The Ashes of Saint Teymorin’s Garden
Most wars do not begin with a trumpet. They start with something small and ugly that nobody quite understands at the time. In Teloshka, the Zerthian War is remembered for its relentless raids, border skirmishes, and the stalemate that settled like a lead-weight in Aurenvia Tollitch. For all its scale, the first spark is little more than a family tragedy.
Zerthys itself sits behind mountains and rumour. To the west, it is a kingdom wrapped in isolation, its warriors occasionally slipping south to raid behind the walls of Skaldrith or Jolda when the mood and the season suit them. Sixteen years before this story, one such raid ended in an uneasy peace. A priest in Jolda offered up his own seven-year-old son so the town could live. Zerthian raiders took the boy instead of burning the streets.
That boy remembers everything. The flames, the shouting, the feel of strange hands on his shoulders as he was led away. In Zerthys, he becomes a branded slave. In Jolda, nothing changes at all, because no one knows he was given up. Only the priest carries that truth, tucked behind prayers and silence, while the rest of the town sleeps peacefully through a bargain made in the dark.
When the story below begins, sixteen years have passed. The boy has grown into a scarred man who has finally escaped Zerthys and made his way back to the town that traded his life for theirs. He comes not as a hero, not as a soldier, but as someone who wants an answer: why was he the price?
This is a short, contained flash fiction piece, about 500 words, written as a moment in history from the wider world of The Essence Wars. You do not need to know the larger story to read it. All you need to know is this: one night in Jolda, a son walks out of the past, and Teloshka will pay for what happens next.
The Ashes of Saint Teymorin’s Garden
Beneath Astra’s rise, the brighter moon, the town of Jolda lay unguarded, its chimneys smoking and its taverns alive with song, while a scarred stranger stepped from the trees. Scratched and bruised, he slipped past the inn where drunks slumped at their tables and voices spilled into the night. The braziers glowed with warmth, but he kept to the shadows, refusing the lure of comfort or ale that teased his senses. He had come too far to falter now.
He slipped through the gates of Saint Teymorin’s Church. A lone candle guttered in the wind as he lit another, its glow catching on a stone half-buried in a bed of fresh flowers. The inscription was faint, barely legible.
‘You there, move along,’ called a man at the gate, lantern in hand.
‘What does it mean?’ the stranger asked. ‘Stolen from the fold?’
The lantern lifted, throwing light across the priest’s face. He studied the stranger in silence, then turned toward the church doors and beckoned him inside. The stranger followed without a word.
The church smelled of tallow and incense. Maserron set his lantern on the altar and poured wine into a clay cup, sliding it across the table. The stranger drank in silence, his scars stark in the candlelight. Maserron watched him, lips moving in quiet prayer, yet his eyes never left the man’s face.
The door creaked. A woman entered, her braid glinting faintly. She lingered by the doorway, watching. The stranger stiffened at her presence, and his voice cut through the hush.
‘Sixteen years I wore the brand of Zerthys before I escaped.’
Thoseel gasped. ‘Zerthian?’
Maserron’s lips did not still. ‘It was for Jolda,’ he said softly. ‘For the fold. One child, that the rest might be spared.’
The stranger lurched to his feet; the cup shattering on the floor. A blade flashed from his cloak as he drove it into the priest’s neck, the steel sinking at the shoulder.
‘I am Larick,’ he roared. ‘I am your son. I am the fold you betrayed!’
Thoseel screamed, her cry splitting the silence. Feet thundered outside, doors crashing open as men rushed in. They seized Larick, tearing the knife from his hand, dragging him down beneath the altar.
‘Murderer!’ someone shouted.
‘He has slain the priest!’ cried another.
Larick thrashed against their grip, blood streaking his face. ‘It was him!’ he bellowed. ‘He sold me to Zerthys! He—’
A fist struck him silent. A blade cut across his throat; his cry strangled in blood. The crowd surged, voices rising with outrage, not doubt. Thoseel remained blind to the truth; her son had stood alive before her very eyes.
Maserron lay gasping, crimson soaking his robes, while the name ‘Saint Maserron’ already passed from lip to lip.
Larick died forgotten, sold into Zerthys as a slave, while Maserron was named a saint before morning light. At the town’s edge, Zerthian warriors had followed Larick, and Saint Maserron’s death would kindle the war that would scar Teloshka forever.
In the histories of Teloshka, you will not find Larick’s name. You will find Saint Maserron on church walls and in lit candles, and you will read about the righteous anger of Jolda after his assassination. You will not see the boy who was bartered away to buy that story. That gap in the record is the point.
Stories inside a world work the same way ours do. They are shaped by who gets to speak, who is believed, and what people are willing to forget in order to live with themselves. The Zerthian War that follows is huge and bloody, pulling in kingdoms and crowns, but it still traces back to a quiet bargain and a child no one expected to see again.
If you would like to see more pieces like this from the wider world of The Essence Wars, let me know. There are plenty of small, sharp moments like Larick’s night in Jolda that never quite make it onto the main page of history.
The West