Dagian
I don't remember when I started running.
All I know is that at some point, the outpost, Ember, the medic with the fox mask, all of it dropped behind me, and there was only the road and the pounding in my head and the weight in my chest.
My feet slammed the stone hard enough that every step should've hurt—maybe it did. I couldn't tell the difference anymore between the burn in my lungs and the fire along my ribs.
The city blurred past.
Broken lamps. Collapsed walls. Smoke drifting from somewhere I didn't have time to care about. Every few seconds the ground rolled with another distant impact from the Imgrel, a slow, heavy rhythm that didn't match my footsteps but dug underneath them.
I pressed a hand to my side as I ran.
The fresh bandages from the outpost were already damp. The medic had told me not to sprint, not to twist, not to get stabbed again. I was doing great on the last one. Not so much on the first two.
A sharp pain ripped through my ribs as I vaulted a low chunk of rubble. I hissed through my teeth but didn't slow.
"Not now," I muttered. "You can fall apart later."
The outskirts weren't far from the triage point if you cut across side roads and didn't mind ignoring half the safety guidelines drilled into you since childhood. I knew that part of the district better than anywhere else. Every shortcut. Every gap in the walls. Every fence you could hop without being yelled at for trespassing.
I'd been making that walk my whole life.
But never like this.
Another tremor rolled under my feet, stronger this time. I stumbled, shoulder clipping a wall, and had to grab a drainpipe to keep myself from going down. My vision fuzzed at the edges—white, then black, then back to red-washed reality.
I pressed my forehead briefly to the cool stone and took one sharp breath.
"You're fine," I told myself.
I pushed off the wall and kept going.
The deeper into the outskirts I got, the quieter things became.
Not safer. Just… emptier.
Fewer people lived this far out. Smaller buildings. Older ones. The screams and orders and clanging of the main district faded into a dull roar behind me. Out here, the dominant sound was the distant, awful cadence of the Imgrel's steps and the occasional crack of something old finally giving up and collapsing.
I veered left at a familiar crossroad—past the crooked lamppost that had leaned since I was a kid, past the peeling mural on the side of a warehouse, past the fence I'd once thought was too tall to climb until my mother had dared me to prove myself wrong.
My chest tightened at the memory.
I pushed harder.
The ache in my side changed from sharp to deep, like someone was digging their fingers into the wound and squeezing. Warmth spread under my palm. Blood, again. I ignored it.
A small pack of critters—root-gremlins with too-long arms and glowing eyes—scrambled out of a crack in the road as I rounded another corner. On any other night they would've been a problem.
Tonight, they weren't worth slowing down for.
One of them hissed and lunged.
I didn't even break stride.
Vireth slid half a thumb-width from its sheath, a pulse of dark-gold energy snapping outward. The nearest root split in two without a sound. The others shrieked and scattered back into the rubble.
"Not now," I muttered.
The houses grew more familiar.
A tight row there. A narrow alley here. The slightly slanted roof of the old couple who always argued about who over-watered the balcony plants. A toppled cart I'd seen every morning and never bothered to move.
Home was three streets ahead.
My pace faltered for the first time.
Not because of the wound.
Because my mind finally let itself imagine what I might find.
For years, no matter how bad things got on red moons, there was always this quiet assumption that the outskirts would still be there when it was over. That my mother's door would still be intact. That the lantern in the window would still be lit.
That I'd always have time to make it back.
Tonight, that unspoken rule had been broken.
I'm afraid I won't see her again.
The thought hit me like a physical blow.
I pushed it down and forced myself forward.
Two streets. One.
The last corner came up faster than I was ready for. My legs almost stopped on their own. I made them turn.
And there it was.
Our house.
Or what was left of it.
The front door was gone, the hinges torn completely from the frame. Wood splinters littered the doorstep like the aftermath of a brawl. The little planter my mother kept by the entrance—empty soil, no flowers tonight—lay on its side, cracked.
