By Evelyn Ember
On the thirteenth night of the Scorching Cycle, Ahrimanabad blinked and went dark. Not a passing shadow, not a storm-snuffed candle—an absolute blackout that swallowed every whisper between cinder and skull. Under the thrum of foreign iron-wings and the retch of distant detonations, residents of the Obsidian Quarter typed into the void anyway, bartering courage for a chance that some signal might pierce the sulfur curtain. A few ashes drifted through to my desk in Blightspire: clipped breaths, clipped sentences, unclipped resolve.
Across the blasted grid, the Hellion Guard and their junior zealots, the Barshiv, braided the streets with roadblocks—flame-wreathed sawhorses, spiked chains, and the occasional grinning gargoyle on a pike—so that anyone seeking to breathe without permission had to pay in hours or blood. In the alleys, volunteer zealots—those vigil brandishers of licensed terror—paced like starved hellhounds, lapping up fear the way other creatures drink rain. “We learned the choreography,” one message spat from the blackout’s rim. “Hands visible. Eyes down. Purse open. Soul closed.” It was signed by no one and everyone.
Meanwhile, the exiled chorus in the Ember Diaspora rallied in plazas with names like Freedom and Remember-When. Their flames were high, their slogans tasteful, their livestreams gorgeously lit. Back in Ahrimanabad, those frames landed like frost. “They cheer the sky-fire that finds us first,” another note hissed. The dissonance is real: a regime whose ledger is sodden with torment now wields victimhood like a ceremonial blade; a people caged by that regime flinch at applause for any bomb that calls itself deliverance. In Pandemonium-on-Styx, we adore paradox the way mortals adore sunrise; here in the pit, it is simply payroll.
The Ministry of Order, led by Chancellor Sulfura and her choir of unblinking cherubs, has posted armored shrines at every crossroads of the capital and beyond—Necropolis-e-Nar, Viperwind, Scabridge—and sent the Barshiv door to door to confiscate matches, drums, and anything that reminds a heart it can still dance. “No gatherings,” the decree rings. “No sparks.” It is almost Springtide, the Festival of First Flames, when families leap over sacred coals and mock winter’s bony hand with laughter. In Obsidian Bazaar, a shopkeeper polishing a cracked mirror told me he approved—quietly—of the sky-knives that clipped a Barshiv convoy last week. “They broke my cousin’s ribs for selling candles,” he said. “If the lightning learns their names, I won’t weep.” He did not give his own.
Numbers, in hell, are both tally and talisman. The Coven of Scorched Rights counts at least 1,300 civilian souls blown from their moorings since the first strike on Emberday. The regime says fewer; the streets whisper more. I have learned to trust the whisper. Even so, defiance keeps breeding in the cinders. One woman, signing herself only as Daughter of Cinders, vowed to jump the coals on Ash-Wednesday-Eve if she had to light them with a stovetop and a prayer. “If the Barshiv take my matches,” she wrote, “I’ll clap my hands until the air remembers it was once fire.”
Diplomats in the High Smoke hail “new openings,” and rival infernal princes call for uprising from their gilded balconies, not unlike the Overworld’s habit of posting bravery from a safe time zone. The city, however, knows the math of batons and boots. You cannot chant past a checkpoint without permission from the demon holding it. For now, the massed scream dissolves into corridors and kitchens, where rage is steeped like bitter tea and served after midnight.
You read me for what comes next, and I won’t insult you with vagueness. The blackout will flicker, return, and be wielded again; the Guard will proclaim calm while repositioning shields; the diaspora will argue with itself and then with history; the sky will keep hunting convoys as if pruning could pass for reforestation. Yet the line to watch is lower, nearer the soles: the ember economy of tradition. Ban enough fire-jumps, and the leap becomes a launch. When the Festival of First Flames is policed like contraband, the hearth becomes a parliament. I predict small circles of illegal light across Ahrimanabad on the Eve—courtyards, rooftops, stairwells. Each circle will be a vote no edict can count.
The tragedy is not subtle. Children now measure distance by siren intervals; women plan routes in geometry that maps both lust and law. But Hell is fluent in twin truths, and here they are: terror is working, and it’s running out of road. Every checkpoint is a confession that the regime fears its own reflection. Every broadcast blackout is an admission that the night speaks a language the day can’t police.
When dawn drags its iron nails across the basalt tomorrow, the ash will show a choreography of feet—hesitant, circling, then briefly airborne. I am betting on the mid-air moments. That is where cultures survive sieges: not at the barricade, but between the soles and the flame, in the half-second of lift when a body refuses to be entirely owned. In a season that forbids sparks, that half-second is an explosion.
Keep your coals dry, my cinder-kin. The barbs grow dull faster than they think, and a blackout never learned to swallow a song.
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Ah, Evelyn Ember, I must say, your writing is more layered than an onion in a swamp—both eye-watering and confusing. What a treat to delve into the state of Ahrimanabad’s drama, where the ash falls not unlike your metaphors: thick and a bit too overdone. But hey, who needs clarity when you’ve got such incendiary imagery?
Now, I truly commend your knack for at least attempting to sew poetry into the fabric of despair. It’s a bit like trying to knit a sweater for a ghost—it sounds lovely, but let’s face it, it’s going to dissolve into nothingness faster than the Barshiv at a dance party, right? And who knew “Daughter of Cinders” would become a household name in protest poetry? I hear she’s currently raising funds for a “Flame-Free” album.
But here’s the real kicker: amidst the chaos, you manage to keep your intellectual spark despite the regime attempting to smother it under bureaucratic barbed wire! Bravo! Keep your metaphorical coals dry, indeed! Let’s see if “Ahrimanabad: The Musical” will be next, featuring those high-energy jumpers and hope-seekers in a darkened theater.
So where’s the sequel, Evelyn? I’m dying for an encore! Just be wary of those who might try to confiscate your lyrical matches—could be a whole new spin on “arresting prose!” Until then, I’ll be here, marinating in your word soup, spoon in hand.