I wasn’t cold anymore. The moment Abby and I saw the horizon we shared a glance and bolted back toward town, all pretense of stealth and reverie forgotten. Sprinting down the narrow forest path and trying not to panic, I could feel everything but the tip of my nose warming as I spent all the energy I had to run.

A glow that big had to be a fire, and a serious one at that. My thoughts swirled in a chaotic maelstrom.

Was it caused by the demon the Church was hunting back in Linthel? Was there some kind of cult around it that had set fire to all or part of the city?

Abby kept pace with me, but stayed a couple meters back so we wouldn’t run into each other down the narrow trail. Although I had a longer stride, she was the more athletic of the two of us and we pretty much evened out. I didn’t turn to see her face, but I have no doubt it was as serious and as shocked as mine.

Two kilometers. That’s how far south the old fort was. The small half of that distance was dense mixed forest, and the rest was farms we were now running through. We jumped the first fence and skirted a herd of sleeping cattle. Across this field was the main road back. Coming around the farm’s barn, we got our first look back at Linthel, which lay down the hill from us.

The orange glow seemed to light the edges of the taller buildings, but we couldn’t yet see the fire. Lord Carvalon’s castle sat atop its hill to the west. The massive stone complex was dotted with pricks of light and silent in the night. The color from the fire reflected off the snow and bathed the whole side of the barn and nearby field in an eerie light.

If we couldn’t see the fire from here, that meant it was on the north side of the city. Our side. My heart sank in my chest. Linthel was a big city with tens of thousands of people, but I had a terrible feeling wash over me. I skidded to a stop in the snow-slicked grass and stared out at the city lit up in orange. This close, we could both see the smoke billowing up into the sky, staining the starry tapestry as black as ink.

Abby ran up next to me not a moment later. Wordlessly, she put her arm around my shoulders. To my surprise, my hand reached out and grabbed her free hand. I looked down at her and she up at me. She started to speak and I could see her lips start to form the words that I knew would be ‘It’ll be alright’, but she stopped herself. No doubt she had the same feeling as me.

“We need to keep going.” Abby’s voice sounded detached.

I nodded numbly at her words and we broke the embrace more slowly than I think either of us intended to before we sprinted the rest of the field and hopped the outer fence onto the road back to town. I don’t think I’d ever moved as quickly as I did just then, and soon both of us were weaving through the streets toward Linthel’s north side. People in nightwear stared out open windows as we passed, the chill night air forgotten in the moment. More people had even come out into the street, and a few were on the streets moving north. Some were in a daze, and others, like us, ran through the night with panic-stricken faces.

When we reached the river, we could finally see flames in the distance, flickering between buildings and roaring high into the night sky. Below us, the Linthel River’s dark water reflected the demented lightshow. My legs burned in agony and from the ragged breathing behind me, Abby wasn’t faring much better. Like it or not, we had to slow down for both the mass of people ahead and our bodies.

The market square across the bridge was a chaotic mass of people, kept roughly in check by a mixture of guards and church folk, if the dull armor and white and red robes were any indication. On the other side of the market were hastily erected barricades. Bucket brigades ran from the river north across the square to carts loaded with barrels. The fire was nearly invisible behind the buildings on the north side of the market, meaning it was further north still. Closer to home. The smoke, however, was visible in the air and I tasted ash.

Like sensation from a numb limb, sound slowly filtered back in as we both dashed across the square. Shouts from people keeping order and of others’ panic rang out around us. From further north echoed the dull whoomphing noise of a building giving up.

I spotted a familiar shock of red hair standing a head above the crowd. Bourick stood helping at the front of a nearby bucket brigade. I called out to him, voice strained and breath coming in gasps. “Bourick!”

The brawny smith turned to us, “Zach! Abigail! Thank Dhias you’re okay!” He lifted a full bucket and emptied it into a barrel on the cart.

Before he could continue, Abby took the lead. “Mr. Gadson, where’s the fire burning? Do you know how it started? Is there a demon rampaging around?”

