Soot Wraith

THE WILDS

Four crowns burned, and not everything in them finished burning. Soot wraiths are the ash that would not settle — the residue of razed halls and their householders, spun aloft and circling still, looking for the fire that made them. They orbit the living like sparks around a bellows, and their touch leaves burns that smell of old cities. The Mendicants bury what falls from them. It is never much.