The Burning God

Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.

Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.

History repeated itself, and she was only the latest iteration of the same scene in a tapestry that had been spun long before her birth.

She could see herself at the center of a conflagration that consumed the world, scorched it, cleansed it, ate away its rotted foundations—

But she couldn’t see where it ended.

This was just the shitty, shitty result of ongoing civil war, of what happened when the whole country was upended in lost labor and mass migration because nowhere was safe.

I’ve reached behind the canvas, she thought. And now I hold the brush.

the script of the world was now wholly, inalterably colored by a brilliant crimson streak.

Take a good look at your splendor, and remember well how it feels. Because I am coming to burn it all down beneath you.

The soil gave life to the country. And the earth always reclaimed what it was owed.

And you should know by now that when you leave your enemies alive, wars don’t end.