Senti's POV
When she ran, I let her.
It was the only way she would survive.
The explosion buried the rail line for half a mile. I remember the heat first, then the silence — that heavy, empty silence that means you're the only one left breathing.
The others were gone.
Adam. His soldiers. The outsiders.
I dug myself out through a wall of glass and metal, bleeding from everywhere but not dying. My Echo wouldn't let me. The power hummed under my skin like static, repairing faster than it should. My blood glowed faint gold before it cooled.
The train was gone, but the screams stayed.
That was the night my reflection started talking back.
I stumbled into Vale three days later. My coat was burned through at the sleeves, my tail wrapped to hide the fur. The city lights stung my eyes.
No one looked twice at another Faunus walking alone. Not here. Not anymore.
I found an alley behind a closed Dust shop and collapsed near the drain. When I came to, my pulse was a drum in my head, but the voice was louder.
You should have burned them all.
"Shut up."
They deserved it.
"I said shut up."
Then why are you still breathing?
I drove my blade into the wall, metal ringing through brick. The sound killed the echo for a moment.
It came back quieter.
She ran because you told her to.
My grip tightened. "She lived because I did."
I stayed in the alley for a day and a night. Every hour, the voice came back — not just one anymore. They had tone now, shape.
One laughed softly between words. Another counted things under her breath. One just whispered: move, move, move.
I learned to tell them apart.
Joy — the manic laugh, sharp and eager.
Logic — calm, surgical, never stopped listing risks.
Cruelty — the one that liked watching pain, even mine.
Charm — smooth, soft, always pretending to care.
They were all me, but split open like light through glass.
By the second night, I needed money. I took a job guarding a Dust exchange at the edge of the docks. They didn't care about my name, just the weapons on my back.
The thieves came anyway.
Four of them. Fast, armed, desperate.
The first two went down fast — no killing, just pressure points and steel. The third pulled a pistol. I disarmed him before he fired, but the noise woke the others.
The fourth ran, shouting "Wolf!" like it was a curse.
That's when I realized I'd stopped hiding my tail.
When the job was over, the manager handed me a small pouch of lien and a bottle of cheap antiseptic. "You work clean," he said. "You want regular shifts?"
I took the money. Not the job.
I didn't want a pattern anyone could follow.
Every night, I walked a different path through Vale's back streets — alleys, rooftops, markets after closing.
The Echo followed everywhere.
You could be a god here.
"Not interested."
You already are, just smaller.
"I'm tired."
Then rest.
"Not yet."
I found her name on a billboard two weeks later — a news crawler replaying footage of the White Fang attack.
They called it terrorism.
They said one survivor, unidentified.
They said Blake Belladonna presumed dead.
I stared until the screen cut to an advertisement.
Then I laughed. Once. Sharp. Dry.
"Presumed, huh?"
The word presumed was all I needed.
If she was dead, I would have felt it.
The bond — whatever it was — would have gone silent.
It hadn't.
I started asking around — quietly, carefully. Courier jobs, transport routes, places she might go. Nothing. Vale was too big, too loud.
After a month, I gave up pretending I was looking for her. I just kept moving.
I worked nights, slept during the day, always near the industrial district.
One morning, while the city was still waking, a courier dropped a folded paper near my bench.
No name. Just three words written in black ink.
Beacon. Huntsman Program.
I read it twice. Then again.
The air shifted. The Echo went silent for the first time in weeks.
"Found you," I whispered.
That night, I walked to the city's east rail line — the one heading toward the cliffs where the academy sat. I stopped short of the checkpoint, close enough to see the lights of the transports rising into the air.
I didn't board. Not yet.
"She's safer there," I said quietly.
For now, Logic replied.
She won't stay safe without you, Joy added.
I looked at my reflection in the dark window — red eyes, pale silver-blue hair, wolf ears half-hidden under a hood, tail flicking lazily behind me.
"Then I'll wait," I said.
For what?
"For when the world forgets what I did."
I turned and walked back toward the city lights.
For now, the shadows were enough.
I would guard her world from beneath it, even if she never knew I was there.
And when the noise came back — laughter, whispers, counting, cruelty — I didn't tell it to stop.
I just listened, steady, breathing slow.
Because if I couldn't quiet the voices, I could at least learn their rhythm.
The wolf survives the world by learning its song.
And I wasn't done singing yet.