The Extra's Transcension

The week after the rains passed, the village returned to its quiet rhythm. Fields dried. Chickens squawked with renewed arrogance. Children chased each other between stone walls with muddy feet and wooden swords.

Ash found a strange sort of peace in it.

He mended the smith's awning with a borrowed hammer. Helped old Mara replant her herb garden after half of it washed away.

Rebuilt a section of the west fence after a stag tore through it during the storm. No one called him "Ash" with reverence. No one asked about spells or stories.

They just offered work.

And bread. So much bread.

Still, the quiet was deceptive.

Because something had shifted.

It began with the animals.

Three sheep went missing from Ardon's pasture. No signs of wolves. No blood. Just wool snagged on a low-hanging branch and a silence too thick for dusk.

Then, the Miller's dog refused to go near the granary.

Not bark. Not whine. Just sat and stared, tail stiff, ears laid flat, hackles rising whenever the door creaked open. The villagers laughed at first, blamed rain rot or old age.

But Ember didn't laugh.

Neither did Ash.

"Wolves?" she asked him one morning as they checked the forest line near the creek.

Ash knelt, examining tracks. "No prints. No scat. No drag marks. Whatever took them, if something took them, it wasn't a beast."

Ember crouched beside him, eyes narrowing. "Magic?"

"Maybe," he murmured. "But not the kind that leaves a stain. This feels… older."

She looked at him. "You've felt this before."

"Hm... Oh umm y—yeah"

"Something like it,"

'From the novel actually. Shit I have to make up a story again.'

He admitted, brushing moss from his palm.

"During a border raid north of the Sunderveld, we found a town where the wells ran dry and the crops kept growing in spiral patterns. No rot. Just… wrong. Like the land was listening."

"Listening to what?"

Ash stood. "That's the question."

*****

By the end of the week, strange symbols appeared on the granary door.

Thin. Carved shallow. Too precise for a knife, too smooth for a chisel. A ring of glyphs, not Arcane, not natural. Something tangled and old, like language before language.

The villagers gathered to gawk. To whisper. To guess.

"Prank," Ardon muttered, puffing his pipe.

"Cultists," old Mara spat. "Always comes back to cultists."

"Maybe spirits," offered the baker's wife, making a warding sign with her flour-stained fingers.

Ash said nothing.

He stood a few feet back, arms crossed, face unreadable.

Ember lingered at his side, arms folded, eyes scanning the carvings.

"You know them?" she asked under her breath.

Ash shook his head. "No. But I don't like the feeling in my chest."

She gave him a look. "That's a feeling?"

He glanced at her. "I've learned to trust it."

She looked back at the door. The symbols pulsed faintly in the light, not with magic, but suggestion. As if they weren't just carved. As if they were watching.

"Think someone in the village did this?" she asked.

"Unlikely," he said. "These aren't the kind of marks you copy from a book. They're intuitive. Woven."

She frowned. "Woven how?"

"Like music," he said after a pause. "But for stone."

*****

That evening, they stood together again near the hill at the village edge.

Ash had taken to carving small branches as he watched the horizon, habit, maybe. Or control. He worked a knot of pine as Ember handed him a cup of tea from her pack.

"Mint," she said. "Don't complain. It's hot."

He sipped. "Not complaining."

They stood in silence for a while.

The wind carried the scent of burning brush and early apples. Somewhere, someone was singing an old work song, slow and mournful.

Then Ember asked, "You think it's a warning?"

Ash didn't pretend to misunderstand.

"I think it's a question," he said.

She looked at him. "From who?"

"I don't know," he said. "But they're asking if we're listening."

She watched him for a moment.

"You seem different," she said.

He blinked. "How?"

"Softer," she said simply. "Still cautious. Still haunted. But… less curled in on yourself."

He didn't answer for a moment.

Then: "I feel different. Like I'm not just surviving. Like I'm actually… here."

She nodded. "The village does that. It's not much, but it's real."

He looked at her, thoughtfully. "You care about it a lot."

"I do," she said.

"Why?"

"Because someone has to," she replied.

"Because if we don't, things like this—"

She gestured back toward the granary

"—happen quietly. And no one notices until it's too late."

Ash looked down at the branch in his hand. The carving was simple, a circle with three lines crossing it. Not a glyph. Not a symbol.

Just instinct.

Ember sipped her tea. "If something's stirring… we need to know what it wants."

"And if it doesn't want anything?"

She gave him a small, sharp smile. "Then we need to be ready for that too."

*****

Later that night, Ash stood outside his small borrowed cabin.

The wind was cold again, but not cruel.

He stared out toward the granary, where the symbols still pulsed faintly, not with light, but with presence. Like teeth pressed against glass. Waiting.

He didn't summon power. Didn't reach inward for glyphs or incantations. He just watched.

And he remembered:

A mirror that opened like a wound.

A choice made in silence.

A name he chose not to reclaim.

Ash.