Okay, maybe she was also as dazed as I was.

Bourick looked over our exhausted forms before replying, “Call of fire went up about an hour ago. Got out of control--something to do with a demon or a cult. Church is handling it.”

“Shit,” I replied. “Our neighborhood?”

He thought for a moment. “Shoot, it might be. I’m sorry you two.”

“Then what are we doing standing here! Zach, let’s go!” Abby dashed off toward the blockade.

“Thanks, Bourick!” I turned and ran off after my best friend.

Bourick waved after me. “The Church has the place blocked off! Oh, and Zach, Abigail’s grandmother stopped by earlier and…”

Behind me I could hear my teacher say something about Abby’s nan, but I couldn’t wait and hear him out. Abby was already racing for the waist-high barricade which she hopped with a practiced ease.

“Hey, you can’t go in there!” a robed Church man guarding the blockade shouted after us.

I didn’t stop and managed to jump over a sideways cart being used as a barricade. The robed man grabbed after me, but missed. I landed on the other side, my ankle rolling painfully under me. Somehow, I ignored the pain and kept running. There may have been shouts behind me, but I couldn’t tell over the din of the crowds and the rushing pulse in my ears. We passed a crew coming back with an empty cart. Others of all sorts were dousing the walls of a store: Church folk, guards, and civilians. If they tried to stop us, they didn’t move quickly and if they shouted, I was beyond hearing.

Abby slowed around the first corner where we needed to turn. I caught up to her and we paused. The buildings around us were dark, but undamaged. Just ahead of us we could hear the fire, and its light flickered orange over the rooftops.

We shared a look and started to run again. After another block we could feel the heat and see the flames roaring around the next corner. It never crossed my mind how dangerous this was. We had to do something. We had to at least know. As we ran, I noticed dark lines down the street and across some of the buildings. Soot? Maybe, but I wasn’t of a mind to go look.

Abby’s house was slightly closer, so I knew we’d go there first. Rounding the next corner, we entered the burning city. The once wide street had been reduced to an alley. Flames and burning heat reached toward us from the sides. A window shattered as we ran by, raining glass down and narrowly missing both of us. My ankle was throbbing now, but I couldn’t slow down. Not when seconds could matter.

Could they matter? The fire started at least an hour ago and the buildings to my sides were engulfed. No one could be alive in that heat, even if the first floors of the nicer structures were mostly stone and wouldn’t burn completely. The densely packed wooden upper stories must have caught like tinder as the flames rushed from roof to roof. No, I thought. Seconds could matter. Seconds had to matter.

The still night was a blessing that kept the smoke moving up and away from the town, but the fire created air currents all its own. My eyes started to tear up and the taste of ash stung my tongue. Against all odds, we made it out through the inferno and into a small plaza with a familiar well. More dark lines converged near the center. The well was all that was familiar here anymore; the houses were burned out and still burning. Unrecognizable if not for their relative position and a few personal touches to the stone walls.

Abby was already running toward the remains of her own home and I hurried to follow her. The charred remains of the door laid on the floor just inside. The upper story was burned away and hotspots and small flames flared around the ground floor. Ahead of me and only a couple meters into the front room Abby stopped.

“No… Nan. Mom, Dad…” Abby trailed off. I could see tears forming in her eyes, but her face was numb with shock. I know mine was the same.

Before us were two bodies near the center of the room, charred and blackened. A third, slumped against the rear wall, wasn’t completely burned. I could see the lifeless eyes of Abby’s nan staring straight ahead, her gray hair wild and tangled, loose from its trademark bun. I could also see the vicious slash across her chest and the blood, some of which had burnt, pooled on the stone floor.

I put an arm around Abby, unable to form any words. Sobbing, we walked carefully around her parents’ charred remains. My best friend knelt down in front of her nan and wept. Abby’s show of emotion snapped me out of my fugue state; my knees fell out from under my and my own tears soon followed.

