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The road wound down from the ridge in coils of stone and dust, carrying him back to a place that had lived only in memory. His boots pressed into the earth with a steady rhythm, each step whispering against gravel, each breath filling his lungs with the mingled scents of pine, damp soil, and the faint smoke of distant chimneys. The wind carried fragments of sound - a blacksmith's hammer striking iron, the faint echo of laughter, a cartwheel rattling over cobbles - ordinary noises of a town that had forgotten its sins.

But he had not forgotten. The weight of thirty years pressed against his chest as if time itself had grown heavy inside him. He remembered the night the world split open - the stench of burning timber, the metallic taste of blood on his tongue, his mother's scream swallowed by fire, his father's shadow collapsing into silence. He remembered the hands that dragged him through ash, the blade that missed his throat by inches, the certainty in their eyes when they left him buried among corpses. To them, he had been a child too small to matter, a name too fragile to survive.

Yet here he was. The ember they thought extinguished, carrying the fire of three decades in his chest. He felt it flare now, warm and merciless, as his eyes settled on the town sprawled below the ridge. It had changed, dressed itself in new paint and rebuilt stone, but beneath the polished surface he saw only ghosts. He could almost hear his sister's voice echoing in the square, chasing a ball that no longer existed. He could almost see his father's shoulders bent at the forge, sparks leaping like fireflies into the dark. Each memory was a knife. Each step closer turned the blade deeper.

He paused at a bend where wild grass brushed his hand, cool and damp with evening dew. For a moment, he let himself imagine turning back, vanishing again into nameless roads and forgotten taverns. He had survived in the shadows before; he could survive there still. But survival was not living. Survival was the ember smoldering, waiting for breath. And now, standing at the edge of the place that birthed both his life and his ruin, he felt the breath of the world rushing in. It was time.

A cart rolled past as he entered the outskirts, pulled by oxen with hide darkened by sweat. The driver glanced at him briefly, eyes narrowing at the sight of a stranger with a cloak worn thin by years of travel. No recognition flickered there. To them, he was nobody. That was his shield. The anonymity of time had erased his face from memory, and he carried it gladly. Revenge moved easier through the skin of a stranger.

The streets opened wide, filled with merchants shouting prices, children darting between stalls, and the scent of spiced bread curling into the air. He let the noise wash over him, though it felt wrong in his ears, like laughter echoing in a crypt. His gaze slid across banners hanging from wooden beams, marked with symbols of families who had risen high in the decades since his own was destroyed. He saw their crests, bold and shining, sewn into fabric that fluttered proudly in the wind. His fists tightened in his cloak. Those names had been written in his family's blood.

Thirty years had not dulled the memory. Thirty years had only sharpened it.

He moved deeper into the square, his shadow stretching across cobblestones as the sun slid lower. For a moment, he closed his eyes, inhaling the mingled scents of roasting meat, sweat, and woodsmoke. Beneath it all lingered something faint, something only he seemed to feel - the acrid phantom of burning roofs, the ghost of fire that never truly left. His chest tightened. The world had forgotten, but his body remembered.

And in that silence between breaths, he made himself a promise: before this town saw another harvest, before these banners fluttered through another winter, the fire would return. Not as smoke in the night, but as judgment walking on two legs.

He opened his eyes, and the ember inside him glowed.

The tavern smelled of smoke and sour ale, its air heavy with the sweat of men who had worked fields all day and drank to forget it. He pushed open the door and stepped inside, the hinges groaning as if remembering him. Firelight spilled across rough tables scarred by knives and fists, and in the far corner, a lute hummed lazily, half a tune played by a musician too tired to care. He lowered his hood, letting the warmth of the room settle against his skin, though his chest remained cold.

He had walked into countless taverns over the years, each one blending into the next - the same stench, the same tired faces, the same noise. Yet this one was different. This was the place where his father once brought him on market days, where he had sat at the edge of a bench, drinking watered cider while listening to the men talk of harvests and horses. The wood had been replaced, the benches newer, but the smell of firewood and spilled ale was the same. For a moment, he could almost see his father's broad hand pushing a mug toward him, hear the rumble of his voice telling him to drink slowly. The memory caught in his throat like a blade.

