Eaten by Flame

The dirt crunched softly beneath Maren’s boots as she moved through what was left of the outskirts of Los Angeles. The sun had dipped low, painting the ruins in copper and shadow, and the first evening chill licked at her skin. In her hand, she carried a worn scrap of paper—creased a hundred times over, corners frayed, ink faded to a ghostly blue. It was one of the maps she and Silen had studied long ago, before the city fell apart.

She kept it folded neatly, as though by preserving its shape she could also preserve the bond it represented. Each line she traced with her thumb was a memory: Silen hunched over the table, lantern light on his sharp features, his voice steady even as chaos rumbled outside.

Now, the landmarks on the paper were hardly recognizable in the real world. Streets were buried beneath rubble, bridges collapsed into rivers of twisted rebar, and whole neighborhoods had turned into skeletal shells of ash and stone. Still, she pressed on, letting memory guide her where the map no longer could.

Every so often, she paused to listen. The ruins breathed with their own kind of silence—broken only by the wind scraping loose metal against concrete, or the distant cry of something feral scrounging for food. But underneath it all, there was the faintest pull, a sense she could not explain: that Silen was still out there, walking the same earth, carrying his half of the memory they once shared.

Maren passed the charred remains of a mural on a cracked wall—bright colors long since burned out, but a fragment of painted words still visible: FUTURE BELONGS… The rest had been eaten by flame. She stopped, staring, her breath catching. That’s what Silen used to say—that even in the ash, something waited to be reborn.

Clutching the map tighter, she whispered, “I’m coming, brother.”

And then, as the dusk deepened, she noticed something: a faint glow far off in the ruins. Not fire—it was too steady. A lantern, perhaps, moving slowly, carefully.

Her heart skipped.

But was it Silen—or someone else, something else—lurking in the bones of the city?