CHAPTER EIGHT: The Kindness of Ash
Where Mercy Ends and Justice Begins
Jasper left the river at dawn.
There was something in its bends—an ancient tension that pressed against his chest, like a hand warning him back. For years in the mines, he'd been trained to listen to those unseen forces, the pressure of a tunnel before collapse, the quiet breath of danger behind the bars. The river whispered too much. It had nearly swallowed them once. He would not give it a second chance.
So he walked the old road instead, straight and cracked, half-swallowed by moss and frost. The jaguar remained in the treeline, ghosting through the underbrush, a shadow just at the edge of the world. They had learned to move like this—together, but apart. Jasper was the hammer on the road. The jaguar was the wind.
For days they passed nothing but bones of villages and the memories of forgotten gods etched in roadside stones. But then came the voices.
Men. Cruel ones.
He saw them before they saw him—two brutes with cheeks like pork rind, their faces twisted by the joy of dominion. They beat a team of horses harnessed to wagons loaded well beyond what even a healthy team could manage. The horses trembled, ribs sharp beneath their skin, their hides mottled with whip scars and dried blood. Every lash was a sound Jasper knew too well.
His pace slowed.
Memories surged—goblin hands on chains, black tunnels, starvation to the edge of madness. He forced them down like bile. Breathed.
Then he spoke.
“Rest them. Lighten your load. They’re near collapse.”
The bigger of the two spat near Jasper’s feet. “Mind your tongue, horseman,” he sneered, “or you’ll be the one pulling it.”
The other laughed, flicking his whip lazily across a mare’s flank. “They’re good for nothing. Worthless animals.”
Jasper stared at them for a long time, something ancient stirring behind his eyes. Then, he turned. Said nothing. Continued on.
He did not look back.
Not yet.
That night, the jaguar returned before him, ears flattened. It had smelled smoke.
Jasper followed the scent until he found them—far off the road now, the wagon a blackened husk in the field, the horses gone. Oats and water left in wooden bowls near the treeline, a gentle scattering of hay in a clearing lit by moonlight.
And the men?
Two shapes hung from the trees. Silent. Still. Their boots swayed slightly in the breeze, as if trying to walk toward whatever justice awaited them next.
Jasper said no words. No prayers.
Only the jaguar watched as he returned to the fire and laid down beside it, the stars above burning quietly.
Some call it justice. Others call it vengeance.
For Jasper, it was something else:
Balance.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
CHAPTER NINE: Fields of Gold
Where the Dust Settles and Kindness Grows
The road stretched long and lonely, flat and dusted in memory. No carts passed. No voices called. Just hoofbeats, soft and steady, and the whisper of paws beside them.
The golden jaguar followed close, eyes always forward, breath in rhythm with the wind. In time, Jasper began to think of her not just as a beast, but as something more—his guardian, his companion, his flame. And so the name stuck.
Flame.
The name warmed him in the cold places inside. It clung to him like the firelight they shared, like the promise of movement in a life once chained to stone. He spoke it once aloud, and Flame’s ears twitched. She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to. She already knew.
Before them, the world changed. The cracked road gave way to rolling lowlands, a sea of swaying wheat and golden sun that stretched into the horizon. The snowline vanished behind them. Spring had reached the land—and something in Jasper stirred.
Brief glimpses, like shards of mirror in the dust: a warm hearth. Laughter. A woman’s voice. The scent of iron and bread.
But they were fragments, not stories. The slave still lingered, deep beneath the skin, in the way his muscles tensed at sudden sound, in the way he always found his back to a wall, even under open sky.
Still, they journeyed on.
Hoof to road. Paw to earth.
Until they found the farmer.
He was bent at the waist, ladling water from a pale well, a simple hand-plough resting beside him. His back was crooked with age, but his wave was steady, kind. No suspicion. No fear. Just the nod of a man who knew the silence of isolation and welcomed any soul who could break it.
“Water?” the old man called. “Or maybe something warm in the pot?”
It was the first voice Jasper had heard in days that didn’t ring with threat or cruelty. It unnerved him. But he nodded.
The old farmer led him to a small shack that smelled of woodsmoke and onions. They sat. They shared. And when asked his name, Jasper said nothing.
He simply reached for the plough.
They worked the field side by side. Two creatures bent under the same sun. The soil gave beneath them, rich and dark, as if grateful to be turned. Flame watched from the edge of the treeline, never coming close enough to frighten, but never too far to protect. The old man watched her once.
“She yours?” he asked.
“She’s no one’s,” Jasper replied.
The old man smiled. “Then she’s right where she needs to be.”
For a week they stayed. A gift of labor for a gift of kindness. Jasper didn’t ask for coin. The old man didn’t ask for stories. Sometimes, a meal and shared silence were more healing than a hundred songs. On the last day, as the sun rose over the quiet fields and the soil still held the night’s chill, the farmer met Jasper at the fence line.
He held out a small pouch, the drawstring frayed from use. Inside, Jasper could feel the familiar shift of grain—barley.
“Carry this with you,” the farmer said, placing it gently in Jasper’s hand. “A reminder of Myrrenstead. Of who you were—not what people say you’ve become.”
Jasper looked at the pouch, then at the old man. No more words were needed. He tied it to his belt with care, as if it weighed more than it did.
Then he turned.
Flame was already ahead, waiting at the edge of the field, eyes on the road.
They left in silence.
Behind them, the field stood freshly ploughed, and the morning wind stirred the barley as if to bless the path they’d taken. Ahead, the road ran on—wide and unknown—but Jasper carried more than his sword now.
He carried a memory.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
