ASHES OF HER NAME
Episode 1: The Night of Rain and Silence
Part 1: The Fire
The rain came hard that night.
It lashed against the thatched roofs of Willow's End, a small village on the edge of the Elmsworth realm. Thunder rolled over the hills like drums of a war god, and lightning danced in the skies with pale blue fury. But inside the modest Wren household, the storm was not what frightened young Jenny.
It was the silence.
Her father, Jareth Wren, had returned from the city council with his brows furrowed and lips pressed into a hard line. Her mother, Ena, had been pacing ever since the floor creaking under her soft footsteps.
Jenny sat curled in a chair near the fireplace, clutching her woven doll, trying to read her mother's face.
"Mama," she whispered, "why are you scared?"
Ena turned, forcing a smile. "No one is scared, my heart. Go upstairs. You'll catch a cold down here."
But Jenny knew her mother's smiles. She knew when they were painted on like makeup to cover bruises. She knew this one was for hiding something bigger. Something worse.
"Is it the men in grey again?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Are they coming?"
Ena knelt in front of her, hands on her shoulders. Her eyes shimmered with tears. "You must be brave, my light. Whatever happens, remember what I taught you."
"Never run toward fire," Jenny recited.
"Never trust a quiet man."
"And never believe a promise from a man who looks over your shoulder."
Her mother nodded slowly.
Then, without warning, the windows shattered.
Part 2: The Men in Grey
The first scream came from the neighbour's house a choked, gurgling cry that was cut short. Amara jumped from the chair, heart pounding. Her father threw open the wooden cabinet under the floorboards.
"Take her," he told Ena. "Now."
The house exploded into motion. Ena grabbed Jenny by the wrist and dragged her toward the hidden crawlspace in the kitchen. Jareth grabbed something from the shelf a scroll sealed in red wax and slipped it into his daughter's pocket.
"Don't lose that," he said. "Don't show it to anyone unless they speak the phrase…"
The door flew open with a crash. Rain and wind rushed in like beasts let loose. And behind them stood three men faces hidden by grey hoods, boots soaked, and blades already drawn.
Jenny never saw what happened next. Her mother pushed her into the crawlspace and slammed the trapdoor shut.
Darkness. Wet earth. Silence.
Then screams. A crash. Fire.
And finally… nothing.
Part 3: Ashes in the Morning
Jenny didn't know how long she stayed in the dark, pressed between the floor and the earth. The scent of smoke seeped into her hair. She bit her sleeve to keep herself from crying too loudly.
Hours later, when the storm had passed and the silence returned, she pushed the trapdoor open with trembling hands.
The house was gone.
Charred beams jutted up from the ground like the ribs of a dead beast. The rain had turned to mist, and the smoke curled up into the pale grey dawn. She stepped barefoot into the ruins, eyes searching, and throat dry.
What remained of her father's body was near the fireplace. One arm extended, as if still reaching for her.
She dropped to her knees and screamed.
The scream carried through the village, but no one came. No one dared. The Wren family had defied the Council spoken too loudly about "truth" and "freedom" and now they were a warning.
By midmorning, the soldiers arrived. Not to save, but to collect.
A tall woman in black stepped down from her horse. Her cloak bore the sigil of the Council a snake coiled around a rose.
"You are Jenny Wren?" she asked flatly.
Jenny could not answer.
The woman sighed. "Take her."
Two guards lifted her up as she kicked and shouted. One struck her across the cheek hard enough to silence her.
"You belong to the state now," the woman said. "But your blood has already cursed you."
Part 4: The New House
They didn't send her to a shelter. No orphanage. No safe house.
Instead, she was taken across the eastern valley to Cypress Hollow, to the home of Uncle Derrek her late mother's brother and his wife Linora.
It was a cold house, both in stone and in spirit. The children there were silent. Linora's sharp eyes missed nothing. The floors were always clean scrubbed by small, blistered hands. The food was counted, every portion smaller than the last.
On her first night there, Jenny was shown a thin mat in the corner of the pantry.
"You'll sleep here," Linora said, handing her a bowl of dry oats. "Eat quietly."
"Can I can I keep my doll?" Jenny asked.
"You can keep your mouth shut," Linora replied, and turned away.
She learned quickly that tears earned her extra chores. Talking back brought the belt. Crying at night? That brought the cane.
But she also learned how to be invisible.
She memorized the creak of every floorboard, the tone of Derrek's voice when he drank too much, the sound of Linora's steps on the stairs. She learned to wake before everyone else and work silently, quickly.
And she never let them see the scroll.
It stayed wrapped in cloth, hidden in the broken leg of the pantry shelf, where no one looked.
"Don't lose it," her father had said.
"Don't show it… unless they speak the phrase..."
Part 5: The Phrase
Years passed.
The bruises faded but the silence grew. Jenny, now sixteen, was tall, quiet, and sharper than they knew. She read at night under the moonlight through cracks in the pantry door using books stolen from the Hollow's cellar. She watched. Listened. Waited.
The grief never left, it simply settled like dust, buried under chores and beatings. But sometimes, at night, she would take out the scroll, unwrap it carefully, and trace the wax seal with her fingertip.
It called to her.
She didn't know what it said. The wax was unbroken because part of her believed that once it was opened, she'd have to become someone else entirely. Someone who could never again pretend to be small.
On her seventeenth birthday, Derrek returned from a Council meeting, his eyes burning with something dangerous.
"You'll wear the green dress," he told her the next morning. "There's a guest coming."
"Guest?" Jenny asked, her voice hoarse with disuse.
"A suitor. Lord Kael of Fernspire. His family has made an offer."
"An offer?"
"For your hand."
She blinked. "But… I didn't agree"
SLAP.
"You live in my house, eat my food, wear the clothes my wife stitches. You don't get to agree."
That night, she took out the scroll again.
Her hands shook.
Don't show it to anyone… unless they speak the phrase.
She whispered into the dark, "What phrase, Papa? What phrase?"
As if summoned by her broken heart, the pantry door creaked open.
It wasn't Linora. Or Derrek. It was a stranger hooded, quiet, his eyes full of something ancient.
"Jenny Wren?" he asked.
She stood, afraid but defiant. "Who are you?"
He stepped closer. His voice was low. "When fire falls, the name remains. Will you rise from ashes, or be swept into silence?"
Her heart stopped.
The phrase.
She clutched the scroll in both hands.
"I'm ready," she whispered.
The man nodded once. "Then we must leave before dawn. They'll never let you go willingly."
Jenny looked back at the only life she'd known since the fire the cold stone, the cane, the silence. And then, with the scroll pressed against her chest, she stepped into the dark with him.