The bones loomed long before they reached the village.
At first, they seemed like just strange ridgelines in the ash—a pale curve on the horizon, too symmetrical for stone, too still for drift. But as Evelyn and the others crested the ridge, the true scale came into focus.
Ribs. Enormous, fossil-white and half-buried, arched like broken cathedral supports. A beast—once titanic—had fallen here. Whatever it was had died ages ago, picked clean by time and sand, leaving only a skeleton vast enough to cradle a village in its chest cavity.
"Dust Village," Vareth muttered from beneath his travel cowl. "It was once a sanctuary. Miners, scavengers, and dream-hunters came here during the Scorch Recession. Until the land cracked beneath it."
"It's inside the thing?" Torren asked, limping slightly.
"In it," Vareth confirmed. "Sheltered beneath its ribs. They say the villagers believed the beast's bones protected them from the deeper hungers."
Evelyn stared down at the settlement below. It was eerily intact—rooftops sunken into sediment, and a crumbling stone wall marking the boundary between wasteland and sanctuary. Lanterns still hung from posts, swaying lightly. No smoke. No movement.
"It's abandoned," Evelyn said.
Vareth shook his head. "No. They're still there. They just don't speak much anymore."
Torren swore under his breath.
They descended cautiously. The air grew stiller the closer they got, muffled like a blanket pulled tight. By the time they stepped beneath the first rib arch—taller than a tower—the wind itself had gone quiet.
It wasn't just silent.
It was listening.
The village's first inhabitants revealed themselves not as guards, but watchers. Children with pale dust-caked skin peered from window slats. A hunched elder stirred ash with a brittle stick. No words were offered.
Only eyes.
The trio passed a shattered fountain where heartfire glyphs had once burned. Now they were cracked, inert—etched into the ground like memories scoured by time. Evelyn paused and knelt, brushing her fingers over one.
It pulsed faintly beneath her hand.
"She feels them," Vareth murmured. "They left their echoes here, too."
Torren shifted nervously. "This place doesn't feel right. It's like something wants to be forgotten."
From a nearby doorway, a voice called: "Visitors don't come often."
An old woman stepped out, blind in one eye, her robes stitched with bead-charms made of teeth and rust. Her presence was commanding—like a tree that had seen too many winters.
"You carry the ember," she said to Evelyn without greeting.
Evelyn tensed. "I carry a shard."
The woman chuckled. "And shards carry you. Come."
She led them through winding alleys, all built within the great skeletal structure. The bones formed walls and roofs, latticed with woven hide and scraps of cloth. They passed a mural carved into ribbone—a depiction of the beast's fall, and a warden kneeling before it with arms outstretched, offering flame to the sky.
"The beast's death marked the beginning of the Wastes," the elder explained. "It bled out fire. It called the first Echoes."
Vareth frowned. "That's only half-true."
"Half-truths are all we have left."
She took them to a central chamber built within the beast's heartcage—what must have once been the village's hall. Crude maps lined the walls, showing tunnels beneath, networks long since collapsed. And in the center: a pit. Not wide, but deep—braced with scorched stone.
"This is where the ember once grew," she said. "A wild seed. They called it the Heart-Kiln."
Evelyn stepped closer. Heat rose faintly from the pit, despite the chill in the air.
"It still burns."
"It remembers you," the old woman said. "And it may offer something, if you dare the descent."
Torren grabbed her arm. "You're not climbing into some ancient fire hole just because it remembers you."
Evelyn's shard pulsed once—warm, eager.
She didn't answer.
She descended.
The air shifted as she climbed down, rung by rung. The pit narrowed into a throat of stone, suffused with red light. At the bottom, she found it.
A brazier of broken stone sat alone, cracked but glowing. A flame danced within it—not wild, but waiting. It pulsed in rhythm with her breath.
"You were called," came a voice.
It wasn't the Warden. It was younger. Feminine. Faintly amused.
"Who are you?" Evelyn asked.
"No one," the voice replied. "And everyone. I was the girl who stoked this fire once. Before the Guild. Before the collapse. I fed it with memories."
"What do you want from me?"
"To know if you'll do the same."
The flame surged—showing her visions of the Dust Village thriving, of children laughing, of elders singing into the dark to keep the beasts at bay. Then: silence. The fire died. The Echoes came. The girl vanished into the kiln.
"Your shard connects you," the voice said. "But connection is not control. That comes with cost."
The flame turned pale gold.
"Do you offer memory?"
Evelyn hesitated.
Then placed her hand over her heart, and whispered her own story—Isenhold, her family, the fall, the run, the dreams. The flame took it all, drank it like water, and glowed brighter.
"You learn," said the voice. "You burn."
When she climbed back out, the old woman was waiting.
"You fed the kiln," she said.
"I did."
The woman nodded solemnly. "Then you carry not just the shard—but us. Our stories. Our memory."
Evelyn felt the ember inside her settle. Not cooler. Not hotter.
Deeper.