Morrow Granz

I despise having to live these lies. While I appreciate the mandate of remembering the lost, the fallen, the erased, it grows taxing having to live so many different lives. Morrow had has purpose still but I need to refrain from existing as him for a time.   The idea of being wiped from the towers is both pleasing and repulsive. I needed Morrow to continue my work, the path it was taking up until two days ago. Now? The Ministry would know in a moment that something was off if I walk through those doors. Especially Mella. She is lucky like that, having been raised the way she was. She has her eyes closed to the real plight of the people, the real pain her... OUR actions caused. What a c---. So I say farewell to Morrow. For now. He and I will be as one again some day, but I expect that might be a very truncated day. If T.J.C is anywhere near correct, Morrow burns with me, and I am ok with that.   48 hours. I lose my backdoor to the Lie. I lose an alias, or the reliability of it. I nearly died (how enlightening that was, or Morrow would still be here) and now I have to walk as Elra for a time. I am not sure what sort of rag-tag group I have gotten wrapped up in. They seem far too open with personal information. Drug addict -possibly former-, gang turncoat (with good reason, I suppose), gutter snipe, medical escapee, former assassin, escaped petting zoo attraction. And what do they know of me? Nothing, really. I don't technically exist.   I'll seek guidance in the dark, when the others are asleep. The silence of the underground brings a special clarity. Perhaps It will speak to me again, perhaps not.   -----   Well, here we are. Bone tokens for me, cryptic messages for the others. Not sure what deadface meant with "spoken in your own voice". If that was for me, hard no, at least for now. Not until I can convert or convince the others I am not a mad-man or a spirit walker who steals bodies. They can believe that last one for all I care. Maybe they'll come around, maybe not.   I can't believe the struggle they want to go through in traversing districts. If we hadn't been wiped Morrow would walk through that gate, slate in hand, no problem. Now? Sewers or forged papers. Damn, do I want to stay away from those towers...

The stench of rust and wet stone clings to the damp air as Morrow eases the corroded door shut behind them. A rusted sign, the words long lost as flaking paint, nearly swallowed by the creeping filth. The room is squat and the curved ceiling drips softly from the weight of the city above.   He stands still, looking for the bricks. "Extinguish the light."   His gloved fingers trace three bricks near the bottom of the left wall. They do not resist him. With a practiced rhythm, he pulls them free, revealing a narrow hollow carved into the wall’s guts. Inside: a faded cotton dress, wrapped tightly into a spiral. Next, the thin, grime-colored strips of cloth once used to tie back hair, old surgical wraps. Nestled in the folds of the dress — a small iron bowl, dented and soot-stained, its inner ring slick with old tallow.   Morrow sets it down before him on the pitted floor.   From his coat pocket comes his lighter, battered but the outer casing holds true, hiding the sigil within. He strikes it, but no spark is produced. The charred cloth wick hisses, and the flame takes.   What emerges is not orange, not yellow. Not any natural flame.   It is black fire — fire that devours darkness instead of casting it. The room dims, but in reverse — shadows are banished, they are consumed. Corners lose their depth. The crevices behind the rusted pipework dissolve. The room is not lit. It is cleansed of darkness, but not by light, buy otherworldly intent.   Behind him, a mural emerges and begins to glow.   Powdered bone and soot — nearly invisible in normal light— now glow coldly on the brick. A mural takes form: the image of a woman with tightly bound hair and a faint, solemn gaze. Elra Voss. Her body is sketched in vague, suggestion-like lines, as if memory itself has been scorched into place. Black chains of soot spread from her shoulders to either side — not drawn, but painted as shadow, anchoring her in place.   Morrow stares at her image, and the black fire’s pulse grows stronger. The air grows heavy.   He closes his eyes.   His shoulders roll forward, then pull back as his body begins to change. His spine stretches. Bones creak softly beneath his skin. The lines of his jaw soften. His neck lengthens. Hair spills downward across his face, darkening, then lightening again into strands of gold-flecked copper. His armor grows loose as his waist narrows and limbs become sinewy, lithe.   Within moments, Morrow is gone.   She opens her eyes.   The glow of the mural fades behind her. Elra turns to face the exhausted audience, chin held high. Her features are unmistakable now — the same as the bone-and-soot portrait behind her.   But when she speaks, her voice is not yet hers.   It is Morrow’s — deeper, resolute, strained through the transformation.   “Morrow is gone… for now.”   “Meet Elra Voss.”   A breath. A beat. The flicker of chain shadows behind her seem to tighten, like muscles coiling.   “Morrow is gone. Dead, for now… but not forgotten.”   “He still has a purpose.”

