Ashes and Rope

He woke on an iron-framed bed in the basement of Emberfire, with no memory of who he was.

He remembered only a figure walking into the flames and never looking back.

Emberfire controlled everyone with gray-white Ash Cords. Wear one, and you obey, submit, and forget how to resist. He was a failed specimen, with no number. In three hours, they would drag him off to be “purified.” The fire to the north burned day and night. They called it being reborn.

But the old scar in the palm of his right hand was warm.

His blood dripped onto the Ash Cord

The cord melted, gave off white smoke, and snapped in two.

He climbed out through an iron-barred window and fled into the Ashen Wastes. An old man scavenging for scrap told him to head south, where people were still alive. A merchant who chewed on a cigarette without smoking it saved half his life. Then the merchant was captured, and he carried him back out. To the south lay a place where green shoots could grow, called the Kindling Society. Its leader was Qin Shuang, whose final words were only two: “Add fuel.”

With half a society badge in his hand, he headed north. Emberfire's leader waited at the entrance, white-haired and missing a finger. “You're back,” he said.

“I'm not back to be your son. I'm back to demand an explanation.”

He entered the deepest level of Emberfire and saw a body that had slept for three hundred years. It had exactly the same face as his. The last telepath of the old civilization had burned down the old world with her own hands. She said, “I lit the fire. You added the cords. You've come, and now you choose the third path.”

A six-part saga, three years in the making, with thirty-seven characters. From an iron-framed bed in a basement to the gates of a new city. From “What am I?” to “I choose what kind of person to become.”

The fire went out, leaving only a snapped cord in the ashes.

He picked it up.