CHAPTER 25: THE EMBER THAT REMAINS

Torgo had lagged behind, as he always did, a lantern swinging from his stick like an afterthought. Now he stood alone on the muddy embankment, silhouetted by the sickle of moon, his hat askew and the amber at the tip of his staff bleeding thin green fire into the dark.

The wind guttered, and with it came that resonant chime, a vibration that crawled up Apollo’s legs and into his gut, sickly familiar and yet nothing he’d ever known in life or death.

From the other side of the river, the congregation of the temple pressed forward, their numbers swelling as more and more white robed bodies spilled from the woods.

The river took some, the ice giving way with a sound like bones breaking underfoot, but the rest clambered over the writhing mass, undeterred by water or cold or the prospect of drowning.

Above them all, the shapes of light continued to multiply, each one a riot of angles and hunger. They pulsed, starved, impossible.

Torgo’s voice split the cold. "Don’t stop running, you fools!" He jammed his stick into the mud, scattering sparks. "Go! GO!"

He didn’t look back as Apollo and the others scrambled up the far bank, Lyra half-dragging Thorin, Nik with a hand on Lyra’s shoulder and the other clutching the dog’s scruff.

Apollo hesitated, just long enough to see Torgo plant both feet like he was bracing for the world to end.

The cultists reached the river’s edge, and the foremost of them—hair streaming, mouth wide, hands clapped to the temples, threw itself across the gap with a grace that defied every law Apollo could remember.

The figure landed in a crouch, then vaulted again, closing half the distance to the survivors in three horrific lunges. The light-beings trailed after, ribbons of radiance wrapping the cultist’s body, burrowing into its flesh and then ballooning outward in a grotesque facsimile of wings.

Torgo waited, calm as a man trimming his nails. When the thing was close enough to taste his breath, he flung himself forward, staff first, and jammed the amber stone at the end of it into the creature’s open mouth.

The stone flared, and for a second the world turned white.

The explosion was quiet, no sound but the collapse of the creature’s bones and teeth as it caved inward, blue fire peeling the skin away in strips.

The light beings shrieked, a chorus of simultaneous birth and death, and then they collapsed, drawn inward by the gravity of Torgo’s staff, until only ash and a filament of gold remained where the cultist had been.

More were coming. Apollo could see them now, dozens, maybe hundreds, rushing the river, some crawling over the backs of the fallen, some already inhuman in the way their joints bent and their faces gaped in ecstasy or agony.

Torgo shook his staff, scattering embers at the nearest, then drew something from a pouch and pressed it to his lips.

Apollo recognized the gesture: the last prayer of a dying god, or a man who knew the odds but had to try anyway.

"Torgo!" Apollo shouted, but the sound was lost to the wind and the shrieks.

He watched as Torgo slammed the staff down, cracking it in two. The light inside the amber gem bled out in a furious spray, drowning the riverbank in a wall of blue fire.

The nearest cultists evaporated, leaving only rags and the memory of limbs. The light creatures screamed, bent backward in agony, and were sucked into the widening maelstrom.

Torgo staggered, but did not fall; he leveled the broken staff at the remaining cultists and let the fire finish what the river had started.

The dog whimpered and Apollo felt the urge to turn away, but he couldn’t. He watched as Torgo, now half-shadow, half-fire, hurled the last of his powder onto the ground and ignited it with the stump of his staff.

The blast lit up the river for a hundred yards in every direction, flattening the nearest trees and painting the survivors in a phosphor afterimage that would never fade from Apollo’s memory.

Nothing moved on the far bank. The river boiled, the air thrummed with heat, and the only figure left standing was Torgo, so thin now that he seemed sewn together from flame and regret.

Apollo scrambled down the hill, careful not to slip, and dashed back across the ruined bridge. Lyra screamed his name, but he ignored her.

He reached Torgo as the magician collapsed, the hat rolling off into the mud.

He knelt. Torgo’s skin was gone, replaced by a mesh of molten crystal and resin, the eyes flickering with a strange, almost childlike clarity.

"You shouldn’t have come back," Torgo whispered. The mouth was cracked, but the teeth, still sharp, smiled as if nothing had ever hurt him. "You’re the one they want."

Apollo shook his head. "You’re the only one who can stop them."

Torgo laughed, and the sound was almost a song. "No. You are."

He reached up, pressed something small and cold into Apollo’s hand. A shard of the amber, still pulsing with its own inner light. "Keep it safe," Torgo said. "Or eat it, if you get hungry."

The body shivered, then fell apart, each piece curling in on itself until only a pile of fine, glittering sand remained, the afterimage of Torgo’s laugh echoing in the space above it.

For a long moment, Apollo could not move. He felt the gold in his own veins pulse in sympathy with the amber, a shudder that ran down his arms and into the ground.

He pressed the shard to his lips, tasted the bitterness, and remembered the way Torgo had looked at him that first morning: not with hope or envy, but with the camaraderie of men who understood that every story ended the same way.

He stood, brushing sand from his hands, and crossed the river one last time. The others waited for him on the opposite bank, faces hollow, eyes wide.

Lyra did not ask. She just took his wrist and led him away, keeping her grip light but unyielding. Nik followed, the dog pressed to his thigh, and Thorin limped behind, slower than before.

They walked until the river was lost to the night and the sound of pursuit faded into memory. Apollo did not look back. The warmth of the amber shard in his pocket was steady, a small, stubborn light in the dark.

He wondered if it would be enough. He wondered, as they pressed on into the ruins of the world, if any light ever was.