As the blood drains from Morrow’s chest, a fire burns where there should be none.   The factory is gone. The gang. The bullet. The pain.   Now there is only this place — A clearing without trees, a horizon without sky. A pure, infinite void and a silence so complete it weeps.   At the center, a fire burns. No wood feeds it. No smoke escapes. No light is cast.   The fire is black, flickering to reveal a rare glimpse at the pure-white core. Light doesn't emit from this flame.   It twists upward like ink in water, devouring the shadows around it — and somehow, impossibly, revealing more than darkness should allow. Shapes behind shapes. Meaning behind silence. Layers of forgotten truths.   Morrow sits on one side of the fire. His coat is torn. His leathers blood-wet and clinging. His hands would tremble if they could move. Across from him sits himself. No, not him. The posture is wrong. The jaw too sharp, skin too pale. The eyes — knowing, wild, eager. He doesn’t know this version. And yet he always has.   The other speaks first in a voice low and dry as scorched vellum. His mouth doesn't move, but Morrow hears it all the same.   So. This is how it ends.   Morrow tries to speak, but all that comes is a dry cough. A copper taste. He holds his chest.   “No,” He finally says. “Not yet.”   The fire dances. It does not warm. It remembers.   The other tilts his head.   You always thought death was the price. But you were wrong. The price was pretending it wasn’t earned.   Morrow frowns.   “I followed the doctrine. I listened. I watched. I survived.”   You hid, the other corrects, gently. You wore quiet like a uniform. You called it loyalty. Called it wisdom.   The fire spits up a fragment — not a spark, but a face, burned into curling black heat, unspoken. Morrow turns away.   We both know it, the other says, voice softening. The Flame isn’t made for comfort. It doesn’t light the way. It burns it clean.   Morrow’s lips tighten.   “And if I’m gone now? What changes?”   The other smiles. Not cruelly.   Then the fire finds another hand. But it would rather keep yours.   Morrow looks at his palms. The blood is gone, instead, they’re blackened at the fingers. Not burned — soot. Marked. Forged.   You’re not done. Not until the lie crumbles beneath the ash.   And then the fire rises. Not upward — inward.   It plunges into his chest, through the wound. Fills the space left by the bullet with something hotter than agony — Purpose.   He screams.   The factory returns. Concrete. Smoke. Screaming.   Morrow rises.   His chest is soaked in blood. But it steams now. Searing away. His hand tightens around an object in his left hand. A lighter.   The gangster who shot him falters. Morrow should have been dead.   Morrow doesn't pause to acknowledge his ally who brought him back from the brink. That can wait.   Too late, the gangster was burning now, scorched with a ball of thrown fire while Morrow was out.   Morrow walks forward to one of the gangsters on the factory floor. He lifts one hand and holds it aloft, rending the air above his target, dragging a beam of black-light down onto the head of one of the gangsters. The darkness burns through, collapsing in only to ignite into a narrow bar of brilliant radiance. The man drops. Dead.   Morrow walks forward. Not with rage. Not with triumph.   And in His voice, Morrow hears: This is your ignition.

