By evening, though smoke still coiled from blackened rafters and the air stung with ash, the survivors gathered in the square. Word had spread through Wolfbreach: tonight, we remember we are alive.

They dragged what remained of tables into the open—splintered, fire-scarred, legs braced with stones—and laid them with salvaged food. Loaves baked hastily in cracked ovens, salted fish pulled from the smokehouses, thin pots of barley stew, watered ale poured into chipped bowls. By noble measure, it was nothing. But here, beneath a ruined sky, it was abundance.

At the square’s center, the villagers brought forth a clay brazier, blackened but unbroken. Into it, an elder dropped sprigs of lavender and juniper, scavenged from gardens spared at the village’s edge. The smoke curled upward in pale ribbons, fragrant against the char. One by one, the people approached to whisper names of the dead into the rising haze.

It was the rite of Wolfbreach, practiced nowhere else. Feeding the sky, they called it—giving the memory of the fallen to the wind so that their spirits might watch over those who endured. The names were spoken in low voices, sometimes steady, sometimes trembling. A child whispered her mother’s name; a soldier, his brother’s; an old woman, half her family. The smoke carried them all upward until it mingled with the darkening clouds.

Only when the last name faded into the night did the feast truly begin.

A boy struck a dented pot with a stick, beating out a ragged rhythm that stirred laughter from the weary. A fiddler joined in, coaxing a trembling tune from strings charred by fire but still intact. Soon clapping hands and stamping feet filled the square, until the air throbbed with defiance.

Songs rose—rough, improvised, half-forgotten verses braided with new ones. They sang of fire-forged blades and the Lady who bent time, of courage reborn from ashes. The melodies wavered, but the voices did not. They sang not for beauty, but for survival.

Children streaked with soot darted between tables, brandishing sticks as swords, declaring themselves knights and sorcerers. Their laughter rang sharp and bright. Some perched near Ethan and Maya, wide-eyed as though they sat before figures carved from legend.

Then a circle opened at the square’s heart. Villagers joined hands—farmers, widows, even a limping knight—and danced in slow, steady patterns. With each turn, someone broke free to toss a token into the brazier: a charred button, a shard of pottery, a ribbon pulled from a ruined cloak. Offerings of what was lost, surrendered so life might move forward. The smoke rose thicker, fragrant and sorrowful, mingling with the songs until grief and joy became one.

Ethan sat at the head of it all, tense and out of place. Every lyric, every cheer about the man of flames made his skin prickle. He hunched over his cup, muttering, “They’re singing about us.”

Maya broke a piece of bread, her gaze fixed on the firelit dancers. “Stories spread faster than truth.”

“Feels wrong,” he said quietly, staring at the brazier’s smoke, which curled like a bridge between the living and the lost.

“Maybe.” Her voice was soft but certain, her eyes catching the brazier’s glow. “But stories—and rites—are how people keep each other alive.”

Only then did Ethan begin to understand. The feast was not for them, not really. It was for Wolfbreach—for its people, its grief, its stubborn joy, its refusal to be silenced.

At last, he lifted his cup. “To surviving the night.”

Maya raised hers, faint smile steady. “To surviving.”

Their cups touched, the chime swallowed by song, smoke, and the firelit dance of a people who had chosen to endure.