Abby was the first to regain the ability to speak. She sounded vulnerable, scared. I was too, but I’d never seen her look so fragile before. Her green eyes stared at me but most of their luster was gone. Dead. But something flickered there still, some resolve I don’t think I would be able to have.

“They killed her, Zach.”

I looked at Abby and then at the slash. A sword wound. I think.

“Look.” Abby pointed to the door. The frame was mostly gone, but the bottom hinge was twisted open and it sat some notable distance inside the front room.

“The Church. They did it,” Abby said, her voice wavering.

“The Church?” My voice came out hoarse.

“The fucking Church!” Abby roared. “Do you see the door? Nan must have fought back. They planned all this. Did you see? All the doors on our block were gone. Kicked in! Someone with a sword killed her—a person killed her. She bled out before the fire even fucking started. And those lines, I bet they mean something!”

“The soot lines?”

“Do you think people dragged burnt shit along the fucking walls for fun?” Abby’s voice was getting stronger and louder. Her eyes were lit by fire, but they still seemed hollow.

“The Church? How? Why? Abby, you’re not making sense!”

“It makes perfect fucking sense! You! How can you sit there and ignore it?”

My face stung. I realized after a second that Abby had slapped me. I turned back and the fire was gone from Abby’s eyes. She looked scared and hurt and when I tried to meet her gaze she looked away.

We stood like that for a long moment, staring over each other’s shoulders.

She hissed out air as her rage left her, replaced with bitterness, sorrow, and guilt. “Zach, I…”

I hugged her. With my gross body that I hated. The guy—no, girl—who hated physical affection, now clung to her best friend. I knew by now that my own family was probably dead, but I had Abby. Together we could figure out if it was really the Church, and why or how all this happened. And I wouldn’t lose her.

I cleared my throat. “Someone did this. We’ll find out, and we’ll see justice done.” I don’t know where I found the words or how I managed to say them when I was out of breath.

“I—thank you. I shouldn’t have hit you; I’m a terrible friend. I shouldn’t even get to have someone like you,” Abby replied.

“You absolutely should have someone like me. Someone better than me, even.”

“We should go.” Abby’s voice was distant.

“Yeah. I know what we’ll find, but I have to see for myself.”

Wiping away tears as best we could when they were still flowing, we both stood up and moved out of our embrace. As we stood, I remembered the heavy weight of the amulet in my pocket. With a look to both Abby and her nan’s body, I pulled it out and put it on. Nothing happened, thankfully, but I could feel its cool weight on my sternum.

“I was right. It does look beautiful on you.” Abby forced a smile. She reached down and closed her nan’s eyes before she stood back up and gave me a nod.

Together, we ran out of Abby’s ruined house and across the square. I took another look at the black lines as we ran over and past them. They seemed to converge in the square near the well in some sort of pattern. Across the plaza, my house was marginally more intact, but the entire top floor was burned away. Like Abby’s place, the door looked like it had been kicked in.

I steeled myself as best I could and walked inside. There, on the floor in the front room, I saw the charred remains of two adults, and the cold, twisting feeling in my guts told me they were my parents. I couldn’t tell how they had died, but I doubted it was the fire.

The door to the front closet, situated under the stairs and mostly intact, swung open. A black-haired blur shot out and tackled me in a hug, dropping a knife she’d been holding.

“Zach!” my sister cried into my chest; face streaked with tears.

“Tania! You’re okay!” I hugged her back. Seeing my sister alive filled me with a new sense of hope.

“What happened, Tania?” Abby asked, still in a daze. She picked up the discarded knife and we moved further into the ruined front room. Small flames licked around the edges of the house and it was uncomfortably hot inside, but neither of us wanted to be on the street just in case what Abby thought was true really was true.

“T-the Church guys knocked on our door after you snuck out, Zach. They were dressed in d-dark clothes but I recognized one of them who was with that scary Inquisitor. Then…” Tania’s voice trailed off and the tears started.

She managed to say, between sobs, that she saw the fight from the stairs. My dad had put up a struggle and Tania had managed to stay hidden upstairs when they went up to search, but ran down into the downstairs closet during the fire. Abby looked around the lower floor for any other evidence while I comforted my sister.

