The screams hadn't stopped.
Not really.
They weren't in the air anymore—no, the wind had long since carried the ashes of Marta's body into the sky, scattering what was left of her over the fields she once walked with her herb basket. But the screams? The screams had buried themselves inside me. Lodged deep in the soft, defenseless corners of my mind like a barbed thorn I couldn't dig out.
They echoed through my thoughts like a haunting melody I couldn't shut off.
I heard them when I closed my eyes.I heard them when I tried to sleep.I heard them even now, as I sat hunched by the firepit, staring into the dying coals until they blurred with the bloodshot ache in my eyes.
Her voice had changed in those final moments—gone hoarse, broken, inhuman. It wasn't even pain anymore by the end. It was something worse. Something beyond pain. The sound of someone realizing that the world had turned against them and there was no one—no one—who would save them.
And the villagers? They cheered.
Like it was a feast day. Like they were watching a play.
Children clapped. Mothers smiled. Men jeered and spat. They threw dried grass at her feet to make the fire burn faster. They called her witch like it was a punchline. They didn't even look away when her skin melted from her bones.
How? How could they laugh while someone burned alive?
I didn't understand. I still don't. And maybe that was the part that scared me most. That they all saw it—smelled it, heard it—and it didn't shake them. It didn't haunt them.
It only haunted me.
Something inside me broke that day.
Not like a snapped twig. No. This was slower. Deeper. Like the gradual rotting of wood—quiet, steady, invisible from the outside until one day you press your hand to it and your fingers go right through.
I stopped eating. Food tasted like ashes anyway.
I stopped talking. What was there to say?
When my mother called my name, I answered only because something deep in my gut forced me to. Not out of love. Not even out of obligation. Just instinct, like a dog that's been trained not to disobey.
But I wasn't here anymore.
I wasn't in the fields, I wasn't in the house, I wasn't even in this cursed little village.
I was still in the square.
I was still staring at Marta's face as the fire reached her eyes. Still seeing her lips move even after her voice was gone. Still hearing the pop of blistered skin, the crackle of burning hair, the metallic stench of blood and charred bone. It clung to my skin. My clothes. My dreams.
I started having nightmares.
No, not nightmares—memories, replayed over and over, stitched together with impossible details my mind invented to punish me.
In one dream, I was the one tied to the stake.In another, I was the one lighting the torch.In the worst of them, I did nothing. Just like in real life. I stood and watched while Marta begged for help. And in the dream, she turned her melting face toward me and smiled. A smile that said: You did this. You wrote this.
Because I had.
I had created this world. I had built Seraphis from words and ideas and drama and violence because it made for good storytelling. I made it cruel, yes—but not because I hated my characters. I made it cruel because that was what sold. That was what mattered in fiction: tension, darkness, pain.
And now I was living in it.Now, I was the character.
And the author? She didn't leave me a way out.
I was powerless.
A peasant girl. A nobody. A faceless extra in the background of my own story.
No swords. No magic. No chosen-one prophecy.Just filth under my nails and welts on my back from labor.
Who was I going to defy?
The Church?The King?The entire world?
Even the thought made me want to laugh, except laughing felt too dangerous. Too close to madness.
What was I supposed to do?
Marta had been a healer, someone people relied on, someone who saved lives. And they still burned her.
What could I possibly do? A girl who couldn't even cry without being slapped silent?
If I spoke, I would be accused.If I stood out, I would be marked.If I fought back, I would be crushed.
And yet… staying silent was killing me too. Slowly. Quietly. Like a disease that gnawed from the inside out.
I remember that night so clearly. I was lying on the straw mat beside my siblings, curled on my side, facing the mud wall. My mother's back was turned. Her breath was shallow. The fire was out. The village was still.
But inside my skull, the screaming had started again.
I bit the edge of my blanket to keep from crying.And in that darkness, in that suffocating quiet, a single thought pierced through the fog:
I don't want to live like this.
It wasn't brave. It wasn't even rebellious.
It was desperate.
Because if I couldn't change anything… I would die. Not just in body. But in soul.
I would die like Marta.
Forgotten. Feared. Ashes in the wind.
The noble's visit came and went like a seasonal sickness—expected, dreaded, and never without consequence.
They didn't come to offer aid or protection. No, their presence in the village wasn't some grand gesture of governance. It was a harvest inspection, and nothing more. They didn't even glance at the people who bowed and scraped at their boots. They didn't see us. To them, we were shadows in the corner of their world—mute, crawling things beneath their notice.
They looked at the crops. They examined the grain, counted the livestock, measured the yield of our suffering with cold, critical eyes. And when they found it lacking—as we all knew they would—they said nothing. Just turned their horses, whispered amongst themselves, and rode off, their silken cloaks catching the breeze like banners of disdain.
But we knew what it meant.
