In the soot-stained city of Grimvale, winter didn’t end—it paused. The snow melted, yes. The days grew longer, certainly. But the cold never truly left, because the chimneys of Grimvale were always hungry.
That’s where Silas Roak came in.
A chimney sweep by trade, Silas was the only one who knew the old rhyme to keep the flues from licking at the hearths too greedily. He’d murmur it as he worked, his brush scraping away not just coal dust, but something older—something that clung to the bricks like a second shadow.
"Ash to ash, dust to dust,
Mind the gap ‘twixt breath and rust.
Sweep it clean, sweep it tight,
Lest the embers wake tonight."
The townsfolk paid him in salt and silver, and for years, the fires burned safe.
Until the mayor’s daughter vanished.
Little Lottie Vey had been last seen near the great furnace at the mill, where the chimney yawned wide enough to swallow a horse. When Silas climbed inside to search, his brush hit something soft halfway up. Not soot. Not debris.
Fingers.
They curled around his wrist, cold and powdery with old cinders. A voice, dry as a dying fire, whispered:
"You’ve swept too well, sweep. They’ve forgotten us."
Silas wrenched free, but not before seeing them—figures pressed into the soot, their faces stretched long in silent screams. The real reason Grimvale’s chimneys needed sweeping.
They weren’t just dirty.
They were digesting.
That night, every hearth in Grimvale roared to life unbidden. Flames twisted into shapes that almost looked like people—reaching, begging. And from the mayor’s house came a sound no fire should make:
A child’s laughter, crackling up through the grate.
By dawn, Lottie was back in her bed, unharmed. But her hair smelled of smoke, and when she smiled, her teeth were blackened at the roots.
Silas packed his brushes and left Grimvale that same morning.
But if you listen close on a windless night, you can still hear the chimneys humming that old sweeping rhyme.
And if your fire burns a little too blue, a little too knowing…
Well.
Best hope Silas left some salt behind.