I woke to the scent of smoke. Not the kind that drifted lazily from an early fire or the scorch of a burnt supper. This was thick, heavy, and bitter—so thick it was like ashy hands gripping into my lungs.
The air was wrong. Too hot. Too still. Too loud with quiet.
I didn't stir for a moment. I just lay there, observing the shadows writhe on the walls—unnatural shapes cast by firelight, too close and moving much too fast. I heard something crack in the distance—wooden beams giving way perhaps, or trees exploding in the heat. Then there were screams.
And I remembered. Not all of it. Just… enough.
By the time I was standing, the sky outside my window was afire with red, as though the world had torn open and bled into the clouds. I wrenched the door open—and the heat hit me like a wall. My village was burning. Houses, trees, animals, lives. Everything. Burning.
I didn't pause to scream. I didn't shout names. I didn't search for my family, or the neighbors I'd known all my life, or the children who'd played with me by the well in the square. I couldn't. If I'd stopped—if I'd even slowed—I'd have died with them.
The fire was everywhere, but I had a path—a narrow, shifting, half-blocked path through the smoke. I pushed myself on. I stumbled. I ran.
I saw bodies. Shapes I did not want to see. Some were too still. Others moved enough to remain with me for the rest of my life.
I crashed through a broken fence, tripped over something I didn't dare examine, and finally crouched in a hollow at the edge of the wood. There, in smoke and darkness, I could breathe—just. My heart pounded against my ribs, guilty and wild.
And I knew I was shaking. Not with fear.
With memory.
I left everything behind in that house. My spellbooks. My scrolls. The protective symbols I'd etched into floorboards when no one was watching.
Everything I had learned—every secret I'd kept—it was all there. All burning.
But I didn't look back. I didn't even turn my shoulder.
Because I already knew.
Not after what I'd done. Or what might have happened.
I tell myself I don't remember. That smoke and chaos warped the truth. That someone else did it. Maybe it was an accident. A raid. A spark in the dry season. Maybe.
But I do remember the night itself. I remember the weight of the energy in the air, thick and humming. I remember the way the runes on the page glowed when they shouldn't have. How the symbols writhed under my fingertips like they were alive.
I remember calling something I didn't know well enough.
Just a test, I told myself. Just a little practice.
But the magic was stronger than I figured. Wilder. Older.
And now my village was gone.
No one would believe me if I told them I didn't intend to. Maybe I don't even believe it myself. Maybe I did want something to happen. Maybe I just wanted them to notice. To stop treating magic as a curse. To stop fearing me.
And now they have nothing left to fear. Only ashes.