Every muscle in my body went cold.
"Mom?" I called, voice rough. It came out louder than I meant. "Mom!"
No answer.
I forced myself forward, each step heavier than the last.
There was blood on the threshold.
Not a pool. Smears. A dragged line across the floorboards just inside the door, dark and half-dried, leading inward. The pattern was bad but not… final. Not the radiating burst you saw when something died on the spot.
Still, my stomach twisted.
"Isabella?" My voice cracked on her name. "Isabella!"
I pushed the door the rest of the way open. It creaked, then banged against the wall hard enough to knock loose a bit of plaster.
The inside looked worse.
The little table by the entryway was overturned. One leg snapped. The curtain rod over the front window hung crooked, fabric torn halfway down. The living room beyond was a mess—cushions shredded, a chair flipped, one of the lower shelves emptied and its books scattered across the floor, pages crumpled.
And through all of it, stains.
Dark, rust-colored stains.
Some smeared. Some in drips.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"Mom!" I yelled again, louder this time. "Answer me!"
Silence.
No, not silence. There was the distant rumble of the Imgrel, the faint crackle of something electrical in the district, the soft creak of the house settling around fresh damage. But no human sound.
My hands shook as I stepped over the broken table and into the main room.
"Isabella!" I snapped. "Where are you?!"
Still nothing.
The blood led farther inside. Not enough for a corpse. Just enough for a fight.
Part of the wall near the kitchen doorway was dented inward, as if something had been thrown against it with serious force. The kitchen itself was chaos—drawers yanked open, a bowl smashed, the old ceramic mug my mother loved lying in two pieces on the floor.
I stared at it for one long second.
Then I stepped over it and kept moving.
"Mom!" My voice was starting to go ragged. "Isabella!"
No answer from the back room. No answer from the little bedroom Isabella had been staying in. Sheets tossed. Drawer halfway open. Her shoes gone.
Gone.
I grabbed onto the doorframe hard enough that my knuckles ached.
Focus.
Panic wouldn't help. Panic would get me killed. Panic would make me miss things.
Hunters are trained to read a scene. To tell the difference between a slaughter and a struggle, between an ambush and an evacuation. I'd done it a thousand times in other people's homes.
Now I had to do it in mine.
I forced my breathing to slow.
Look.
Blood trail—starting near the entry, streaked at about knee-height on the wall, smaller droplets lower down. That suggested someone fell or was grabbed, but then moved. One set of bare footprints in the blood—small, familiar. Isabella's. Another, lighter pattern where someone had been dragged or half-carried.
No scorch marks from feral energy discharges. No deep gouges from a Ravorn's claws. The splintered door fit a mimic's entry pattern, but there was no mimic residue left. Someone had cleaned that up. Or destroyed it.
Near the hallway, over the smears, there were boot prints.
Heavy. Patterned. Standard-issue Hunter soles.
My chest eased a fraction.
They weren't taken by more monsters. Somebody got here.
I knelt carefully beside one of the clearer prints, my side protesting. The size matched adult Hunters I'd fought alongside. The stride wasn't erratic. No signs of dragging bodies out; the pressure distribution suggested guiding someone who could still walk.
"Okay," I muttered. "Okay. Think."
My mother would never go willingly with anyone she didn't trust.
Isabella would never leave my mom behind.
And Hunters had been patrolling hard even in the outskirts tonight.
It fit.
They'd been found.
Moved.
Evacuated.
It didn't explain the blood. That still clawed at me. But it was better than the alternative my mind kept trying to throw in my face.
Dead. They're dead. You were too late.
"No," I said aloud, jaw tightening. "No, I wasn't."
My voice sounded thin in the ruined house.
I pushed myself back to my feet, gritting my teeth as my ribs flared. The bandages were properly ruined now, a warm wetness seeping steadily through the cloth. I didn't care.
I stood in the center of the destroyed living room, turned in a slow circle, and let the images burn themselves into my mind.
