The Embers About to Cool

The night swallowed the deep pit until only a ring of grey-white edges remained. The rim of the pit looked like a shell licked by tongues of fire, undulating with a faint, hot glow. The wind changed direction several times, only to be dragged back by the dark in the center. The stone skin cooled slowly, heat retreating layer by layer from the interior, and grey dust fell and stuck there, never to move again. In the distance, only belated echoes remained on the ridge, slowly pushing back from the night, so light it sounded like a drum being beaten behind a cloth.

Netero still stood at the edge of the pit, his shoulder line straight, his palms slowly lowering from before his chest. The dry, stiff red of his lapel darkened in the moonlight, like a leaf wrinkled by the wind. He took half a step forward to steady his toes, his gaze still pressing down on the heart of the pit. The air was mixed with the smell of rust and scorched metal, like a newly ground blade. He stopped for a long time, until that faint, scraping sound in the wind could no longer be heard, and only then did he turn slightly and step back half a foot, yielding the line directly facing the center of the pit.

The people in the outer hall walked back from the edge of the ruins to the thin line at the doorway. Morel arrived first, his shoulders and back still shaking as he gathered his mist into a very thin ribbon, spreading it along the outermost edge of the ground seams like placing a wet cloth over residual heat. Knov closed the retreat door, leaving only a finger-wide crack as an observation port, and slowly moved his palm against