Only Ash.

Behind him, a voice said, "You can't sleep either?"

He turned slightly.

Ember stood a few feet away, arms wrapped around herself. Not in fear. Just in thought.

"No," he said.

She nodded. "Good. Then we can both be tired tomorrow."

And without another word, she sat down beside him on the porch step.

Not close.

But close enough.

*****

The carvings on the granary door didn't fade.

They deepened.

Not visibly, not like chisel or knife might deepen a cut. But every day, the grooves seemed darker. Cleaner. As if the wood had grown around them willingly. As if the symbols were roots digging into the flesh of the building.

Ash checked it every morning.

He said little about it. But Ember noticed how his fingers hovered just above the glyphs, as if something inside him recoiled at touch.

The villagers began avoiding the granary. Not with fear, not openly, but in the way people avoid graveyards at dusk. The grain was still good, they said. Still smelled sweet and stored dry. But the baker took less than usual. The brewer spoke of rot that wasn't there.

Then came the murmurs.

First it was Derren, the cooper. Friendly man, wide smile, always had a joke about barrels. He stopped smiling. Began forgetting words mid-sentence.

Then, the old healer, known for her sharp tongue. She forgot Ash's name. Then Ember's. Then her own recipes, herbs she'd used for twenty years.

Just names at first.

Then directions.

Then moments.

Ember stood outside Mara's hut one morning, arms crossed, watching the old woman try to remember how to start a fire.

"She was sharp as flint two weeks ago,"

Ember muttered.

Ash stood beside her. "The glyphs are a door."

She looked at him. "What kind?"

"A soft one," he said. "One that doesn't open all at once. You don't notice it happening… until you're through."

Ember's brow creased. "A curse?"

Ash shook his head. "No. It's not targeted. It's ambient. Drifting. Like pollen on the wind."

"You're saying it's… infecting them?"

"I'm saying it's inviting them."

"To what?"

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

That night, Ember caught herself staring at the same carved symbols, even as she tried not to.

From the hill near the field's edge, she could see the granary clearly. No lights around it. No movement. Yet her eyes kept drifting toward it.

And not just hers.

Three villagers stood down the path in the dark, not moving, not speaking, just watching it too.

It unsettled her in a way that battle never had. Not with adrenaline. Not with fear.

With doubt.

"Eyes," Ash said softly beside her, seated again on the old porch rail.

Ember turned. "What?"

He gestured toward the granary. "It feels like being watched by yourself. Like standing in front of a mirror and knowing something's wrong with the reflection."

She was silent a moment.

Then, carefully: "What happens if they start listening back?"

Ash looked at her. "Then we'll need to listen louder."

The next morning, Ember found strange piles of dried herbs placed in a ring behind the granary.

Not stacked. Not gathered. Arranged.

Mugwort. Willow bark. Crushed moth wings. And iron shavings.

Folk magic, old, rustic. But not random.

Ash crouched over them, running a finger through the ash at the center.

"This isn't a child's game," he said.

Ember knelt. "You think it's a ritual?"

"No," he said. "It's a ward."

Her eyes widened. "Someone's protecting the granary?"

Ash nodded. "Or trying to trap what's inside."

That evening, they gathered the village elders. Sat them around the long hearth table at Ember's urging.

Only half of them came.

Derren arrived late, eyes sunken, smile ghosted. He stared at the fire the whole time.

Mara spoke as if through cotton. Her words were slow. Paused often. "Don't see the harm in it," she said. "The symbols are beautiful… old songs in them."

Ember frowned. "You can hear them?"

"Feel them," she murmured. "When I sleep."

Ash stiffened.

He leaned forward. "What do they say?"

Mara blinked. Her smile turned oddly wistful. "They want us to remember."

Ember's breath caught. "Remember what?"

But Mara's head simply tilted, and she said, "The soil speaks, child. You must listen."

After the meeting, Ember didn't speak until she and Ash stood outside beneath the stars.

The wind was soft, but the air had changed.

It wasn't the smell. It wasn't the cold.

It was the feeling that something else was breathing beside them, slow, quiet, and vast.

Ash rubbed his temple.

"Your head?" Ember asked.

"It's… buzzing," he muttered. "Not pain. Like a thought I didn't have."

She watched him carefully. "Are you hearing it too?"

He didn't answer right away.

Then: "I think so."

She stepped closer. "You're not losing yourself. Not you."

He looked at her.

In the faint starlight, his eyes looked older than they should've.

"Tried that once already," he said. "Didn't like who I became."

Ember nodded. "Good."

Then, with a hint of dry humor: "We've already got one cryptic wanderer. Don't need another."

Ash huffed a faint laugh.

But it faded quickly.

"I think we're being tested," he said quietly.

Ember's eyes narrowed. "By what?"

He looked out at the granary.

Then down at the villagers in their homes, many asleep, some staring blankly into the night.

"I don't know," he said.

"But it wants us to forget."