Fire, After
And in the very ending of your world, forests will be flame. Mountains will blind in the heat of centuries. Oceans will chaos with the blood of the earth. All the empires of your toil will pass away.
And the stairway to the After will come down, in the city with silver walls.
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The days were better now that the last hordes of the diehard were packing.
In years past, the Fires on the far horizon had stained it crimson. Now, in the very eaves of the sky, the red was faded, like blood in rain, and though, at night, they could hear the inferno like the wind inside a conch, sometimes they heard silence too.
The canvas roofs were folded from the square beside the clock tower. Two dozen souls placed all they owned, save their thick, pavement skimming coats and the pieces of fine weave muslin which kept the smoke from their lungs, into sackcloth. The crates were stacked on the carts which hadn’t yet disintegrated. The wind wore the walls another inch. The stone, grey granite, caught the death of the sunset and sparkled. Quite where the throngs were going was still unclear.
Ashe was too young to remember anything but the ruins. Her mother might have, if she had strained to think, but the hours, if anything, were longer where they were, and there wasn’t much beyond after which to lust. The Fires had raged in the distance for so long that the years had ceased to be counted. It was generations now. Decades. When hell advances for so long, it doesn’t matter if the exact date slips from the consciousness. Even the names of the ones who had started them had fallen from contempt.
There had been a cliché, just before the earth had burned, about being thrown from the frying pan and into the fire. Though mirrored, that seemed their world exactly.
If it was any consolation at all, Ashe couldn’t dread the world beyond their walls. Even the flames in the very eye of the inferno might have been an improvement.
Whether Ebony was afraid, or whether she had simply adjusted to the hell from hell in which they now resided, Ashe couldn’t read.
“You can’t stay here.”
Ashe hadn’t sat down. There was only one comfortable spot on that particular mound of rubble, and Ebony was perched on it already.
“This is where we have to be,” she said.
Ashe kicked one of the smaller stones away. It was difficult to gauge her thoughts; the better part of her face was covered.
“We’re leaving at dawn.”
Sunrise, sunset, it didn’t make much of a difference. The sky was burning either way. The section in between, where they grew restless in the ruined streets, or listless under their canvas, was equally as grey.
“You’re an idiot, Ebony. And you’re not even happy. I can suffer fools if they’re content, we don’t have a choice. But you’re not happy at all.”
“I’m not a fool either,” she on the bare rock said. “This is where we need to be. The After”
“There is no After.”
“I keep dreaming about it. No more pain. What is that going to be?”
Ashe turned her eyes away. A hundred years since the matches had been set, since their fuel, and their cities, and their warheads caught alight. Twenty, since the city had been closed.
“Everything hurts,” Ebony breathed. “The sky is screaming. I can’t imagine anything else. Not even numb to the pain. Free from it.”
“Pain is the hallmark of reality.”
Ebony laughed dryly. Ashe could quote the prophesies all she liked, but it couldn’t be that they were meant to hurt.
She stood, and stormed away. The diehard could leave the holy city if they wanted. She would stay until the Fire blazed against the walls.
“If that’s what you’re chasing, you’re leaving me behind.”
In the middle distance, if one craned and squinted and was talked into seeing what ought to be, there was a pool of a darkness so pure that it seemed the Fire would never take it, but that wasn’t a future to strike out for.
“We shut a thousand people in,” said Ashe, “and now we struggle to count thirty. What else is there?”
At the city’s gate, there was a cherry tree. It didn’t blossom, and the leaves, once emerald, were so coated in the smut of the Fire that they were petrified. The tree only leaned over the gap in the wall, warped to a crescent, bark so tight and knotted that it seemed a muscle under greatest strain. Ashe dreamed through the branches. She left among the first of the two dozen.
Ebony climbed the clock tower to watch them leave.
“You will be alone,” had come the final words.
“Then I would rather be alone.”
She sat in the curve of the great iron bell, safe. It had been years since the clock hands turned, and they were frozen forever at midnight or noon. Some had said that that was when the world had ended.
The breeze, like solar wind, abounded through the belfry. It had taken the spider webs years ago. The birds nests in the corners had grown brittle, and even their fleas were gone. But she could make herself believe the air was pure, and she let it tear the muslin from over her mouth.
At her eyes, at her back, at one hand and the other, the Fire raged. They had vanished before she had reached the top of the stairs, and her loneliness was in squinting for them across the plain. She couldn’t see a thing.
As hard as she lashed against the bell, it didn’t make a sound.
I have a feeling about this one. It came from nowhere, but I could expand it, in either direction. This could be a prologue or an ending, I don’t know. I’m sort of new to the genre, so comments on the idea, as well as the writing, please please.
m
This was very confusing. Whose viewpoint is this being told from: Ebony's or Ashe's? Also, a bit more background on who the diehard are and what "dreaming" is and why it's significant would be nice. As is everything, including the setting, is very vague and undefined, and that left me asking every couple sentences, "What is going on?"
So, yes, very confusing.
I'll be your reviewer for today. 
Mountains will blind in the heat of centuries. Oceans will chaos with the blood of the earth.
The days were better now that the last hordes of the diehard were packing.
In years past, the Fires on the far horizon had stained it crimson.
Now, in the very eaves of the sky, the red was faded, like blood in rain, and though, at night, they could hear the inferno like the wind inside a conch, sometimes they heard silence too.
The canvas roofs were folded from the square beside the clock tower.
Two dozen souls placed all they owned, save their thick, pavement skimming coats and the pieces of fine weave muslin which kept the smoke from their lungs, into sackcloth.
The crates were stacked on the carts which hadn’t yet disintegrated.
The stone, grey granite, caught the death of the sunset and sparkled.
Quite where the throngs were going was still unclear.
Her mother might have, if she had strained to think, but the hours, if anything, were longer where they were, and there wasn’t much beyond after which to lust.
The Fires had raged in the distance for so long that the years had ceased to be counted.
It was generations now. Decades.
Even the names of the ones who had started them had fallen from contempt.
If it was any consolation at all, Ashe couldn’t dread the world beyond their walls. Even the flames in the very eye of the inferno might have been an improvement.
Whether Ebony was afraid, or whether she had simply adjusted to the hell from hell in which they now resided, Ashe couldn’t read.
Sunrise, sunset, it didn’t make much of a difference. The sky was burning either way. The section in between, where they grew restless in the ruined streets, or listless under their canvas, was equally as grey.
Ashe turned her eyes away. A hundred years since the matches had been set, since their fuel, and their cities, and their warheads caught alight. Twenty, since the city had been closed.
“Everything hurts,” Ebony breathed. “The sky is screaming. I can’t imagine anything else. Not even numb to the pain. Free from it.”
The diehard could leave the holy city if they wanted.
In the middle distance, if one craned and squinted and was talked into seeing what ought to be, there was a pool of a darkness so pure that it seemed the Fire would never take it, but that wasn’t a future to strike out for.
“We shut a thousand people in,” said Ashe, “and now we struggle to count thirty. What else is there?”
The tree only leaned over the gap in the wall, warped to a crescent, bark so tight and knotted that it seemed a muscle under greatest strain.
Ashe dreamed through the branches.
“You will be alone,” had come the final words.
It had been years since the clock hands turned, and they were frozen forever at midnight or noon. Some had said that that was when the world had ended.
The breeze, like solar wind, abounded through the belfry.
But she could make herself believe the air was pure, and she let it tear the muslin from over her mouth.
They had vanished before she had reached the top of the stairs, and her loneliness was in squinting for them across the plain.
As hard as she lashed against the bell, it didn’t make a sound.
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