The broken door.
The smeared blood.
The scattered belongings.
The prints leaving.
They weren't here. That was the only fact that mattered right now.
I pressed my palm flat against the nearest wall, the familiar roughness of it grounding me for half a second.
"I'm not leaving you," I said quietly into the empty house. "Not like he did."
Saying it didn't fix anything.
But it stopped me from breaking.
Another distant boom shook dust loose from the ceiling. I looked up through the cracked plaster, imagining the Imgrel towering somewhere over the heart of the city, ripping streets apart like loose thread.
If the Hunters had evacuated civilians from the outskirts, they would've taken them toward designated safe zones. Shelters. Barriers. There were only a few structures sturdy enough to handle that kind of load under a red moon.
I knew where they'd go.
Which meant I knew where to follow.
I took one last look around the house—the home that suddenly felt smaller, weaker, older—and then turned back toward the shattered doorway.
"Stay alive," I whispered, to them or to myself, I wasn't sure.
I didn't feel the pain anymore.
Not in the normal way.
It was there — sharp, constant, tearing at my ribs with every step — but it wasn't connected to anything. It felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.
All that mattered was the trail.
The bootprints leaving my house.
The blood smears leading away instead of deeper in.
My mother and Isabella were alive.
Somewhere.
I didn't know where.
But I knew where they'd be taken.
The safe-haven.
So I ran.
Again.
Through shattered alleys and cracked roads. Past fires burning out from fallen lamps. Past toppled carts and stores that would've been crowded hours ago. The district looked like a dried-out skeleton of itself — hollow, pale, barely holding together.
The Imgrel's steps rumbled behind everything else, the world shaking in slow, heavy pulses.
I felt each one in my bones.
I was halfway through a street I barely recognized — buildings crushed so flat I had to guess where the sidewalk had been — when something changed in the air.
The tremors stopped syncing with its footsteps.
They got… heavier.
Slower.
More focused.
I skidded around a corner, boots scraping across loose gravel —
And saw it.
The Imgrel was turning its massive body.
Twisting.
Facing east.
Facing the direction of the safe-haven.
My heart stopped.
"No," I whispered. "Don't do that. Don't you dare—"
It took a single step toward the safe zone.
BOOM.
Dust shot upward like smoke from a collapsing mine shaft.
A second step.
A third.
Each one too close to where my mother and Isabella were.
"Move," I growled at myself. "MOVE!"
I ran faster.
Pain exploded through my side, tearing through the fresh bandages, but adrenaline drowned most of it. I barely felt the ground under my feet.
The Imgrel's chest began to glow.
Dark. Dense.
The void sucking the air around it inward.
"No, no, no—!"
A shockwave fired outward — not the beam, not yet — but the blast of force that came just before it unleashed anything.
I felt it before I saw it.
The air bent.
The street buckled.
And then—
The world hit me.
A wave of invisible pressure slammed into my chest, hurling me backward through the air. My vision spun so violently the sky and ground reversed twice.
I hit a wall.
Hard.
Stone shattered around me.
Then I hit the floor, rolled, and crashed against a broken support beam before everything stopped moving.
The pain came a second later.
Searing, crushing, everywhere.
My ribs screamed.
My spine throbbed.
My lungs pulled in a ragged, wet breath.
I couldn't move.
Not for a moment.
I lay there on my side, face pressed to dirt and ash, my fingers twitching uselessly.
I tried to breathe.
It hurt.
I tried to move my hand.
It shook.
Something warm dripped onto my cheek.
It was tears.
I wasn't even surprised.
They just came.
Hot.
Silent.
Unstoppable.
"Damn it…" My voice cracked. "Damn it…"
The Imgrel roared somewhere in the distance — a world-ending sound — but it felt far away now, muffled by the ringing in my ears.
All I could think about was two faces.
My mother's gentle eyes.
