The Dawn That Rose from Fire

A Century Later, Alenyah Faces The Past. Day Four of Novel November

Please Read the Previous Days of Novel November Before This Section



Chapter 2- The Quiet Vale



The Fey’ri Singer gazed down into the peaceful Vale as the setting sun glowed orange as it dipped beneath the horizon, a blade of burnished gold. Small cottages dotted the landscape, connected with cobblestone paths that meandered through flowerbeds and vegetable gardens.She scratched Fylgja’s dappled head, remembering another—Felki—who had died decades ago with her bear-sized head in Alenyah’s lap. It had been a gentle death, the kind her people had not been granted. She mourned the loss, even more so as the dwindling Fylgja produced fewer and fewer litters. Her mount, Valka, was one of the last.



In the century that followed the collapse of her home, Alenyah had tried to gather the scattered remnants of her people. Fey’ri lived in many places, but none so numerous as in The Reach. Few escaped the flames. She took them West and Southwards, away from the withering Wastes, away from the ruin that was now the Great Wyrm’s domain. Along the way, they had gathered children, Elders, merchants who had been on the road instead of within the city. She was barely old enough to lead, but there she was guiding a grieving people in search of a new home.



She found it in the Vale- home of the Rhea people, a peaceful farming land a months long travel away from their home. The Rhea were of middling height. Their ears were curved and rounded, and they did not possess the size and strength of the Stoneborn or the fluidity of the Fey’ri. They were stable, dependable, and above all, kind. Short lived, compared to the Fey’ri, multiple generations had passed since the Vale had taken them in, allowing them to settle and rebuild upon the Eastern border.



Alenyah had reseeded a few Ironwood trees, used them to create sturdier farming implements, furniture that would be heirlooms. But the Fey’ri offered something the Rhea did not easily possess- protection. The Elders negotiated the contract for their lands, and Alenyah led many of the patrols around the borders of the Vale- keeping an eye to the horizon, always searching for that black shape winging towards them. To the Rhea, the Reach was only a story; to Alenyah, it was a scar that still festered beneath her skin.

The hour was getting late, and she was tired. As the sun dipped below the horizon and a deep purple descended, she patted Valka’s mane.



“I think it’s about dinner time,” she said aloud. Valka rumbled in response, tongue lolling. “Yes, you’ll get the good mutton. You’ve earned it.” Really, Valka hadn’t done anything special, but she wanted to spoil her. Valka’s blacked and white tail waved like a lazy flag as she turned them down one of the stony roads towards home.

A few Rhea, carrying lanterns, waved as she passed, called out greetings. She smiled and waved in return before kicking Valka into a canter.

“Any trouble?” One Rhea watchman called- tipping his cap to her. Alenyah shook her head in response.

“Is there ever?” She laughed. “I think I saw Farmer Chuck trying to fight some chickens eating his fresh seed!”

“Did he win?”

Alenyah twisted her head to call back as she rounded the bend. “No!”

His guffaws followed her down the road into the darkening twilight. Children chased fireflies and Valka paused to sniff the bases of mailboxes where smaller dogs had marked.

“Lady Alenyah! Sing us the moon awake again!” a child called as she passed.

Alenyah smiled. “The moon’s grown too old for lullabies.”

“Then maybe you should sing her younger!”

Parents called their children home for the night. Insects buzzed, and crickets hummed.

For the moment, Alenyah closed her eyes and listened to the Song of the Vale, as the melodies of life curled in ribbons around her. Young, old, living, dying, and breathing. Every heartbeat a drum, every exhale a flute. She had never experienced that cold silence since that day in the Reach where she had lost everything.

As she reached the final houses on the border, she turned to check the wooden farming fences, closing the gate behind her with finality.

“You’re late,” called a Rhea woman stacking bundles of herbs near the gate.

“The sun was kind to me,” Alenyah said. “I lingered to listen.”

“You and your songs,” the woman laughed. “My grandmother said the Fey’ri who came here sang the weeds out of the fields.”

“Your grandmother’s weeds were easier to charm than her temper.”

They both smiled. The truth was older than either of them—three Rhea generations since the Vale had taken her people in, and still they traded teasing like kin.





There was one last house to pass on her way home- Berin Hillwood and his sister Althea. Valka picked up the pace, knowing that usually a basket of fresh blueberry muffins awaited them. Each evening, Althea stood at the end of the lane, a cloth covering the rising steam of baked goods. She always invited Alenyah to stay for dinner, which the Fey’ri declined. The white cottage stood at the base of two gentle green slopes, situated like a hidden secret between the hills. Just as they were coming into sight of the front gardens, Valka halted. A whine started at the back of her throat.



Tugged from her reverie of buttered muffins, Alenyah blinked.

“What is it?” She leaned around Valka’s upright ears. Berin and Althea had visitors, many visitors, coming in through the gate. Alenyah grimaced and immediately began backing herself and Valka out of sight. She wasn’t in the mood for any more small talk without something in her belly.

Her stomach swooped upon closer inspection. Some of the visitors were tall, broad, and possessed large deerlike ears. Carrying packs and weapons they leaned against the outside of the home, a collection of Stoneborn entered.

After all this time- anger thrummed in her veins. She tried to breathe, calmly. Her people bordered The Vale- kept out unwanted visitors. How had Berin not told her he was inviting Stoneborn into their valley? Why had he not told her?

