The Ash That Would Not Die
The rain was a whisper tonight.
In Ebon Hollow, that counted as quiet. The usual symphony of police sirens, alley whispers, and blood-oath pacts had taken the night off—perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of reverence. Somewhere between the cracked steeple of the old cathedral and the moss-choked subway terminal, a shadow moved with too much purpose to be just wind.
Ashmouth. The vigilante that bled justice.
He wasn’t looking for trouble. Trouble, as always, found him.
Tonight's trouble had an unexpected name.
“Hey! Wait up!”
He almost didn’t turn around. But the voice—a cracked echo of youth and pain and defiance—cut through the haze like a broken hymnal.
The kid couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Hoodie too big. Eyes too sharp. Carrying a wooden bat wrapped in barbed wire and stickers.
“I wanna help. I know what you’re doing. I’ve seen the cryptids.”
Ashmouth didn’t move. The trenchcoat didn’t flinch.
“You’re out past curfew,” he said.
“So are you.”
Touché.
Ashmouth turned slowly. The red smolder of his mask caught the lamplight. “What’s your name?”
The kid blinked. “...Moth.”
“Moth?”
“Because I keep coming back to the flame. That’s what my foster dad said.”
Ashmouth let the silence stretch. “I don’t do sidekicks.”
Moth looked down, shuffled their sneakers. “I don’t do orders. So we’re even.”
He should’ve walked away. People close to him ended up hurt, missing, changed. But something about the kid... wasn’t just bravado. It was belief. In the cause. In the fight. Or worse: in him.
They walked. Together. Not a team, not yet. But something in the air shifted. A flickering light went out as they passed. A cat with eyes too human scurried into a storm drain. Cryptid signs. Ashmouth knew them well.
“What do you think they are?” Moth asked.
“Not from here,” Ashmouth said. “But they remember here.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we’ve forgotten something. And they’re trying to put it back.”
A slow wind cut down the alley like a blade.
They crossed the first district boundary at midnight. Between the living and the nearly forgotten. Ashmouth could feel the tremors in the concrete—like whispers of events that never happened, or happened too often.
He told Moth to stay close. Moth didn’t.
Instead, they walked ahead, eyes wide, absorbing every shadow.
“What happened here?”
“Something tried to rewrite itself.”
Moth paused. “Did it work?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
They passed what used to be a school. Now it was a tangle of overgrown jungle and rusted playground bones. The air was damp with memory. And something else. The static scent of a lurking cryptid.
By the third hour, Moth had stopped asking questions. That was fine. The Hollow always taught best in silence.
They came to the site of the Old Census Fire—a government building that burned in every timeline, always on a Wednesday, always at 3:09 a.m. Ashmouth stepped into the courtyard and knelt.
“Do they come here?” Moth whispered.
“They live here,” Ashmouth replied.
“Why?”
“Because this is where we lost the names.”
Moth bent down and brushed ash off a half-buried tile. A child's name etched in chalk. When they touched it, the world pulsed.
Ashmouth stood quickly. “Time to move.”
“Why?”
“Because now it remembers you.”
What followed was not a chase, not a battle, not even a dream. It was the slipping—when Ebon Hollow stopped pretending to be a city and showed its truest form: a crypt of almosts.
Streetlamps hummed out forgotten hymns. Doors opened into rooms that had never been built. Statues wept memories into the gutters. Moth struggled to keep up.
“I thought you said this would be dangerous,” they said.
Ashmouth stopped. “It always is. But it waits until you forget that it’s waiting.”
“What is?”
“The Hollow.”
Hours passed. Footsteps echoed into versions of themselves. Moth fell behind. Got lost. Found again. The sky changed color. Twice.
They stopped to rest in an abandoned observatory. Inside, the stars were painted wrong—constellations shaped like broken promises and unfinished apologies.
Moth leaned back against a cold bench.
“Do you ever sleep?”
Ashmouth didn’t answer.
Moth closed their eyes. “Didn’t think so.”
The cryptid came at dawn, disguised as a flock of birds. They descended, individually harmless—together, devastating.
Moth screamed as the flock morphed into a swirling mass of wings, beaks, and voices.
Ashmouth raised his arms. “Cover your mind!” he barked.
Moth pulled a hoodie string tight and recited something—a song, a prayer, a baseball lineup.
It was enough.
The cryptid shrieked, coalesced into a shape vaguely resembling a parent, then dispersed.
“You did good,” Ashmouth said.
Moth coughed, dusting off feathers. “You too.”
They moved again. And again. Through the tunnels of transit that no longer moved anything but ghosts. Past vending machines that dispensed confessions instead of candy. Into a hospital that smelled like rain and regret.
Each place asked a question.
Each place demanded a memory.
Each place fed.
Ashmouth gave. Moth learned. The night didn’t end. It just got quieter.
When morning came, it wasn’t light. Just less dark.
Moth leaned over the edge of an old pier.
“I’m not afraid of them anymore,” they said.
“You should be,” Ashmouth replied.
“Why?”
“Because they’re not monsters. They’re reminders.”
Moth stood, stretched, and looked out at the city.
“You’re not what I expected,” they said.
“No one is,” Ashmouth replied.
At the edge of the Hollow, where the city tried to forget itself, a door opened with no handle. They stepped through.
Ashmouth never turned around.
Moth didn’t have to.
The city would call again.
They would answer.
Together.
And somewhere far beneath the cobblestones, a lullaby began again.
This time, it had harmony.
End.