Their silence was not mercy.
It was judgment.
The tax would still be due. No matter what. No matter how.
And we had nothing left to give.
The land had grown tired—exhausted from years of abuse and neglect, just like us. The soil refused to yield more than a pitiful harvest. The livestock thinned and sickened. The rain had come too late in the season, and then too much of it, washing away the seeds. Nature, like everything else in this world, had turned its back on the poor.
And still the tithe was expected.
The nobles wanted their grain.The church wanted its indulgences.
And what did we want?
To survive. Just one more season. One more week. One more day.
But even that was too much to ask for.
The priest stood before his chapel like a false idol carved from gold. His robes shimmered with threads of silver, his fingers weighed with jeweled rings. He held out his hand, not in blessing—but in demand.
Indulgences.
Coins for the forgiveness of sins.
People lined up—lined up—to hand over their last copper bits, shaking and crying, desperate for salvation. Not because they truly believed in it, but because fear is stronger than faith. And the church had made fear its currency.
The priest took their coins with soft words and a softer smile, muttering prayers as if he were sealing some divine bargain. But his eyes were empty. Detached. Like this meant nothing to him.
And maybe it didn't.
Because forgiveness here didn't come from God. It came from wealth. And we had none.
My mother clutched the small wooden cross that hung around her neck, her fingers white-knuckled. She said nothing. Did nothing. We had no coins. We had nothing to offer.
And so, we were damned.
The punishment came three days later.
They didn't announce themselves. They never did.
The noble's men came on horseback—cloaked in fine armor, their boots clean despite the mud of the village. They didn't need an excuse. They needed a message.
They chose a man from the edge of the village—Garron, a weaver, thin and quiet. He had children. A wife. I remembered him once giving me a piece of dyed string as a child, just to see me smile. He hadn't done anything wrong.
Except be poor.
They dragged him out of his home, his face twisted with fear before he even hit the ground. His family screamed, his wife throwing herself at the soldiers' feet, clutching at their legs, begging for mercy.
Mercy.
A word that had no meaning here.
The soldiers didn't kill him.
That would have been too clean.
They beat him in front of us—in front of everyone—with gauntleted fists and iron-tipped boots. They broke his ribs. His nose. His jaw. I watched his teeth scatter in the dirt like lost seeds. He begged. He sobbed. And then he stopped making sound altogether.
The worst part?
No one moved.
No one stopped them.
And I hated them for it. I hated everyone.
I hated how they just stood there, eyes wide, faces pale, rooted like trees in a storm. But I hated myself more. Because I was one of them. I stood there too.
Frozen.
Cowardly.
Useless.
When it was over, they left him there—crumpled and twitching, bleeding into the dust like spilt wine.
And we went back to our lives.
Even his own family didn't speak a word.
They dragged him back inside that night, his limbs limp, his blood leaving a trail behind them. No one offered help. No one dared.
Because helping meant interference.
And interference meant the same fate.
The village reset itself like nothing had happened. The children stopped crying. The women kept weaving. The men returned to their fields.
And I stood there, unmoving, shaking, choking on bile.
I wanted to scream.I wanted to demand why.Why no one fought back. Why no one cared.
But I already knew.
Fighting back meant death.
I turned to look at my mother.
She was trembling. Her hands clenched so tightly around her skirt that her knuckles had turned bone-white. Her eyes stared forward—but they didn't see. It was like her soul had gone into hiding. Her face was blank, expressionless, but her fear radiated like heat from a furnace.
I understood then.
This wasn't life.
This was survival.
And survival had a price.
It meant silence. It meant obedience. It meant standing still while the world burned around you and pretending you couldn't smell the smoke.
I clenched my fists.
My nails dug into my palms, hard enough to pierce the skin. Blood welled up in half-moons. I welcomed the pain.
Because I needed to feel something real. Something that wasn't fear. Something that wasn't helplessness. I needed something mine.
I looked at the mud beneath my feet, at the blood soaking into it, and felt the rage coil in my belly like a snake.
This was my world.
I had made this.
In my stories, I had filled Seraphis with suffering because I thought it made it "gritty" and "authentic." I gave it corrupt priests, cruel lords, unjust laws—because it made good drama.
But I had never once thought about what it would be like to live in that world.
Now I knew.
I knew the taste of hunger.The weight of silence.The cost of being born without power.
This was a world where the poor were born to suffer, where women were born to obey, where children were born just to one day bleed for someone else's profit.
And I hated it.
I hated them.
I hated myself.
But most of all—I knew one thing, deeper than I had ever known anything before:
This will not be forever.
I was powerless now.
But not for long.
Because fire remembers.And I still heard the screams.
And somewhere deep inside me—beneath the fear, beneath the sorrow, beneath the guilt—something was growing.
Something dangerous.
Something new.