Lucian wiped the blood from his mouth roughly, scanning the gray murk.
He needed to move. And he needed to move fast.
The Hollowborn were gone. But others would have felt that pulse.
The Shroud itself had changed texture, as if the whole fabric of the Wastes had been stretched too thin.
Carrying Selene carefully, he stumbled back to the bike.
The magelights flickered erratically, spitting sparks, but the engine still rumbled, loyal and ready.
Lucian secured Selene against him once more, gritting his teeth against the screaming pain in his ribs.
"Just a little more," he whispered to her.
He gunned the engine. The bike teared forward again into the dark. Ash howled behind them like a wounded beast, but they didn't look back.
Because something worse was waking now. Something that would tear the world open if it found them.
And Lucian was running out of places left to hide.
Selene remained unconscious against him, pale, fever-warm, her breathing soft but steady.The power she had unleashed earlier lingered around her skin like the last heat of a dying star, invisible but felt.
Lucian kept his senses sharp.
He stared at her pale, hands now tightened into fists, curled around his chest.
"What the hell are you?" he wondered.
But another voice inside him, quieter and far older, whispered back:
"Not what. Who."
And whatever she was, whatever danger she would bring down upon his head.
He was already too deep to turn back.
He had tied her with himself using a torn piece of his cloak.
"Rest now, little ghost," he murmured.
"We'll keep running."
"Together."
The shroud was coming to an end.
_________
The world blurred at the edges.
Cael staggered through the twisted alleys, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps, each step scraping agony across his battered limbs.
His side burned from an old wound, one he didn't understand, didn't know how to fix. His bare feet tore open against the broken ground, leaving tiny blood trails behind him, vanishing into the dust.
The city, if this wasteland could still be called a city, pulsed around him: too bright, too loud, too full of things he had no names for.
Food.
Laughter.
Lights in windows.
Voices.
He knew none of them.
He knew only hunger. And pain. And the strange, gnawing emptiness inside him growing worse by the hour.
Withdrawal.
He didn't know the word.
But he knew its taste, acid and copper at the back of his throat, the way his muscles twitched and cramped, the way his skin burned from the inside out.
He needed something. No, he was craving something but he didn't know what. His body was screaming for food, for warmth but something else too. Maybe, it was a mistake to leave that place.
Maybe, it was the pill or.... the tubes. Whatever they gave him in that place kept him, his sense in place. And without it, the powers that had been stitched into his bones screamed against his fragile human shell.
Every nerve ending was on fire.
Every sound was a hammer against his skull.
Cael stumbled into a gutter, collapsed hard against the cold stone, curling into himself.
Shivering.
Biting back small, broken whimpers he didn't understand.
His mind fractured and recoiled, reaching for things he didn't have.
The walls that kept the voices away.
The injections that smoothed his heartbeat.
The sterile cages that promised numbness.
Not this pain or fear. Fear? Yes there was fear but it didn't feel like this, like giving up. Like failing.
He did not know this world that smelled like smoke and rot and a thousand strangers who wouldn't even notice if he bled out in the street.
And then there were footsteps.
He flinched violently, pressing himself tighter against the wall, muscles locking instinctively.
A group of boys passed, teenagers, laughing too loud, shoving one another, dirty clothes, stitched at several places, flashing under broken magelights.
One spotted him, the ragged thing huddled in the dirt.
They jeered.
Called him names he didn't know.
One tossed a rotten fruit at him, it splattered wetly against his chest, the smell so strong it made his stomach heave.
Another kicked at him, half-hearted, like a child prodding a wounded animal, more for sport than cruelty.
Cael barely felt it.
He barely felt anything anymore.
Just cold. And hunger. And the terrible shaking in his bones that made him wonder if he was dying.
Eventually the boys wandered off, their laughter trailing behind them like smoke.
Cael stayed where he was, shivering violently, curled into the smallest space he could find.
He wasn't afraid of death. He wasn't afraid of pain. He was afraid of being alone.
No. It wasn't fear of loneliness but being lost. Lost in this mess of a place or streets. Something he wasn't even aware of. Things he has never been shown all his life. The life that was all spent in that place and that was his whole world. Then how...how did he thought of leaving it.
The alley fell silent again.
Ash drifted like slow, gray snow from the ruined sky.
And then he heard soft footsteps. They were different, measured.
Cael didn't lift his head. Didn't have the strength.
Something brushed against his shoulders, warm and heavy, a rough fabric draped carefully over him.
A cloak.
It was not yanked. Not thrown. But placed. Placed very gently.
Cael froze.
A voice followed. It was quiet, low and careful, "It's alright, kid. I've got you."
There was no anger. No threat. No mocking like all the encounters Cael had in this place.
There was just warmth.
Just a kindness he didn't know how to process.
But still, Cael's body flinched instinctively, ready for pain, ready for punishment, but none came.
The stranger knelt beside him, one hand steady against his back, not grabbing, just grounding.
Slowly and carefully, Cael lifted his head.
A blurred face, lit only by a faint magelight lantern, hovered above him. A man's face, lined with persistence sorrow and patient exhaustion. Eyes that knew what it was to fall.
Eyes that didn't pity him, just understood.
The stranger didn't speak again.
He simply shifted his weight, offering his arms without demand, without pressure.
Cael stared for a long moment, shaking, torn between the old trained instincts, fight, run, freeze, and something new. Something lightning up in his heart. I this what they called hope? There is the facility.
It was tiny and fragile. But real.
Finally, with a broken, gasping sound, Cael sagged forward, into the offered arms.
The man caught him easily, lifting him up with a strength that didn't feel like force.
The cloak wrapped tighter around him, shutting out the cold. Shutting out the pain.
And for the first time since the walls had shattered, since the white rooms had burned, Cael let himself believe. Just a little. That maybe he wasn't alone.
Not anymore.