The smoke began to thin, curling upward like a vanishing specter. Rubble crackled beneath scorched boots as Leo Foster took slow steps forward, his breathing shallow, his ribs still aching from the last blow. His eyes dropped to the motionless figure lying in the fractured asphalt.
Vernon Slade.
The man who once stood at the front of the charge. The man who had bled with them in the name of hope. Now, he lay in ruins clothes in tatters, face bloodied, body broken… and yet, somehow, there was still that twisted, half-mad smile on his lips.
Leo stared down at him, memories surfacing in flashes.
The rooftop laughs.
The firelit camps.
The unspoken promise to never become monsters.
But Vernon had broken that promise first.
"What should we do with him?" Leo asked quietly, his voice nearly drowned by the wind.
There was a hesitation in his tone—hesitation that didn't go unnoticed.
