The night unfolded like a wound. Smoke drifted low across the city, curling through shattered windows and broken arches where once banners of defiance had flown. The ruins wore silence like a crown, though beneath that stillness, something pulsed—a rhythm, slow and morbid, as if the city's dying heart still dared to beat.
Eira moved through the empty streets toward the glow that gathered at the horizon. It was not firelight. The glow was cold, pale, unnatural. The air thickened the nearer she came, carrying the acrid tang of burning tallow and blood. The invitation had come at dusk, inscribed in shifting light upon the walls of her refuge: *The feast awaits those who remember hunger.*
She had almost ignored it. But it wasn't curiosity that drew her forward—it was dread, pulsing deep, a magnetic pull she couldn't resist.
When she reached the square before the crumbling citadel, she saw them: the lost, the weary, the hollow-eyed survivors of the rebellion, gathered around tables sculpted from ruin. The tables stretched endlessly under tapestries of smoke. Above them floated shimmering lights—no stars, only hollow orbs casting thin, ghostly radiance.
Auren stood at the head of the feast. Her mentor. The man who had once walked in fire beside her, who had accused her of betrayal and vanished into the storm. Now he looked pale, his silhouette cut sharp as a blade against the light, his gaze void of warmth.
"Welcome," he said, voice resonating unnaturally, layered with something not entirely human. "We feast not in victory, but remembrance."
Eira's stomach twisted. The platters before them bore no food she recognized—translucent meats that pulsed faintly, black fruits dripping with ink, and goblets filled with liquid fire that crackled when disturbed. The smell was intoxicating: sweet rot tangled with spice and smoke, urging her closer even as her mind screamed for distance.
"This place is wrong," she whispered.
Auren smiled faintly. "Wrong? Or honest?" He gestured to the others. "They have seen the truth, Eira. The world devours itself. We merely give it form."
When she stepped closer, she saw what he meant. The others—the rebels, the citizens—it was not flesh they consumed. Each mouthful stole fragments of emotion: grief, love, rage. Faces hollowed as they ate, their eyes growing darker, freer of pain.
"This is what the hunger wanted," Auren said softly, his tone both teacher and priest. "A feast to end feeling. To quiet the ache of memory forever."
Eira's pulse thundered. "You let it in."
"I *invited* it," he answered. "You fought to hold the city. I sought to release it from pain. We both serve something greater—but only one of us accepts the truth that no one can endure endless sorrow."
Lightning surged across the bruised sky, illuminating the grotesque splendor of the banquet. Eira's boots crunched on scattered shards as she stepped forward, her fingers glowing faintly with restrained power. "You called this freedom?" she hissed. "You've enslaved them to emptiness."
"Peace *is* emptiness," he replied quietly. "It's what they begged for while drowning in fear. You mistake agony for purpose. You always have."
She wanted to scream, to strike, but as her fury burned, the hunger within her stirred—recognizing itself mirrored before her. The shadow that had whispered in her nightmares stretched now across the square, weaving through the feast, licking at her thoughts like flame.
"Why do you fight it still?" asked Auren, stepping closer. His voice softened, dangerously tender. "It's part of you, born from your despair. The light that you claim to wield—it feeds upon the same sorrow you curse."
"I fight," she said, each word shaking, "because sorrow is not the end. It's proof that something still matters."
Auren's smile faltered. For a moment, the mask slipped, and the fractured man beneath flickered into view—his eyes full of exhaustion and grief. "You think you can save what's already starving? You're clinging to ghosts."
"Maybe," she said, drawing her blade, its light turning from silver to a fierce, pulsing blue. "But ghosts remind us who we were."
The energy between them cracked like thunder. Light clashed with shadow, and the air itself shivered. Each strike blurred the line between them—teacher and student, creation and destruction. Magic surged wild through the feast, scattering orbs of cold luminescence into the dark sky.
When the dust settled, the tables lay in ruin. The hollow-eyed feeders had vanished into smoke. And Auren knelt beneath the shattered arch, his cloak torn, eyes alight not with malice but grief.
"You will never win," he whispered, voice ragged. "Because victory for you means remembering pain."
Eira stood above him, sword dimming. "Then I will carry it. For all of them."
Thunder broke overhead, washing the square in rain. The light bled through the darkness like veins of dawn, faint but relentless. Eira turned, the weight of sorrow pressing upon her shoulders like armor. She walked through the ruins, each step echoing in time with the city's fractured pulse.
Behind her, Auren's faint laughter drifted—soft, bitter, and unbearably human.
And in that moment, Eira knew the hunger would never truly die. It lived in them all. It *was* them all.
But she also knew something else—the hunger feared her, for she had learned to devour despair and forge it into will.
The feast had ended. Yet the war for their souls had only begun.