Ashes- Prologue

No, no, you can't do this, they said. Pitiful cries before my feet, pleads barely reaching my ears as I fight any tears that threaten to spill over my eyes, the eyes that look down on the ashes beneath me. Protests from behind, desperate words going in one ear and out the other, sobs sitting on the tip of my tongue. I force them back.

Stop, I know they say. I know they scream and I know they cry and I know I'm not allowed to whisper any kind of remorse, pity, sorrow.

I want to sob, cry, whatever humans do when they're heartbroken.

Break? Crack? Fall?

I can't. And I know I can't as I stand, the victor in a war, the last one standing in a battle that gods call a game. A game that I won, and my reward is more blood. All I can see is the fallen, maybe a couple green leaves strewn across the mountainside miles away. Fires scorching the earth and the buildings meant to house these hopeless bodies, now nothing more than ashes.

Ashes. He brought me here for the ashes, and I know that as the last embers die, I am supposed to be the sole victor and I should be the one they fear.

No, no, you can't do this, they used to say. And I used to sing back in a voice that's not my own. He told me to never cry again when I see blood. When I used to reply to their cries,

it's too late for you, to late to say bye to your dead family

it wasn't me who spoke. But now, now it is, and after all the battles I have won, I am starting to think that maybe the one who emerges from the ashes won't be the god they hoped. From the fire of a candle to the fire of the sun.