Chapter 2 — Ash and Oil

Oil was cheap; ash was free. The gatekeeper had learned long ago that the things which cost nothing were the hardest to be rid of.

The second chapter shifts perspective. Below, a note on a recurring metaphor.

Translator's note

The novel repeatedly pairs ash (what remains) with oil (what is spent). In the source language these share a root that English lacks. I chose to keep the pairing visible by always placing the two words close together, trusting the reader to feel the rhyme of meaning even without the rhyme of sound.

To add a new chapter, drop another .mdx file in this folder; to add a new novel, create a new topic folder under content/blog/ with its own topic.json.