"You're gonna get yourself killed, Lyra."
Mud clung to her fingers as she wiped them on her trousers, still crouched low in the ruins, refusing to look up.
Behind her, Jace—her so-called "friend"—shifted from foot to foot, jaw tight and eyes darting toward the shadows, like he was too nervous to stay but too ashamed to leave.
"You listening? Wyrmwatch isn't far. Patrols sweep this sector now. You get caught, you vanish. Just like the others. I'm telling you, there's something wrong under this hill. Something's moving down there. People go missing, and no one talks about it."
Lyra glanced back over her shoulder. "Then run, coward. But someone's got to bring food back for the kids in the village. I'm not leaving empty-handed." She said it like defiance, but inside, the thought clawed deeper, if this didn't work, they'd starve, and she'd be the one who failed them.
Jace huffed but didn't move. Typical. Too scared to stay. Too proud to leave first.
Ahead of them, the cracked stones of Seresthos Hill gleamed wet under the rain. Wind rattled through broken prayer carts, a hollow echo swallowed by distant, useless bell clangs.
Her stomach growled, sharp and loud, forcing a grimace across her face.
Another night. Another gnawing ache in her gut. Another plan that reeked of desperation—one she'd remember later, when desperation felt like cowardice, not courage.
"What's the target?" Jace muttered.
She nodded toward a battered stack of crates near a half-collapsed tent. "Canvas bag. Rations or supplies, maybe. Worth enough for a week's food if we're lucky."
"And if you get caught?"
"I don't plan to. I'm starving. You're starving. Everyone in the village is starving. We can't keep waiting for miracles."
He snorted. "You never do."
"What, you think we should just be selfish? Run from the village? From this damned hill and everyone left starving behind us?"
Before he could answer, Lyra slipped into the rain, boots sliding across the blackened mud.
The plan was simple: slip in, snatch the goods, disappear.
"Easy," she muttered. "Like always."
The Wyrmwatch knights stomped past nearby, armor clinking, their voices low and sharp. Lyra's heart hammered, fast and wild, against her ribs. Wind sliced through her soaked clothes like knives, but she kept moving, step by cautious step.
Almost there.
Her fingers brushed the canvas.
Then a sharp voice barked: "There!"
She spun. Too late.
A gauntlet clamped onto her wrist, metal crushing bone. She gasped, trying to twist free, but the knight yanked her hard, sending her sprawling into the mud.
Another knight let out a cruel chuckle.
"Found us a little gutter-rat," he jeered, kicking her side with his boot. Pain bloomed white-hot through her ribs.
Jace bolted, just like she knew he would. The knife-twist of betrayal burned hotter than the knight's kicks. She told herself she didn't care, that she'd expected it. But the sting of it, sharp and personal, clung tighter than she'd admit. Lyra gritted her teeth against a scream as the others laughed, boots sloshing through blackened mud.
The knights dragged her across Seresthos Hill. Rain gathered around their boots, slicking the stone beneath them. Smoke curled from the sky, a shifting veil that smudged the world in gray. Grass and weeds clawed uselessly at the rubble.
A bell clanged somewhere distant, swallowed quickly by the wind.
She bit the inside of her cheek, tasting blood, holding the scream down like bile.
"If you like stealing like a rat," one muttered, "you'll love where you're going."
The others laughed, boots sloshing through the mud.
A haze of soot drifted on the wind. Wind hissed through broken stone. The ruins slumped lifeless across the hill's jagged slope.
The ruins loomed empty, no living soul in sight.
Blood dribbled from Lyra's lip as she spat into the mud. Her wrists ached from old shackles, her hands trembling with cold and fury.
The knight dragging her wore a necklace of cracked bones, stained with salt and grime.
A sharp gust slipped through the ruins, rattling loose stones and raising gooseflesh on her neck.
Ancient plazas lay broken, stones cracked and scattered. Lyra's eyes flicked over the devastation—but she didn't linger. Staring too long made her chest tighten. Collapsed altars slumped beside puddles streaked with oil and ash, their carvings faded and half-lost to the mire. Scavengers picked through toppled tents, tugging at stormglass, glass born from lightning striking sand. Their hands were filthy, their eyes hollow. Blood still stained the trampled ground.
