Night fell over the ruins like a slow suffocation.
The city was silent again, save for the faint hum of distant machinery—old generators buried under tons of concrete, still clinging to life centuries after the world had forgotten them. The squad set up camp inside the shell of a derelict transport hangar. The metal walls still bore bullet holes and blackened claw marks.
I sat apart from the others, watching the dying light fade through the fractured windows.
No one spoke much after what happened in the tunnels.
Captain Iver had vanished for a while after the battle. When she returned, her hair was still streaked with blood, and her violet eyes seemed... distant. It wasn't fear. It was something colder. Something like calculation—like she was already thinking several steps ahead, far beyond what any of us could see.
Reid worked on his gauntlet, muttering curses at the sputtering sparks. Sera leaned against the wall, motionless, eyes flickering faintly as she scanned the perimeter for movement. Barel sharpened his living blade with the kind of focus only soldiers who have killed too much can have.
I just stared at my hands.
The feeling hadn't gone away.
That moment—when Iver had released her Bloodlust—had carved itself into my memory. It wasn't something you could forget. The way the air had bent around her. The way even the monsters had frozen. I had felt it in my bones, in the back of my skull, like a command carved into my nerves: Kneel.
I had seen many kinds of fear before. But that… that was something else. That was a higher order of power.
"Elias," a voice cut through my thoughts.
It was Iver.
She walked over, her steps deliberate but quiet. The torchlight caught the purple strands of her hair, reflecting a ghostly shimmer. She stopped a few feet away, arms crossed, studying me with that calm, unreadable expression.
"You've been quiet," she said.
I hesitated. "Just… thinking."
"About what?"
I exhaled. "About earlier. The things we fought. The way they reacted to you. That... pressure. What was it?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly, though not in anger—more like she was measuring how much truth to give me. Then she looked away, staring out through a gap in the wall toward the ruins outside.
"Fear," she said softly. "But not theirs. Mine."
I frowned. "Yours?"
"Bloodlust," she continued, her tone flat. "That's what we call it. It's not something that can be taught. It's something that manifests when your will becomes sharp enough to cut. When you've seen too much and survived too long. It's a scar you learn to weaponize."
She turned her gaze back to me. "Only a few people ever awaken it. And none of them stay the same afterward."
Her words lingered, heavy and cold.
I swallowed, unsure how to respond. The air around her still carried a faint residue of that invisible pressure—like the air hadn't forgotten to be afraid.
"Rest," she said finally, stepping past me. "We move at dawn."
I watched her walk away. Even her shadow looked heavier than it should have.
But the strange part wasn't her—it was me.
When she'd stood close, I'd felt something stir in my chest. A faint vibration. Not fear. Something else—like a thread being plucked deep inside my bones. For a moment, the walls had seemed to pulse faintly with it. The flickering lamps dimmed. The metal around me listened.
And then it was gone.
I clenched my fists, staring at them again. Maybe it was just my imagination. Or maybe it was the ruins themselves. Sometimes it felt like this place was alive—like the world was watching, waiting for something.
That night, sleep didn't come easily.
I dreamt of glass and blood. Of a city drowning in crimson light. Of voices whispering from the cracks in the walls.
And of something vast... whispering my name from the dark.
---
At dawn, we moved again.
The mist had grown thicker, crawling low over the broken streets. The air was cold, the kind that bit through clothing and skin. The sun never rose properly here—it was always a pale glow struggling behind the clouds, like even light was afraid of this place.
Reid cracked a joke about how his boots were starting to rot. Sera ignored him, scanning ahead with her spectral eyes. Barel hummed a low tune that sounded like a funeral dirge.
Captain Iver said nothing. But every time her gaze swept the horizon, I felt that faint pressure again—the echo of her Bloodlust, barely contained.
As for me… that vibration still lingered in my bones. Faint. Whispering. Growing.
---
That was the first time I realized something was wrong with me.
Or maybe something was finally waking up.