Ash in the Margins

Prologue

There are no summoning rituals for dragons.

No chants. No circles of salt. No virgin sacrifices. Those are stories told by men who misunderstand power.

Dragons answer letters.

Only letters.

Once a petition is delivered and accepted, the dragon is bound to the wording of the request. It will not consider what you meant. It will not soften what you feared. It will not spare what you failed to name.

The first kingdom learned this when it wrote:

Burn our enemies.

And the dragon burned the capital, because the capital had been rotting long before the enemy arrived.

Since then, every court in the continent maintains a Royal Archive. Every war begins not with swords, but with a draft.

And every apprentice scribe is taught the same lesson:

Ink is heavier than ash.

Petition I

Filed in the Royal Archive of Aurelith

By order of His Majesty, King Odran IV

To the Sovereign Flame Who Dwells Beneath the Black Spine Mountains,

We, the Crown of Aurelith, humbly request your fire against our enemies of Valmere, who gather at our eastern border in open hostility.

Grant us flame.

Burn their threat from our lands.

In exchange, we offer tribute of gold, cattle, and iron, delivered upon your acceptance of this petition.

Signed and sealed beneath the sigil of Aurelith,

King Odran IV

Marginal Annotation – Apprentice Hand

(Unfiled. Scratched into the draft before sealing.)

“Burn their threat from our lands” is dangerously imprecise.

If the dragon defines “threat” broadly, the border towns themselves may qualify.

Recommend clarification:

“Burn only the armed forces presently encamped beyond the Eastern River.”

— Elira Vey, Junior Scribe

Reply from Senior Archivist

(Pinned to Elira’s draft, unsigned but recognized by hand)

You are here to copy, not to interpret dragons.

The King has approved the language.

File the petition.

Unsent Letter – Elira Vey to Master Thalen

(Her former tutor in rhetoric, retired from court)

Master,

I know you told me that words are knives. I know you said dragons are the only creatures more literal than law.

The King’s petition is flawed. It is not specific. It leaves too much to interpretation.

If a dragon reads “burn their threat,” what prevents it from defining the threat as villages that might one day support Valmere? Or children who will grow into soldiers?

I cannot sleep knowing this letter may kill more than intended.

I am only an apprentice. They do not hear me.

— Elira

(The letter was never delivered.)

Petition II

Filed Without Amendment

To the Sovereign Flame Who Dwells Beneath the Black Spine Mountains,

We, the Crown of Aurelith, humbly request your fire against our enemies of Valmere, who gather at our eastern border in open hostility.

Grant us flame.

Burn their threat from our lands.

Signed and sealed,

King Odran IV

Delivery Record – Witch Post

Courier: Marrow of the Grey Veil

Status: Delivered beneath the Black Spine. Accepted.

The Dragon’s Response

(Arrived three nights later. Parchment singed at edges. Ink smells faintly of smoke.)

To the Crown Who Requests Flame,

Your petition is received.

You ask that I burn your threat from your lands.

I shall.

The threat to Aurelith is not merely those who gather beyond your river.

The threat is famine in your eastern provinces.

The threat is dissent in your border towns.

The threat is soldiers who will one day turn their blades inward.

I shall burn your threat.

Prepare your lands.

Memorandum – Elira Vey to Senior Archivist

This interpretation was predictable.

We must send a counter-petition immediately, specifying limits of engagement. The original language allows catastrophic expansion.

Dragons are bound only to the first accepted letter per conflict. However, precedent from the Ashen Rebellion indicates that a clarifying amendment may be recognized if framed as correction rather than contradiction.

I request authorization to draft an amendment.

— Elira Vey

Response – Senior Archivist

Denied.

The dragon has accepted the petition.

Any further correspondence would be interpreted as a second request and ignored.

Prepare evacuation notices for eastern provinces.

Private Letter – Elira to the Dragon

(Sent through Witch Post without royal seal)

Sovereign Flame,

I write not as Crown, but as witness to its error.

The petition was imprecise. The King intended only the armed encampments beyond the Eastern River.

The border villages are not threat. The farmers are not threat. The children are not threat.

If you burn them, you will not remove danger from Aurelith — you will create it.

I ask not as ruler, but as scribe: interpret narrowly.

— Elira Vey, Apprentice of the Archive

Dragon’s Reply

(Arrived within a single day. Ash fell from it as it was opened.)

Apprentice,

You presume intent matters.

I do not burn intent. I burn language.

The Crown asked that I burn its threat.

I shall remove all that imperils its stability.

You say farmers are not threat.

Hungry men become soldiers.

You say children are not threat.

Children become dissent.

You ask me to narrow my flame.

Your King did not.

There will be no second petition.

Prepare your lands.

Intercepted Letter – Elira to Master Thalen

(Delivered this time.)

Master,

It is worse than I feared.

The dragon interprets “threat” as structural instability. It will not stop at soldiers. It will burn famine by burning fields. It will burn dissent by burning towns.

I have one possibility.

You once taught me of Binding Clause 7: “A petition may be nullified if the sovereign authority is proven false.”

If the dragon believes the King’s authority compromised, it may revoke acceptance.

I must prove the King’s petition illegitimate.

But to do that, I must accuse him of acting in bad faith.

And if I fail, I will hang.

— Elira

Confidential Letter – Elira to the Dragon

Sovereign Flame,

The petition you received was signed under coercion of incomplete counsel. The language was knowingly left imprecise to justify broader destruction.

The Crown does not seek protection. It seeks pretext.

If you burn Aurelith’s eastern provinces, you serve not stability but ambition.

You were asked to burn threat from the lands.

I ask you this: who defines the lands?

The eastern border towns swear fealty to Valmere in secret, taxed twice, starved by both crowns.

They are not wholly Aurelith.

Burn what is truly claimed.

— Elira Vey

Dragon’s Reply

(Delivered at dusk. The parchment warm.)

Apprentice,

You alter the frame.

You question sovereignty.

If the lands are divided in loyalty, then the Crown’s claim is partial.

I burn only what is wholly Aurelith.

You have narrowed the fire.

Royal Decree

(Circulated three days later)

Eastern provinces suffer limited incineration of military encampments and Crown granaries.

Border towns spared.

Valmere’s forces retreat.

The King praises the dragon’s precision.

Final Letter – Elira to Master Thalen

Master,

The dragon burned the royal granaries first.

Without grain, the King cannot sustain prolonged war. The eastern towns survive, but the Crown’s expansion dies with the harvest.

The dragon interpreted “wholly Aurelith” as what the King could prove full control over.

The border towns—half-loyal, half-forgotten—were spared.

The King does not yet know that I wrote to the dragon.

But I know something else now.

Dragons are not weapons.

They are mirrors.

They burn what we confess in ink.

If I am discovered, I will say only this:

The letter said, “Burn their threat.”

And the greatest threat to Aurelith was its own hunger for more.

— Elira Vey,

Apprentice of the Archive