A Soul Beneath the Ashes

(this story includes triggering matters like death, grief and supernatural horror.)

Yvaine was drenched within minutes by the rain which matched without any tag of will or tell—as she was caught standing at the village edge staring into the pyre.

The scent of charred wood and flesh mingling with the air was thick as grief itself—again, she was too late.

The elders had already burned the body.

Her mother's body.

The flames had died down to embers, but they had done their work. The woman who had raised her, who had whispered old names into her ear when she was a child, was nothing but ash and bone.

Yvaine clenched her fists. This was the only thing the people of the village had said to her when she returned—in the same hushed voices, the same wary eyes.

"It had to be done."

"She was not what she claimed to be."

"She was a danger."

But that was her mother. She had always been careful. Always careful not to speak too loudly, to look too long, to let the old power in her voice slip. Then something went wrong.

The truth lay buried in the ashes, and Yvaine refused to leave it behind.

She stepped forward, boots sinking into the wet earth, until she stood before what remained.

The bones had cracked from the heat, blackened and fragile, but one thing had not burned.

A ring.

A simple band of iron, lying untouched in the soot. Yvaine reached down, the metal cold against her fingertips as she turned it over. There was an inscription inside, but it was not in the language of the village. It was older. Ancient, even—a kind of language that whispered in a long forgotten time—of a long forgotten oath. She hesitated, feeling its presence like a storm. As if the earth itself were holding its breath, the air crackled and crackled with some unspoken warning.

She knew this language.

Her mother had taught her.

And the name written there—

It was hers.

A sharp breath caught in her throat.

Her mother had never worn a ring. Not once in her life.

So why would this one have Yvaine's name inscribed on it?

A wind right above her head whispered something else—movement behind her. Yvaine closed her fingers around the ring and turned.

At the edge of the dying fire, in the place where the smoke curled thickest, a shape stood.

A woman.

Her mother.

No. Not her mother.

Not anymore.

Yvaine’s hands trembled as she took a step back, the ring burning against her palm. The figure before her—her mother, or what had become of her—stood too still, the murmur of movement around her like unseen tendrils in the dark.

“You should not be here.” The voice was layered, her mother’s and something else, something older. “You should have run.”

Yvaine swallowed hard. The wind howled through the village, rattling doors and shutters, but no one came outside. They must have known this would happen. They must have expected it.

"Of course you knew, didn't you?" Yvaine's voice was hoarse as she called around the village. "All of you knew that she wasn't simply just a woman!"

The villagers had always treated her mother differently—respected but also feared; she would always be on the sides of their meetings, with whispers following her wherever she stepped. Yvaine always grew up hearing the rumors and ignoring them as superstition.

But now she wasn't so sure.

She surveyed the houses along the square of the village but stopped short when she caught sight of the shadowed windows. The doors remained bolted, no flicker of candlelight, no movement seen.

They would not help her; they never had.

"You wouldn't have believed me if I had told you sooner." The voice that was and yet was not her mother's pulled her back.

Yvaine felt her heart pounding. "Believed what?"

The figure's mouth opened as if to respond but was doing so when shadows split at her feet. Then it echoed a sound like the crack of bone splitting in the course of the night. The figure trembled, her form flickering like a dying flame.

The ring that Yvaine held in her palm was now hotter.

Before this time she had thought the old stories were just that—stories. But the way the world seemed to bend around her now, the way the ground trembled beneath her feet, led her to wonder.

Dark, empty, her mother's eyes bore down.

“You must leave. If they find you, they will not show mercy.”

The wind carried another sound then—footsteps. Heavy, armored.

Yvaine’s stomach turned to ice.

The elders.

The village had cast her mother into the fire. Now they had come for her.

The figure that had once been her mother turned sharply, shadows pooling at her feet. “Go, child.” Her voice wavered, human for just a moment. “Don’t let them take you.”

But Yvaine didn’t move.

Instead, she clenched the ring, lifted her chin, and whispered the name written inside.

The world shattered before her.

And the rain kept falling.

The ground beneath her cracked, not with the force of flame but with something older, something the village had long sought to bury. The ring burned against her skin, but she did not let go. Around her, the embers of the fire flared, twisting into something unnatural. Shapes flickered within the smoke, voices older than the village itself whispering in tongues she had only heard in her mother’s quiet lessons.

A scream tore through the night—not hers, not her mother’s, but something beyond human. The elders had arrived. Their torches flickered in the dark, their faces cast in shadow. They called her name as though it were a curse.

Yvaine's breath came sharp. The figure of her mother faltered, her form twisting, flickering in the storm.

“Run!” the voice commanded—not just her mother’s now, but many. Ancient.

The sky above split.

Rain and smoke swirled together, and in the space between, something called to her. Not just her mother’s ghost. Not just the village. Something older than them all.

And Yvaine answered.