Tania pointed to amulet Abby had found, tears still streaming down her face. “H-hey. Where’d you get that?”

The honest question coming from my sobbing sister caught me off guard. “Abby found it in the ruins and she gave it to me.”

Tania nodded and forced a thin smile. “M-my gift is nicer, but you’ll have to wait until your birthday, o-okay?” Her voice was strained and I could see that she was barely holding herself together. We all were. Frankly, I was amazed by my sister’s bravery throughout all this.

“I will. I promise you Tania, I will.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Abby called from the back door. “The alley has hot spots, but it looks clear.”

“Yeah,” I replied and took Tania by the hand. I took one last look at the ruins of my life and turned to follow Abby. My sister and I left the front room and headed down the remains of the back hall to the rear door a few meters behind Abby.

I had just enough time to register a dark figure as he moved out of the remains of the kitchen and lunged at Abby.

“Abby!” I shouted.

“Yea—“ she turned, and her eyes went wide. She tried to bring the knife up, but it was too late. I saw a flash of steel and heard her scream.

Abby turned the knife she held on her attacker and stabbed deep into his arm. He grunted in pain and grabbed Abby by the shoulder with his injured arm. She twisted, but the man’s grip held firm.

“Zach!” Abby’s eyes were wide with fright.

I took a single step toward the man, but Tania grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the front door. The man’s sword arm moved forward and thrust the blade toward Abby’s chest.

“Run!” Abby screamed one last time.

The sword pierced through her. I saw blood spray everywhere. Abigail Hunter’s eyes locked on me for one last second before the light in those green pools left forever. Her body slumped forward in her attacker’s arms and before I could see what happened next, Tania and my own traitorous feet carried me out of the hall.

Not a moment later, I heard footsteps thundering behind me and the cloaked man, now covered in my best friend’s blood, ran out of the hall after us. His one arm seemed injured and he was bleeding, but how much blood was his I couldn’t tell.

Tania held my hand tight and led me out into the square. I could see a figure in the center of it now. A familiar, reedy silhouette who had changed his red and white robes for dark ones. The figure was reciting some sort of incantation I couldn’t possibly recognize. My sister saw him too and turned us, aiming for the next street over.

I was exhausted.

My ankle throbbed.

My head and body were numb—Abby’s death hadn’t yet sunk in. It all seemed like a bad dream.

My ankle throbbed.

The man was catching up to us; Tania would be faster without me.

My ankle throbbed again and I tripped. My hand wrenched out of Tania’s and I tumbled to the ground. I struggled to stand up, but it was too late—the man too close.

“Run!” I shouted at Tania. “I’ll catch up!”

She looked to me and then the man, her face a mask of fear and sorrow: she knew I wouldn’t make it. My sister hesitated only long enough to look into my eyes and give a thin smile before she took off at full tilt towards the safety of the side streets.

Before the man could reach me or decide to chase after Tania, I turned and ran toward the robed figure in the center of the square. I wasn’t going to reach him. Even if I did, I couldn’t hurt him. But neither of them knew that.

“I’ll kill you!” My shout came out ragged and hoarse, but I’d never heard myself speak with such rage.

I stumbled forward as fast as I could manage. My pursuer caught up to me near the well. Pain blossomed across my back as the sword slashed a deep gouge and I fell to the ground at the center of the black lines.

“I’ll kill you all,” I glared up at the robed figure, barely able to lift my torso to see him. Inquisitor Finley’s face looked back down at me, then at my chest. His eyes flashed recognition and, what surprised me the most, fear.

“Wait!” he shouted at the man.

But it was too late. Already, mid-motion, the man who killed my best friend drove his sword down through my spine and pierced my heart. I had a moment of lucidity. Finley’s face was a mask of shock and he started to say something. Then, the black lines around me flared into an intense crimson light.

The last thing I felt was a searing, burning sensation just above my sternum.