The Extra's Transcension

The forest north of the village was older than the rest.

The trees didn't just grow, they leaned, as if listening. Bark gnarled into faces if you looked too long. Roots crisscrossed the dirt like veins in a slumbering body. And the air? It hummed. Low. Faint. Like a warning.

Ember walked ahead, her boots silent despite the underbrush. Ash followed, the parchment map tucked into his coat, though they hadn't needed it, she knew the way.

"You've been here before," he said.

She didn't turn. "Once. Years ago."

"Why come back now?"

"You," she said simply.

That shut him up for a while.

They moved quietly, occasionally pausing when the hum in the air thickened. At one point, Ash saw a tree with its trunk split, not by lightning or age, but from within, as though something had grown and clawed its way out.

Ember didn't comment on it. Neither did he.

Finally, the tower revealed itself, standing like a broken tooth among the trees. Weather-beaten, wrapped in vines, its upper section had collapsed inward, leaving jagged stones poking through the canopy.

They climbed the spiral stair slowly, careful of the half-rotted steps. At the top, they reached what had once been a lookout. Only half the floor remained, with the rest crumbled into the woods below.

Ash stared at the glyphs etched into the curved wall.

Time hadn't touched them.

He stepped closer. "These are old. Pre-Academy. Pre-Unity even."

"Can you read them?"

"Some."

Ember watched him trace the lines with a gloved hand. His eyes flicked back and forth, interpreting slowly, lips moving soundlessly.

Then he stopped.

"What is it?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"Ash."

He exhaled sharply. "It's a beacon."

"For what?"

"For anyone who survived the Fracture. Anyone displaced. It's a spell woven into stone, not active, but dormant. Listening."

She frowned. "Listening for what?"

"For someone to answer."

A silence settled between them, heavier than before.

She took a step forward, her shadow crossing his.

"And are you going to?"

Ash looked up at her. "I don't know."

Her mouth pressed into a line. "You came here. You're reading it. You do know."

"It's not that simple."

"It never is," she said, but her tone was flat.

"Still a choice."

He nodded once, stepped back from the glyphs.

They sat at the edge of the broken tower floor, legs dangling. The wind was clean up here, crisp, tugging at hair and cloak edges.

Ember chewed a strip of dried meat, handed him another without comment. He accepted it.

"Why do you care?" he asked.

She took a while to answer.

"I don't," she said finally. "But if something follows you back… I'd like to be ready."

Ash chuckled. "Still as warm as ever."

She didn't smile, but her shoulders loosened a little. "And you're still as cryptic."

He nodded, chewing.

After a while, she spoke again. "When I first saw you in the village, I thought: there's someone who's lost more than they can carry."

Ash didn't respond.

"And then I watched you patch roofs and chop wood and help the butcher's boy find his dog. Thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe you were just… some broken man trying to pretend otherwise."

"And now?"

"Now I'm not sure which scares me more," she said. "The pretending. Or the truth."

Ash stared at the forest. "You're not wrong."

"I wasn't trying to be right."

Another long silence.

This time, when Ember stood, she didn't walk away immediately.

"We should go," she said. "It's going to rain."

Ash stood. "You felt it too?"

She gave him a look. "Don't need magic to smell the sky."

They descended carefully, but the forest was already changing. Shadows deepened. Wind slithered through the leaves in unnatural directions. The hum from earlier returned, louder.

And underneath it, something else.

A voice?

No.

A pressure.

Ash turned mid-step. So did Ember.

Back at the tower's base, something stirred. Slow. Wet. Like a breath drawn from underground.

They didn't wait to see what.

*****

By the time they reached the village edge, night had fallen. Rain hadn't come yet, but it pressed against the sky, ready.

Ember didn't say goodbye. She handed him a strip of bandage, his palm had been scraped during the descent, and walked off without looking back.

Ash stared at the cloth for a long time.

Inside his cabin, he spread the parchment map again. His fingers hovered over the glyph sequences.

Somewhere deep in his chest, something whispered:

Answer.

He didn't.

Not yet.

*****

Rain arrived sometime before dawn. Not with violence, but with patience, a steady rhythm tapping across the village roofs like a tired drummer too stubborn to stop.

Ash stood beneath the eaves of the carpenter's shed, sleeves rolled to his elbows, watching water collect in the ruts between stones.

He'd slept little. Not from nightmares, though they still hovered on the edge of rest, but from something else.

Restlessness.

The glyphs from the tower had embedded themselves in his mind. Not dangerous. Not overt. But listening. Always listening.

"You're up early," a voice said.

