Then the fire was lit.

Together, you cast the wreaths into the brazier. So did the thousands of others wed that day. Not to destroy, but to transform them. The smoke would rise to Ishara, to record your bond. The heat would carry your names to Thar’zil, so he might forge them together in the halls beyond time. That night, meteors rained across the sky. The gods had blessed these unions, the oracles cried.

Two shadows on the stone, cast long by firelight.

Two voices made one.

Two paths bound together.

Along with thousands of your kin.

You were wed in the old way.

The true way.

The way of Nur.

The fire reaches the outer districts. The very air is a wrathful sermon. It burns the lungs of the unbelievers last. Your beloved will not make it to the Spire. Perhaps you could make it, should you go on alone. But you will not leave them. It looms ahead, blackened and bright. And then, your knees give.

Not from pain, but from sound. No, not sound. Not exactly.

A light that vibrates within your bones.

A pressure behind your eyes. A language unspoken, but imposed upon you.

You hear the voice of Mahagos.

"YOU. ARE. OFFERINGS."

Your beloved gasps, collapsing beside you. Their hand tightens on yours. Blood runs from their nose. You stand. Somehow, you stand.

“Not them,” you whisper. “Take me.”

The fire does not answer. It undulates across the sky in twisting columns of fierce gold, scouring the land. As a new god is born, the old world dies.

You pull them through the ruins of the Old Gardens. This is where you first kissed. Where you first caught a glimpse of them, all those long years ago. They caught your gaze. A slow smile spread across their face as they recognised the same spark you felt; love, sudden and undeniable. You had never believed in love at first sight, but they had proven you wrong that summer afternoon. This is where they told you their truth. That which they had never shared with any before and had never shared with any after. This is where you said you would never leave.

You have always been a liar, but never to them. They fall. You catch them; too fast, too hard. One of your legs buckles beneath you. Their breath catches. Yours does not return. It doesn’t matter now. They look at you, eyes wet with ashen tears, and ask you to stay.

You do.

When the fire comes, it hurts, but unlike flesh, unlike bone.

It is the pain of being remembered wrong. The ache of your name no longer fitting your shape, a sorrow that strips, not sears.

Unwriting, unmaking, unbeing.

You whisper the name you were afraid to say. It leaves your lips like smoke. Like song, you feel it carve itself into the air. Into them.

They look at you, and in their eyes: peace.

Their voice is leaving you. You can feel it; soft on your skin, then gone. The memory of their laugh unravels in your mind like frayed thread. You remember their favourite flower… and then you don’t. You try to picture their hands, and only smoke comes. You try to speak, but the words fall from your tongue like ash.

You were together for twenty-six years. Or was it twelve? Or five?

You remember the wedding, the fig tree, the children…

No.

You remember running.

A city burning.

Someone holding your hand.

You remember you loved them.

That is the last thing the fire lets you keep.

Until it takes you with it.

Somewhere in the ash, a fig tree dreams. And in its roots, your name lingers.