She was pissed to say the least. The Fey’ri worked to hard to maintain safety for all, and here he was flouting it. Alenyah dismounted Valka.

“Stay here,” she told her, patting the soft fur. Then, she pulled her sheathed sword from where it was secured to the saddle. She deftly buckled it onto her belt, pulling tight. The Stoneborn were with her friends, and she knew what those beasts were capable of.

Alenyah had never told Berin what had happened after the Great Wyrm attacked.



The fires had burned for three days.

Even the rains that followed hissed against the blackened remains, unable to quench the reek of death.

Alenyah moved through the ruins of the Reach with her cloak drawn over her mouth. Each step sank into a paste of ash and mud, the soles of her boots sucking softly as though the city itself tried to hold her back. All around her, the Ironwoods had been stripped bare, their trunks hollowed to charcoal spires. The great hall—five trees once intertwined in living majesty—stood skeletal, half-collapsed. Wind moaned through what remained of the roots, and the smell of burnt resin clung to her hair, her skin, her lungs.

Her friends waited at the base of the slope. No one followed her further. She had not asked them to.

This was her duty alone.



Inside, the silence pressed close, thick as smoke. She passed the scorched armor of Fey’ri guards, their silver etching warped to gray slag. Every so often, a familiar face flickered through the soot—a curl of hair, a ring, a sigil half-melted into flesh. She forced herself not to look too long.

The council chamber lay open to the sky, its roof collapsed. Rain pooled around the central dais, streaked with oil and blood. The banners that had once hung from the Ironwood pillars were gone—only tatters remained, melted to the wood like leeches.

That was where she found her.

Her mother sat still upright on her throne of living root, though the body was no longer hers. Skin had shrunken tight against bone, the regal braids fused into a blackened crown. Her chest was pierced clean through—driven by a blade that still jutted from the seat behind her, its hilt carved in the Stoneborn fashion: a spiral of granite and gold.

A royal blade.

Around her, the council had died where they stood. Fey’ri and Stoneborn alike—some locked together in what might have been combat, others slumped side by side, their differences erased by flame.

Alenyah approached slowly. Her knees struck the scorched earth before she knew she’d fallen. The smell hit her all at once: burnt myrrh from the council candles, the sharp tang of ozone, the faint sweetness of decay beneath ash.

“Mother…” The word was a whisper dragged raw.

She reached out, fingers trembling, brushing the brittle fabric of the queen’s robe. It disintegrated beneath her touch, drifting away like gray snow. Beneath it, the mark of the Singer still glimmered faintly at her throat—the last echo of a power that no longer answered.

Alenyah bowed her head. The Song was gone here. Even when she strained for it—listened for the hum that lived beneath all things—she found only silence.

The blade’s hilt gleamed faintly in the dim light. She reached up and wrapped her hand around the stone spiral. It was still warm.

A Stoneborn weapon, forged for honor, not treachery. A gift once exchanged between kingdoms to seal their oath.

Her stomach twisted.

Her people had been burned alive. Her mother was murdered among allies. And the Song—snuffed out.

She drew in a long, shaking breath and stood.

There were rituals for the dead. Songs for parting, hymns to return a spirit to the Maker’s harmony. She could not remember a single note. Her throat locked, her lips cracked open, and only ash came out.

So she did the only thing she could.

She pulled the blade free.

Its weight was immense—heavy enough to pull her arm down, to sink her into the ruin. But she held it, and in its tremor she thought she could still hear something—not music, not yet, but the faintest pulse.

Her mother’s final note, buried under silence.

Ash and splinters spilled down the dais. For a long while, Alenyah only stared at it—the weapon that had undone everything her mother had built.

The runes carved along its fuller still shimmered faintly beneath soot.

She knelt beside what remained of her Mother. The bones had been scorched pale, her crown fused to the ruin of her skull. She reached out and fingered the disc of obsidian, burned to the skin and chain melted into the neck. Alenyah gritted her teeth and yanked the Songstone free. In her hands, she heard the sound of her own childish laugh, the token of remembrance a mother would keep on her person always.

She reached out, desperate to touch her mother one final time. When she stroked her mother’s cheek, the skin crumbled beneath her fingers. She wasn’t going to find any closure here. Alenyah choked on a sob, pocketed the Songstone, and rose.



When she stepped out from the hall, the mist had begun to fall—soft, merciful, too late. The survivors waited below the slope, faces hollowed by soot and sleeplessness. Merath looked up.

“Was she there?”

“She was,” Alenyah answered. “And she is gone.”

No one wept. There was nothing left to give to grief.

Alenyah turned her gaze westward, where the smoke thinned into gray veils and the horizon breathed faint light. “We cannot stay,” she said at last. “The Reach is ash. The Crags are hollow. If we remain, the fire will finish what it began.”

“Where will we go?” a voice called.

She looked again at the sword in her hand. Her voice steadied.

“We will find what remains, and we will build anew.”

She planted the blade in the earth, its blackened edge gleaming faintly in the mist. Alenyah spoke the words her mother recited at each new moon. “Let the branches bend, but not break. Let what falls take root anew.”

That night, beneath a red and weeping sky, the survivors gathered their dead beneath the Ironwoods. When dawn came, the Fey’ri left the Reach in silence, their footsteps muffled in ash.

Alenyah rode at their head, her mother’s blade across her lap, the weight of a kingdom on her shoulders.