The Cinder

The Cinder’s skin is cracked like a surface that has endured too much heat. A small cage hangs from his chain, containing what little he could recover after his master was burned without the rite the Dominion owed him.

The people responsible called it a necessary disposal. The Cinder asked for the circumstances, the witnesses, and the authority that had approved it. Each answer led to another omission, so he took Last Ember out to find the truth himself.

He is not certain his master was innocent. That uncertainty is part of his anger: whatever the dead man had done, the rite should not have been denied merely to make inconvenient evidence disappear. The Cinder offers witnesses a chance to speak and preserves even testimony that troubles him. He wants a proper reckoning, not a story polished until it comforts the people who survived.