04:45 - Wake. Dress. Erase. The alarm doesn't ring — it clicks. Morrow Granz doesn’t wake startled. He wakes the way a file is accessed: pulled from storage, processed, and set to work.   He dresses in the uniform issued to Civil Observation Clerks. It smells faintly of paper mold and ministry ink. The trousers are too short at the ankles, and the collar digs at his neck. These things are deliberate. No one trusts a man too comfortable in his post.   "He" looks in the mirror, and "He" is gone. Pale sallow beige. Cheeks slightly sunken. Hairline receded just enough. A clean shave. Eyes that scream of exhaustion, but never rebellion. Because that is how Morrow is.   He blinks twice, recites the daily affirmation:   “I see so they do not have to. I listen so they may speak freely.”   The words feel like rust in the mouth.   06:00 - Transit to Bureau 19 The train smells like wet leather and ozone. Morrow stands, even though seats are open. Only liars sit early in the morning. His clipboard is tucked to his chest like a hymnbook. His posture says: I am unremarkable. I am regulation.   The station’s surveillance grid hums overhead — barely audible, but he hears it anyway. It pings every identity, every movement, every voice. It doesn’t ask questions. Just builds dossiers, drips of data feeding the river of suspicion.   He wonders how many times it’s logged Elra Voss. Or Anka Frein. Or others he no longer names aloud.   He checks the pocketwatch built into the inside cuff of his coat — a gift from Bierce Drommel, retrieved from a pile of smelter scrap, still ticking despite the heat.   06:30 – Entry Checkpoint, Propaganda Oversight Wing Security scans his retina. He doesn’t flinch. The eye they scan isn’t real.   Clerk Granz enters without comment. The guard, Mella Renn — another pretender — gives him a once-over and a smile too sharp. She knows. She would. But they have a job to do too.   07:00 – Document Review, Censorship Queue Delta Rows upon rows of clerks in gray. Screens flickering. Morrow’s screen shows a children's poem submitted for broadcast approval. The words are sweet — too sweet.   He highlights a line about fireflies:   "Tiny lights that guide us home."   He flags it. Could be code. Could be cult. He writes: “Imagery evokes unauthorized religious overtones. REJECT.”   He deletes a second file without reading it. The name on the author line was once used by Rurik Daln. The memory stings. But not like pain. Like acid on old bindings.   The Black Flame does not speak here. Not aloud. But it’s present, always, in the peripheral silence.   12:00 – Lunch, Alone He eats a gray protein wedge and drinks lukewarm tea. No one joins him. That’s the way he’s built it.   Across the cafeteria, a factory worker — thin, trembling — meets his gaze for a moment. Morrow looks down, but behind his mask, "He" records every twitch.   That man once bought medicine from Elra. He’d spoken the phrase: “Truth grows in ruins.” He’s marked now. Not to be punished. To be watched. Nurtured. Maybe even saved.   13:00 – Audit Interview: Civilian Code Review A mother, trembling, accused of teaching unauthorized prayers to her children. She cries. Morrow records. Speaks soft. Cold. Official.   But in the way he guides the questioning — the phrasing, the subtleties — he threads her a path. She walks it unknowingly. Leaves with a warning instead of a sentence.   In the recording room, Morrow deletes the last two minutes of footage.   The black flame flickers in the reflection of the terminal’s mirror. Just once.   17:30 – Dismissal. Transit. Mask Drops. He boards the train. Same spot. Same silence.   But this time, he sits.   Outside the tram window, Sector 9 burns in the distance — a factory fire, they’ll say. A wire spark. But he knows. He remembers the black flame’s promises:   “From ruin, reclamation.” “From masks, truth.”   He brushes his fingers along the inside of his coat, where the old shawl of Anka Frein is folded like scripture. He thinks of Dren. Of Rurik. Of the woman whose name was never Elra but still lives in Elra's body.   He arrives home. A cramped one-room dorm above a Ministry Archive Annex. He stares into a cracked lantern on his desk.   Its flame is normal. Yellow. Flickering.   But he sees it as black.   And behind his eyes, it burns.