Isabella's brave, terrified, stubborn smile.
I pressed my forehead into the cold stone. My hands curled into fists.
"I'm… weak," I choked. "I'm still weak."
The words tasted like broken glass.
"I'm scared," I whispered. "I'm… scared."
Something inside me cracked open.
Something old.
Deep.
Ugly.
"I'm scared and I couldn't protect them." My voice rose, shaking, breaking. "I couldn't even get home."
A sob tore through my throat.
I slammed my fist into the ground. Stone cracked under my knuckles.
"Why did you leave?" I snarled into the dirt. "Why did you leave us? Why did you get to run away while we had to stay?"
I punched the floor again.
And again.
My breath kept shaking.
I didn't care.
"I hate you," I said through clenched teeth. "I hate you. I hate you for leaving her. I hate you for leaving me."
My fist shook violently as I pulled it back again—
But then something strange happened.
The pain didn't matter. The world didn't matter.
A voice — quiet, deep, distant — whispered inside my skull.
Not my voice.
Not memory.
Not imagination.
"You can't give up now."
I froze.
My heart slammed once, hard enough to shake my chest.
The voice continued:
"You have to bring her to the top."
My breath caught.
The pain in my ribs twisted.
The air around me seemed to vibrate — not from the Imgrel's roar this time, but from something else entirely.
Something deeper.
Something layered.
For a moment, the world went dark at the edges, like shadows reaching inward.
Then—
I gasped.
A surge of energy pulsed through my limbs — cold at first, then burning, then something in-between, like frost and flame twisting together.
My fingers dug into the ground and pushed.
Not me.
Not completely.
It felt like someone else had placed their hands over mine and lifted with me.
I rose to my knees.
My breath steadied.
I pushed harder — and my legs stood before I understood how.
"What…" I whispered. "What is this…?"
My body felt light.
Weightless.
Perfect.
Like something was guiding me. Like something inside my bones was reaching outward.
The voice faded, but the residue of it — the echo — stayed lodged in my chest.
I looked toward the safe-haven.
The Imgrel was charging its black hole again.
A beam of darkness gathering.
Civilians screaming.
The barrier flickering.
My mother and Isabella were somewhere in that chaos.
Somewhere too close.
My hand reached for Vireth.
And when my fingers wrapped around the hilt—
Power roared through me.
Darkness, golden, furious, unfamiliar.
My breath hitched. My heart thumped once, twice.
I didn't think.
I moved.
Fast.
Faster than I ever had.
The ground blurred beneath me as I sprinted, dodging broken stone, leaping fallen beams, tearing through clouds of dust like they weren't even there.
My ribs didn't hurt.
My body didn't feel broken.
It felt… guided.
Pulled.
Pushed.
I didn't know who was helping me.
I didn't know why.
But I didn't have time to care.
I saw the Imgrel's chest glow — collapsing inward like a collapsing star.
I heard Rogan yelling.
I heard civilians screaming.
The beam formed.
A black hole ready to fire.
"NO!"
My legs planted hard.
I launched myself upward with everything I had — and everything I didn't.
The world dropped away under me.
I rose into the air.
High.
Higher.
Higher still.
Wind tore at my coat.
My hair whipped behind me.
And time seemed to slow.
The Imgrel's head turned toward me.
Its void-chest pulsed.
I lifted Vireth.
The power inside me surged.
Dark gold.
Alive.
Perfectly aimed.
"Don't touch them!"
I swung.
A blade of golden light ripped across the sky, splitting through the Imgrel's chest.
Cracks exploded across its body.
The void flickered.
The monster reeled backward.
And as my upward momentum died and my body began to fall—
I looked down.
Through dust. Through chaos. Through the storm of destruction.
And I saw her.
Isabella.
Her eyes glittered with tears.
And for a moment — just one — everything slowed.
I met her gaze.
I didn't smile.
I didn't speak.
I just let her see me.
And then I fell into the dust.