I feel it now—undiluted devastation coiled beneath my skin, a living weapon waiting for command. One thought and the checkpoint would cease to exist. One breath and these enforcers would taste annihilation. The magic no longer lies silent but hums with intent, whispering of justice warped into vengeance, of scales leveled through fire and ruin. Yet beneath those whispers stirs something darker, a truth more terrible than the vengeance it promises: if I release it, I vanish with them. This is no tool, but a reckoning, and it does not care who burns.
The air thickens around me, every sound reduced to vibration. I reach for restraint, but my thoughts splinter.Please, I beg again, though I no longer know who I’m begging. Myself? The force inside me? The thing beneath it all, watching with ancient, pitiless eyes?
Kane’s grip on my arm tightens to the point of pain. “Don’t,” he hisses against my ear, voice raw with horror. “You can’t save them. Not like this.”
The presence reluctantly recedes, leaving behind a hollow colder than absence.
But the moment doesn’t end.
The containment spell detonates, wrenching the children skyward, limbs convulsing mid-scream as coils of magic tighten around them. Their bodies twist in the air, terror denied, breath stolen before it can be drawn. The atmosphere fractures, folding inward until it collapses, leaving no remains, no trace—only memory, etched into me with a permanence I will never escape.
“We were ordered to detain, not kill,” one enforcer remarks, voice flat beneath the modulation. The words hang empty, the tone more amused than reprimanding.
“Self-defense.” The first enforcer cocks his head toward the void where a mother used to stand. “She was unstable, a threat to authorized personnel. Not like anyone’s going to argue the report.” His laugh is a mechanical rasp that crawls across my skin.
Kane shifts in front of me, moving on instinct. His body shields mine, but it’s too late—the sensors have found us. The red scan line cuts across my face, invasive and unblinking.
“Ah. More citizens seeking liberation,” the enforcer purrs, his voice oiled with cruelty. “How fortunate. We’re processing quite a few departures today.”
The second one steps into view. “Let me guess. You’ve got papers?” His tone drips with mock civility. “Proper authorization, all nice and tidy?”
Kane doesn’t flinch. “Transport clearance,” he says, voice level. But the tremor runs through his arm where it presses against mine. “Scheduled transfer, sector directive.”
The first enforcer claps his gauntlets together, the clang sharp and deliberate. “Official channels. How delightful. Voss, shall we assistour dutiful travelers?” He takes a single step forward. Blood smears beneath his boots. “Efficiency, after all, is our specialty.”
Behind him, the second—Voss—tilts his head in mock curiosity. “Perhaps a demonstration first? Show them how we maintain compliance at our borders.”
Kane doesn’t hesitate. “Actually, I think we’ll double-check our authorization. Wouldn’t want to violate protocol.”
The enforcer chuckles. “So careful. We do value precision. Take all the time you need.” He gestures to the barrier behind him, mockery carved into every movement. “We’ll be here. Happy to expedite your departure.”
Their laughter follows us, hollow and mechanical, echoing through my skull with the scrape of iron across stone.
Kane pulls me backward, one step at a time. My legs obey, but nothing registers as real. The world moves out of sync—sound arriving too late, light bending the wrong way. My body hangs distant, a costume wrapped around a mind still trapped inside that moment.
“Keep moving,” Kane murmurs, his grip the only thing keeping me tethered to reality. “Don’t look back.”
The image brands itself into my consciousness: children vanishing without weight or farewell, a mother’s final reach arrested mid-breath, a spell unmaking her as though existence had been a clerical error. My lungs constrict, each inhale scouring against memory, ribs aching with a silence that refuses to break.
“Aria,” Kane says again, his voice distant, muffled, already receding. I am not here. I am not whole.
I am the remnants of that family. I am the blood leeching into sterile stone. I am every fracture in the system, every cry devoured by protocol.
The world folds inward, reality stripping away until color drains and sound is devoured, and what remains is red—blood and violence—and the eternal judgment of something within me that does not forgive, and will never forget.
Kane pulls me intothe shadows between buildings, his grip gentler than I deserve. But all I see is blood smeared across sterile stone, children frozen in the moment before annihilation, their mother’s final cry rupturing air saturated with death.
My legs give out, and the wall meets me with unrelenting stone, scraping through the thin barrier of my jeans and jacket. Filth and runoff seep into my skin, but the sensation barely registers.
“Hey. Hey, look at me.” Kane’s voice reaches through the static, low and urgent. He’s crouched in front of me now, hands hovering near my shoulders, hesitant to touch. Like contact might undo what little of me is left. “We need to move. There’s got to be another checkpoint, or we find a maintenance line. Sewers, or . . .”
The words wash over me, meaningless. My mind remains anchored to what I saw.
“Aria.” Kane’s voice breaks. “Please, stay with me.”
“How long?” The question tears from my throat. When he doesn’t answer, something calcifies behind my ribs. “Kane. When does the glamour break?”
He goes still, and for the first time genuine fear flickers behind his eyes as his hands tighten at his sides, joints straining with each breath—one, then another, then a third, as though he’s trying to rewrite a sentence that can only end in execution.