The corridor is quiet — not in the way silence normally behaves. Not empty. Not serene. But held.   Like the walls themselves are waiting.   The Ministry’s Propaganda Bureau rarely darkens its own halls. The truth, after all, requires light. But tonight, that rule breaks. Tonight, light would only betray.   He moves like the silhouette of a forgotten thought — pale skin stretched tight over a wiry frame, ash-ringed eyes locked on the figure ahead. His armor creaks softly, worn and dark like old charcoal. His mohawk flickers slightly as air moves, though no breath escapes him.   Rurik Daln walks ahead with practiced grace, boots clicking over tile, cloak pristine, gloves white and immaculate. His shoulders radiate certainty.   "Minister Vonn wants the new creed lines by morning," Rurik mutters to himself, annoyed. "As if faith can be drafted."   He watches from the shadow of a filing alcove, eyes reflecting a single dim glow behind him: a lantern. Cracked. Hanging from a rusted wall-hook. Burning with black flame.   It whispers like a teacher, like a choir of dry leaves.   “This face was never yours.” “This tongue never spoke truth.” “He mimicked righteousness, but forgot the weight of belief.”   He steps forward. Quiet. Measured. Inevitable.   Rurik half-turns, sensing movement too late.   “What the he—”   Whip The garrote hisses through the air — a loop of taut silver wire etched with spiraling flame-script: a glyph-prayer to the Forgotten Flame.   It bites into Rurik’s throat like a righteous serpent. The glyphs ignite — not in fire, but in absence. Sound fails. Light drowns.   Rurik thrashes. Scrapes metal against stone. Eyes bulge. Fingers claw. He tightens the wire with steady hands, not angry — devotional.   “I reclaim the lie,” he whispers. “And return the silence to your gods.”   Rurik’s final twitch echoes in the dead corridor.   But he does not stop.   He pulls a jagged ritual blade — serrated and burnt black. With no emotion, he mutilates the face.   First the eyes, then the cheekbones, then the lips. He cuts deep, scraping the bone, reducing symmetry, erasing memory. The tongue is removed. The fingers — crushed and dropped into a rusted pipe. The brain, too, is pulled free, severed at the stem, and wrapped in waxed cloth inscribed with a sealing curse.   “The Flame will not suffer pretenders to be remembered.”   The black-flamed lantern in the corner flares with approval. Its light casts no shadow — it simply erases what once was.   “He cannot be raised.” “He cannot be traced.” “He cannot be mourned.”   He stands over the remains, panting now, but not from exertion. From clarity.   This was not revenge. This was purification. The shedding of a mask that had grown too clever, too dangerous, too close.   From the shredded garments, he pulls a badge — the mark of authority. A pass to words no longer spoken. He pockets it. Not for power. For leverage.   “The world writes lies in stone,” the lantern whispers. “But you — you are the fire that scours the monument clean.”   He walks away, Morrow once more.   Behind him, the body begins to burn — not visibly, but in essence. The identity of Rurik Daln unravels from memory. Within hours, even the Ministry will forget he existed.   Later as his true self, he sits cross-legged beneath the pipes in his forgotten lair, head bowed, mohawk limp with sweat. Before him, the same black-flamed lantern sways gently in unseen wind.   He places a single black fingernail into a brass bowl and whispers:   “One fewer lie. One truer flame.”   And the lantern smiles.