A body hung half inside a collapsed shaft, clothes rotted to rags, face half-buried in rubble.
Lyra stumbled. A gauntlet smashed her spine.
"Move, filth," a knight growled.
All around them, the city's skeleton sagged beneath rubble and ruin, bone and stone blurred in the smoke-heavy air.
Ahead, a squat hut of scrap wood and rusted metal slumped over a pile of broken stone, barely standing against the wind.
In the middle of the hut's floor, a thick iron hatch lay chained shut, sealing off a stairwell that plunged into the rubble below. The metal was scarred with rust, the chains bolted tight into the cracked stone floor.
The knights halted.
Lyra stared at the doors. Her breath stuttered. Was this where people vanished? Her stomach twisted—not just from fear, but the sick certainty she wouldn't be coming back the same.
Blood-signs smeared the hatch: WYRMWATCH MONSTERS GO DIE.
One knight spat into the mud. Another glanced around once, wary. Lyra's breath hitched. Her heart hammered against cracked ribs.
She flinched, expecting chains. But none came. Her hands were empty, trembling from the chill and that flicker of hope she'd tried to crush flared bitter and bright before dying again.
The knight with a storm-scar across his jaw stepped close.
He seized her hand and twisted it cruelly. Then he turned her around roughly, patting down her pockets with quick, practiced hands. He yanked out a few crumpled scraps, tossing them into the mud. With a sneer, he struck her across the backside with the flat of his hand, hard enough to drive her forward a step.
One of the knights yanked the chains loose and hauled up the iron hatch with a grinding screech.
Cold air rushed out from below, thick with the stink of wet stone and mold.
The knight leaned in, breath hot and reeking. Lyra tensed, nausea clawing at her throat. Then he whispered:
"Get moving. We'll come back after our shift. If you're still breathing,"
Then they shoved her into the dark.
So much for hope.
The hatch slammed shut behind her, the chains rattling as they locked it back in place.
Darkness swallowed her whole.
No miracles, just stone, just silence.
She used to dream under a clean sky—quiet blue, air that didn't reek of blood. Pine and sun-warmed stone. Simple, forgotten things. She didn't remember the sky, only the ache it left behind.
A sour, wet stench curled through the air. Cold mud clung to her skin, sticky and suffocating.
For a moment she stayed crouched, one hand pressed to the wet, filthy floor. Her breath tore in bursts, frosting the dark as steam coiled from her lips. Grit and grime oozed between her fingers, clinging like wet bark. She gritted her teeth and pushed upward, each joint grinding like rusted hinges with every strained motion.
A bone-deep chill crawled through her limbs, settling into the marrow.
Bit by bit, she dragged herself up. Pain flickered down her back, sharp and electric, making her limbs stiffen, and steam curled from her lips into the freezing dark. Water lapped around her boots, ankle-deep and cold enough to bite through skin.
"Hey!" she shouted, her voice raw and cracking like old wood. "Come back, cowards!"
Muffled laughter. Then silence.
She dug her fingers into her palm until something gave. A pop of pain. Something to hold onto. 'Easy, like always,' she'd said. But nothing about this was easy now—not the fear, not the dark, not the silence.
Quick hands. Quicker mind. That used to be enough. But not today. The shame settled in her gut like stone, she'd been caught, and worse, she'd walked right into it.
With a snarl, Lyra lashed out at a loose stone. Pain flared up her foot as it shifted, and she hissed, stumbled, and slipped.
She slammed down. For a heartbeat, nothing moved, then a jagged stone bit into her ribs and the cold punched the air from her lungs, sharp and punishing.
Below, the fractured ground shifted and scraped, groaning under its own weight.
Crack. Something snapped inside her too a final thread of control.
For a breath, she thought it would hold.
Another crack, sharper.
The floor split.
Lyra dropped hard, the scream torn from her throat. For a fraction of a second, silence rushed in, so complete it rang in her ears. Then the sensation of falling twisted sideways, as if the world tilted beneath her. Rubble and darkness swallowed her, cold grit in her mouth, no sense of up or down.