Ember.

She stood a few paces behind him, her cloak damp, curls stuck to her cheek. She wore no armor today, no blades. Just a simple tunic and worn trousers. Civilian, if such a word still meant anything to either of them.

"So are you," Ash replied.

She shrugged, stepping beside him under the eaves. "Storms make it hard to sleep."

He glanced at her. "Didn't take you for the sentimental type."

"Lightning burned down my uncle's barn when I was six."

Ah.

He didn't press. They watched the rain for a while.

"Do you ever get tired of being careful?" she asked suddenly.

Ash raised an eyebrow. "Careful?"

"Careful with your words. Your silence. The way you never really stop watching every room you're in."

A beat passed.

"Sometimes," he admitted. "But most days, I'm too tired not to be."

Ember hummed softly, something like agreement. "I know the feeling."

Ash leaned back against the post. "What about you? You ever stop being sharp?"

"No," she said flatly.

He laughed, a dry, short sound. "Didn't think so."

"But," she added, "I do try. Sometimes. Around people who... don't expect me to be sharp."

Ash looked at her then, properly.

She didn't look away.

A moment passed. Long. Quiet.

Then the carpenter's boy came out with a bundle of half-shaped beams, and the moment shattered like mist in wind.

"I should help with repairs," Ash said, pushing off the wall.

"Of course."

He moved past her, brushing against the damp edge of her cloak. She didn't stop him. But she watched.

*****

The rain lingered for three days.

In that time, Ash worked. Quietly, steadily. Helped mend roofs, cleared debris, reinforced the riverbanks with stone.

Ember didn't hover, but she was often nearby. Asking questions. Bringing cloth or tools. Watching him speak to the villagers in the kind of voice that held no command, only steadiness.

"You don't act like someone who once ruled anything," she remarked once, during a lull between tasks.

"That's the point," he said.

Still, she saw glimpses, the way he flinched when certain names were spoken. The way his fingers curled, instinctively, when startled.

Once, when a child scraped her knee and wailed, Ash reached for his belt as if expecting to draw a spell from it. There was nothing there.

And Ember?

She began to shift, too.

She laughed more easily around him, not often, but when it came, it was real. Soft. Like smoke from dry wood.

She offered him bread, once, straight from her pack. Still warm.

"You're not the only one who can bake," she said when he raised an eyebrow.

He took it. Bit. Chewed thoughtfully.

She waited.

"...Yours is better," he admitted.

She didn't smile, but her ears turned slightly pink.

*****

On the fourth day, the rain broke. The sun returned, diffused through wet leaves and golden clouds. Villagers emerged slowly, stretching, blinking at the light like they'd forgotten it existed.

Ash walked to the edge of the village, where the hills rose gently into the treeline. He didn't expect company.

Ember joined him anyway.

They sat together on a flat stone, overlooking the valley below. The wind was clean, scented with pine and something deeper, petrichor and earth.

"You ever think about going back?" she asked.

"To the Academy?"

"No. To anywhere. Where you're known. Where your name means something."

Ash thought about it. Then shook his head.

"Names are heavier than chains," he said.

Ember glanced at him sideways. "You talk like someone twice your age."

"I was," he said, with a shrug.

She chuckled. "Fair enough."

Silence stretched again. Comfortable, if cautious.

Then she said, almost without thinking, "I used to want to join the Academy."

Ash looked at her in surprise.

She picked at a piece of moss growing on the rock. "Not to learn magic. Just… to matter. Thought if I wore their sigil, I'd stop being some village girl with nothing to her name."

"And what stopped you?"

"My father," she said. "He said I didn't need their permission to matter. Just a blade and stubborn lungs."

Ash nodded slowly. "He sounds like a good man."

"He died during the breach. Defending people he didn't know."

Ash didn't speak.

Ember didn't need him to.

They sat like that for a while, the sun warming their backs, wind threading through their silence.

"You ever get tired of pretending you don't care?" she asked.

Ash blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You act like none of this touches you," she said, gesturing to the village, the world. "But it does. I see it. Every time you fix something. Every time you help someone."

He looked away. "It's easier not to get attached."

"But you are."

Ash didn't argue.

And Ember didn't push.

Instead, she stood, dusted off her trousers.

"You coming?"

He stood too. "Yeah."

As they walked back, Ember glanced at him. "You ever thought about staying?"

He looked at her, surprised.

She didn't elaborate. Didn't explain.

He didn't answer.

But something in the way his footsteps matched hers told her, maybe he had.

*****

A/N: Yup She's feeling something, Ember, something is happening... > <