Dream-Memory: “Madwoman’s Crown” Morrow dreams of Anka Frein — not the mask, but the woman before the fire took her name.   Rain drums on corrugated metal in a frantic rhythm — fast, erratic, like a warning too late to matter.   The alley is choked with refuse, rusted out pipework, and the stink of bleach and mildew. Light from a cracked street-lantern reflects in puddles as though trying to crawl away from the filth.   He — Morrow — huddles beneath a rusted awning, collar up, clipboard in hand like a shield. He watches through the drizzle, just another shadow in the city’s ribs. Watching her.   She is not yet Anka. Her name was Ressa Aldvine then.   A preacher's daughter turned insurrectionist courier, mouth full of poetry and prophecy before the Flame ever touched her. She wears threadbare robes stitched with runes no one reads anymore, but her voice slices through the rain like glass.   She stands barefoot on a crate in the heart of the tenement square, face lit by a flickering lamp, eyes lit by something else.   “Your names are not your own! You were branded at birth and told to smile!” “The truth isn’t gone. It’s buried. And the shovel is fire!”   People watch. Some smirk. Most avoid. A few… listen.   Morrow does not breathe. He listens. Not just to her words — but the spaces between them. The way she leans forward at the end of a sentence. The crack in her voice when she says “truth.” The tilt of her head, like she's trying to remember something very old.   And in the space behind Morrow — in the wall’s reflection, in the puddle's tremble — the black fire begins to whisper.   “She is not mad. She is unchained.” “Her mind was not broken — it was opened.” “Take her ruin. Let it seed.”   And then it happens.   A tremor in the pipe above. A hiss of pressure. An explosion of steam and boiling light from within the building she leans against.   The blast is not meant for her. But the effect is the same.   Ressa is thrown backwards into flame. Old gas lines ignite like serpents awakening. The world screams — not in grief, but in recognition.   Morrow rushes forward, against instinct. Against training. Through the smoke, he sees her. Limbs broken. Hair aflame. Eyes open.   She looks through him. She knows him.   She smiles.   “I remember you,” she says. “Even if you don’t.”   And then she burns.   But not in red. Not in gold.   In black.   The fire coils around her like a shroud, consuming not her body, but her bindings. Her name. Her shame. Her limits. Her silence.   In the ashes that remain, Morrow finds her shawl — singed, scorched, but intact. He lifts it.   The voice of the Forgotten Flame curls in his ear like smoke in the lungs:   “She did not die. She became.” “Wear her. Speak her. Be the prophecy unfulfilled.” “Truth is not silent. It screams. It weeps. It laughs.”   Later, in the mirror, Anka Frein stares back at him.   Eyes milky. Smile crooked. Madness performed — but never false. She walks barefoot through gutters and churches alike, speaking riddles to children, cultists, and corpsemen.   And the fire laughs with her.

Dream-Memory: “Ash in the Gearteeth” Through the eyes of Morrow Granz   It begins in the hum.   A deep, thrumming sound like a great metal beast breathing beneath the floor — the smeltworks of Sector 7. Pipes rattle. Pressure howls in the distance like something trapped just beneath the steel. The air stinks of iron, sweat, and coal-dust baked into the marrow of the world.   He — now Morrow — stands just beyond the edge of the light. Clipboard in hand. Plain uniform. Ministry badge scratched but present. Unnoticed. As always.   Through the rising steam, he watches Dren Volzig.   Broad as a freight hauler, beard bristling with soot and pride. Dren stomps across the catwalk above Vat Line C, barking orders at a half-dozen workers while hauling a slag chain the size of a grown man’s thigh. He is the smeltworks — sweat and muscle made manifest. He’s gruff, crass, quick to laugh, and quicker to fight for the ones under his watch.   And yet—   Something is wrong tonight.   The line is too quiet. A belt jerks once, then stalls. One worker slips and no one moves to help. Something deliberate lingers in the air, like a decision already made.   Morrow’s knuckles tighten around the clipboard. Not from emotion — not exactly. But knowing.   Dren doesn’t see the two Reichshammer officers until they’re already on the catwalk with him. White masks. Red cloaks. The smeltworks quiets. Machines groan, but no man speaks.   Dren turns, confused, indignant —   “What in the black hells is this?”   