I remember Kimberly’s scream when something crashes down between us.
And then—nothing.
When I come to,everything hurts.
Rubble pins my leg. My claws are out, cracked and blackened. My back feels like it’s been flayed and glued back together with wire. I taste metal. I smell ash. I hear the sound of emergency beacons still whining somewhere far away.
And daylight.
That’s what draws me.
I crawl.
It takes minutes. Maybe hours.
I crawl through broken tunnels and over shattered steel beams. I drag my body up a slope of crumbling debris until fingers brush open air.
Then I see the sky.
Burnt orange. Blue in places. Smoke pillars climbing into the troposphere. I pull myself up, inch by inch, blood slick on my arms, until I can kneel.
Cameras buzz like insects around me.
Drones, bots, satellites streaming my image to every possible outlet. I’m a monster, a weapon, a symbol, and a warning all at once.
But I don’t hide.
I rise, slow, deliberate, no armor to shield me now.
Let them see the claws.
Let them see the bone.
Let them see the blood.
I raise my head.
And for the first time in my life?—
Idarethem to look away.
CHAPTER 33
KIMBERLY
There’s no quiet left in Novaria.
Not really.
What people think is quiet—the lull after the detonation, the distant echo of collapse, the static hum of overloaded grids—it’s not silence. It’s the city breathing differently. Not relief. Not peace. Just a new rhythm. Something born of wreckage and fire and the kind of exhaustion that settles into your bones like smoke. The kind that never leaves.
The sky above me is still that bruised gold, smeared with soot, the color of everything sacred and dying at once. I taste the air as I climb the scorched stairs of what’s left of my family’s restaurant. The taste lingers like burnt sugar and metal and heartbreak. My bare feet scuff through the ash, gritty and hot even now, clinging to my skin like it’s trying to brand me.
The Fierson Grill is gone. There’s no front door. No sign. No kitchen smells drifting through the air. No laughter from the tables. What’s left is ruin and steel ribs exposed to the sky. But it’s still mine.
Tur isn’t here yet. Mara’s above ground somewhere, managing militia rotations, her voice clipped and sharp over comms. Ishaan’s in a hollowed-out utility station trying tokeep the alliance reps from swarming in with “reconstruction support.” Liars. They want to plaster their logo over our survival and call it a win.
I don’t have time for their stories.