A serving woman passed by, balancing mugs that sloshed foam onto her arm. She glanced at him with the practiced sharpness of someone who measured strangers quickly. He offered a nod and moved to an empty table near the wall. The wood was sticky beneath his palms, rough with splinters. He traced one line absently, his ears catching every sound around him - the scrape of boots, the clatter of dice, the low murmur of voices weaving into a steady hum. Somewhere, a man coughed, wet and harsh, and the room stank briefly of sickness.

He sat in silence, but silence was never empty. Inside his mind, voices stirred - the echo of screams, the crackle of burning roofs, the pounding of his own heart as a boy running barefoot through ash. He tried to bury them, but they rose again like ghosts refusing to leave. Thirty years had done nothing to soften them. If anything, time had sharpened the edges, turning memory into something more dangerous than grief.

When the serving woman returned, he ordered bread and meat with a voice low enough not to draw attention. She nodded briskly and left him in the hum of the tavern. His gaze moved across the room, studying faces. Most were strangers, too young to have seen the fire that ended his family. Yet in the laughter lines of older men, in the scars hidden at the edge of beards, he searched for recognition. He wondered if any of them had stood there that night, torch in hand, blade dripping, convinced that the boy in the flames would never grow into the man watching them now.

His food arrived - thick bread, tough meat, a mug of ale that smelled of yeast and bitterness. He ate slowly, chewing through memories rather than food, letting his body act on instinct while his mind traced the banners he had seen hanging in the square. He remembered each crest burned into his sight as a child, the names whispered as his parents fell. Time had made them lords, but in his eyes they were nothing but thieves wearing crowns.

A group of men at the next table spoke loudly, their voices spilling across the tavern like spilled wine. Their words pricked his ears. They spoke of the Council, of trade routes, of taxes levied in the name of peace. But one name struck him like iron on steel - Veynar.

He froze, mug halfway to his lips. Veynar. The man who had led the raid. The man whose blade had cut his father down. The man who had laughed as the fire spread.

The men spoke of him with reverence, calling him Lord Veynar, praising his wealth, his power, his influence in the Council. They called him a builder, a savior of the city. They spoke of his estates that stretched across the hills, of his sons who now commanded soldiers, of his wife who hosted feasts that dazzled nobles.

The ember inside him seethed. His fingers tightened around the mug until wood bit into his skin. To hear that name alive, gilded, honored, while his family lay in unmarked earth - it was like drinking poison.

He forced himself to breathe, slow and steady. Revenge could not be rushed. Not yet. He was a stranger here, nameless, faceless, cloaked in time. That was his shield. He could not cast it aside too soon.

When the men laughed again, his jaw ached from holding back words. He imagined walking across the floor, driving the knife under his cloak into the throat of the one who dared praise the butcher. He imagined silence falling as blood pooled on the table. He imagined the shock, the recognition, the fear. The ember inside him begged for it. But he swallowed it down.

Patience. Fire was patient.

He finished his meal, left coins on the table, and rose to go. As he pushed through the tavern door, the night air met him cool and sharp, filled with the scent of damp earth and distant smoke. Stars scattered overhead, pale and watchful, as if the sky itself bore witness to his return.

He pulled his cloak tighter and walked into the dark, every step carrying him deeper into a city that no longer knew his name - but would soon remember it.

The streets were thinner at night, veins of stone that carried only shadows and the occasional drunk stumbling home. He moved through them silently, his cloak brushing against the rough walls of houses, the smell of damp straw and cooling ash clinging to the air. Somewhere a dog barked, sharp and restless, before falling into silence again. The city slept, but beneath its stillness he felt a pulse, an invisible rhythm that reminded him of breathing - the kind of breathing a predator makes before it strikes.

He had not walked these streets since he was a boy,...