FIVE
Chapter Five: Ash and Dawn
The wind has turned sober. No scent of smoke now, only dust, the faint metallic sting of cooled stone.
Vael stands where the earth has stopped burning. Beneath his feet, the once-molten plain has hardened into black glass, a mirror fractured by its own making.
He sees himself in shards, one eye steady, the other distorted.
Sel: You expected revelation.
Vael: I expected silence.
Sel: You can’t tell the difference yet.
The morning is thin and pale. A single hawk wheels above the scarred horizon, circling nothing. Each beat of its wings writes a reminder, the world continues, with or without witness.
Vael turns his palms upward. The skin has blistered and healed unevenly. The pain is gone, but the memory hums under the surface.
He flexes his fingers, testing them against the new day.
Sel: You’ve been given back to yourself. What will you do with it?
Vael: Breathe. Walk. Begin again.
Sel: Begin where?
Vael: Where the noise starts.
He begins to move. The world feels raw, uncluttered , no illusion left, no veil. The air carries nothing but itself. Yet somewhere beyond the ridge, faint vibrations travel through the stone, the murmur of engines, static, voices layered over voices.
Civilization.
He feels it before he sees it , that relentless hum of everything human trying to prove it’s still alive.
Sel: They call it progress.
Vael: It’s louder than hunger.
Sel: It’s designed to be.
He climbs the ridge. The view widens, roads cut into ash, towers in the distance glinting with glass and ambition. Lines of light crawl along them like restless veins. From here, the city looks both holy and hollow.
Vael: They call this success.
Sel: And you?
Vael: A fever. But even fever burns for purpose.
He descends slowly, his reflection flashing in each shard underfoot. The closer he gets, the more the air fills with signals , electric, invisible. His skin tingles, his heartbeat syncing to the static rhythm.
Sel: You’ll be tempted to let them tell you what to want.
Vael: Let them speak. I won’t answer.
Sel: You’ve said that before.
Vael: And yet I’m still here.
He stops at the edge where rock gives way to the first sign of road , a thin strip of concrete cracked by heat. A billboard leans half-collapsed against the slope. Its colors have faded, but the words still whisper through the dust: Faster. Easier. Yours.
He laughs , once, sharp, from the belly.
Sel: They still believe comfort makes gods.
Vael: Let them. Fire made me.
Sel: Fire will make them too, if they wait long enough.
He walks. Every step is deliberate. The glass crunches into dust behind him, leaving a line he doesn’t look back to trace. The city waits ahead, alive with distraction, every window a mouth calling his name in a thousand tongues.
Sel: You can’t outrun the world.
Vael: I’m not running. I’m entering with my own noise.
Sel: You think you can hold your silence inside all that?
Vael: Silence isn’t something I hold. It’s what holds me.
The road bends toward the first pulse of civilization , neon lights flickering faintly even in daylight. He feels their hum in his teeth. For a heartbeat, doubt flickers, the memory of comfort, the lure of belonging, the seduction of ease.
Sel: This is where the real trial begins.
Vael: I know.
Sel: You’ll be offered everything but yourself.
Vael: Then I’ll refuse politely.
Sel: And when refusal costs you warmth, name, belonging?
Vael: Then I’ll remember the forge.
He looks back once. The horizon glows faintly with the heat he left behind, a bruise of orange under the pale sky. The ground between is quiet, neither promise nor warning.
He touches the scar on his palm , the line burned there by the molten stone, and feels it thrum, faint but steady.
Vael: You said it would come down to one thing.
Sel: It always does.
Vael: Me.
Sel: You.
He nods. The sun rises fully now, spilling its clean light over glass, ash, road, and bone. The city breathes out a low, electric sigh.
Vael steps into it.
No chorus. No revelation. Just the deliberate sound of his boots finding rhythm , his own pulse, carrying forward.
• UN