Flash Fiction Friday: The Doom of the Salt People Part 3

If you've missed the previous pieces, click here.  And please excuse the rough edges of this installment.  Needs some editing, for true.  Denouement comes next week.
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     As the family slept, the time Before was drawing to a close. King Yostace had commissioned the warlocks and sorcerers of his realm to break through the Doors of the Deep. He searched for a cure to defeat death and to retain youthful vigor, for his fear of dying was topped only by his greed. On that night, the mages succeeded, and the Doors were thrown from their hinges.
      Ills and untold horrors burst forth, spilling out into the world like a creek through a poor beaver’s dam. As it happened, one of these horrors fled from the portal and ransacked the capital, bringing ruin with it. All that encountered it, everything with the breath of life in its lungs, was turned into a pillar of salt. And when its judgment on the capital was over, the horror fled from the city and out along the King’s Road, where it soon came upon a failing campfire.
      It was moments before dawn when the horror entered into the ring where the family of Cloy slept. It first consumed Cloy, burning his body to salt as he slept soundly. It then turned its attention to Zula, his wife, and filled its mouth with the sweetness of her blood and she, too, became a pillar of salt.
      At this time, Amos, the eldest child, stirred in his sleep, roused from a dark and dreadful dream. A cloud of smoke and ash surrounded him. He cried out, thinking he saw four glowing, red eyes circling where his mother and father slept. The smoke took the shape of a man and crouched before Amos. “Why do you cry out, manling? A nightmare?” It’s voice was sweet as strawberries, intoxicating as wine, and poisonous as bone-white mushrooms.
     Amos could find no words in his gullet. Instead, his right hand closed about the handle of the small knife his father had gifted him. His eyes strayed from the ash-man’s and fell on the two crystallized bodies of his parents, white and dull in the weak morning glow. He growled and brought the knife up, slashing wildly at the ash-man’s throat. Caught unawares, the knife found its mark, drawing a thin, jagged line across the ash-man’s pale flesh. Black ichor leaked from the wound, and as it did, dawn suddenly broke, white-orange light spilling into the glade. The ash-man made clicking noises, like a babe at the breast, as its body burned away in the sunlight. 

     All the children awoke then, and they saw the doom of their parents. Like two sleeping statues, Cloy and Zula were memorialized as pillars of salt. All the children wept, and after a time, Amos sobered up. “We must leave at once,” he said. “I know what did this, and we must find shelter before night falls. There could be more.”
     So Amos commanded his brothers and sisters to tell their mother and father goodbye. Then they sang “Timber’s Dirge,” the only death song any of them knew, and Iya led them all in a prayer. When they were finished, they loaded into the wagon and made their way back to their homestead (for the horses were not turned to salt).
     Now the sons of Cloy who survived that night are Amos, the eldest, and his brothers Tome and Yue. The daughters of Cloy who survived that night are Iya, Lecia, and Ann. These are the sons and daughters of Cloy, son of Caran.