The officers raise a writ. Branded with the Veil Division seal. Subversion. Cult association. Failure to report illicit gatherings.   Lies. Every word.   Dren spits.   “You think because I keep my crew fed and don’t rat ‘em out to your damn shadow priests that I’m some apostate?”   They say nothing. One draws a baton. The other clicks a rune, and the gantry beneath Dren’s boots shudders.   The gears below scream. The floor vanishes.   Dren falls.   Not into flame — but into a vat of half-cooled slag. Not fire. Worse. Thick. Slow. Inescapable. He doesn’t scream. Not because he is brave, but because it happens too fast.   Morrow watches from behind the fogged glass of the oversight booth.   No one looks his way.   And yet— He is not alone.   Behind him — not seen, but felt — the black fire whispers.   “See what truth costs.” “See what silence buys.” “He chose loyalty. Not to them — to meaning. To memory. And now he is remembered.”   Morrow stares at the surface of the vat. A single steel ring from Dren’s beard floats for a moment before sinking, swallowed whole.   “Take him. Not his shape. Not his pride. His purpose.” “He did not burn in vain. You will.”   The clipboard in his hands turns hot. He looks down — it smolders from within, curling into blackened paper. The name “Dren Volzig” chars until it reads:   “Burden. Reclaimed.”   Morrow awakes with ash beneath his fingernails and soot at the corners of his eyes.   In his dreams, he did not reach out. In memory, he never will.   But in fire, he remembers. And that is enough — for now.  

Dream-Memory: “Through the Glass” Witnessed by Morrow Granz   He dreams in grayscale. Always, when Morrow sleeps, the world bleeds to charcoal — like the color has been rationed. He stands beneath a leaking ceiling in some long-abandoned Ministry factory, everything damp except the air, which is brittle and dry with old sawdust and secrets.   Through a dirty, half-fogged window — just one pane left unshattered — he sees her.   A woman, mid-thirties, half-elf. Cheekbones high and shoulders taut, working a terminal by the wall. Her fingers fly with practiced precision across a bank of brass-coded levers, feeding numbers into the machine like prayers into a slot god. She is radiant — not in beauty, but in reality. Everything about her is true.   Morrow — unnoticed — watches, transfixed. He doesn’t know her name. Not yet. But he studies her like scripture.   She frowns slightly. He memorizes it. She tucks a strand of copper-blonde hair behind her ear. He memorizes that too. She hums a three-note tune as she works — it haunts him. And then— a lantern tips.   The sound is so soft. Glass kisses concrete. Oil whispers out like blood. And then: black fire.   The blaze erupts, not orange, not red — but void-dark. A blossom of night made flame. It devours shadow itself, peeling it back like wet wallpaper and revealing not smoke… but light beneath. Light with memory.   The woman flinches, turns toward the window— and for a moment, her eyes meet his.   She does not scream. She nods. As if she knows. As if she’s been waiting.   The fire consumes her in perfect silence, but her outline remains — a silhouette of living flame etched in the factory wall. The building collapses into cinder and glass. But the black fire does not leave.   It turns to Morrow, who still stands behind the window that somehow remains unbroken, untouched.   “Take her truth.” “Take her ruin.” “Take her shape, and make the world remember what it tried to forget.”   The voice of the Forgotten Flame is not heard — it engraves itself on the bones of the soul.   Morrow’s hands ignite. Not in pain. In clarity.   His flesh peels away like paint in a furnace. Features dissolve. And from the ashes of Morrow Granz, Elra Voss is born.   Her cheekbones. Her copper hair. Her voice, already whispering the formulae. Not mimicry — inheritance. She lives again, but this time with a purpose beyond numbers and gears.   The fire coils around her like a lover, brushing her shoulders, whispering:   “You are the flame of the forgotten.” “You are truth remade in ruin.” “You will walk in her skin, not as thief — but as witness.”   She awakes — Morrow, as Elra, gasping in the cot of a junk-slicked apothecary loft.   The scent of ash lingers. On the worktable beside her, a brass lantern lies cracked. The flame inside it flickers dark for a moment, then vanishes.   She closes her eyes and remembers the woman behind the window — and the promise etched in fire:   Ruin is not the end. It is the beginning of reclamation.