Elara ran until the pain in her side blurred into numbness. She didn't know how far she'd gotten. The world looked wrong—too quiet, too still. Eventually, the chasing stopped. Maybe she lost them. Maybe they gave up.
Her mind had been foggy from fatigue, she didn't expect to escape the instructors in the first place. When she saw the open side gate, it forced her to wonder if they'd been summoned somewhere else.
It wasn't just unguarded—it was wide. Metal half-split from its hinges. Like someone had left in a hurry—or left it for someone else to enter. She hesitated to walk through it, but she had little choice.
Elara slowed, boots crunching over the concrete floor. Her eyes stayed sharp. Her legs were still moving before her brain gave permission. She circled in through the service stairwell. No resistance.
The halls were quiet, oddly quiet, they felt— spacious.
She didn't find a single instructor. Not alive anyway
Elara knew silence. She'd known it all her life. But this—this felt wrong.
Her intuition was right, the halls had been emptied out. Bodies of those who oppressed her laid half-hidden against the walls. The Foundation had become a graveyard in a matter of minutes.
She tried not to focus on the bodies, twisted in shapes the body didn't naturally allow.
She'd been gone less than half an hour. Elara struggled to orient herself in the building, it'd been completely changed. As she entered the space where barracks previously had been overcrowded she noticed there were still a decent few kynenn around.
A girl burst into view—young, curls tangled and eyes too wide for her small, tan face. She was breathing hard, twitching with the jerky panic of someone who's forgotten where they're going. The moment she saw Elara, her face changed completely. Fear. Recognition. Even a hint of confusion.
"You!" The word snapped out breathless. "You're—you were always around him."
Elara didn't move. "Who?"
"Umm—white hair," the girl managed. "With the purple dye. He was really quiet. Always… always helping people. You know who I mean." She blinked twice, fast, shifting weight on bare feet. "You were with him. All the time. It's really not a good time to act clueless."
Elara swallowed once, throat dry. She hadn't intended to entertain the girl's original conversation, Hikari was Elara's business exclusively. "What happened here?"
The girl shook her head sharply, backing up a step. "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!! I—I saw him. Just now, well i was with him. He was fighting this...freak. His powers didn't match anything. Like it made no sense, it was like he controlled shadows or something. It didn't look real. He vanished, reappeared—just stepped into thin air!"
Elara didn't answer, but her pulse quickened.
"They were fighting, your friend was protecting me from the shadow guy. They were about even," the girl rushed. "But your friend—he had him. At least, I think he did. It was fire everywhere. I ran. Had to. Didn't want to be there when it ended. Didn't want him seeing me again."
She glanced behind her like shadows had ears. Confused, she had no choice other than to believe her. Elara took one small step closer.
"Then what?"
The girl exhaled sharply, voice dropping lower, urgent. "Well that's the thing. When I went back, no one was there. There was a lot of blood, but nobody near it. They were just—gone. Both of them."
Elara's chest tightened.
"Then another guy showed up," the girl said, words clipped. "Not the shadow freak—someone else, older, I think he was following the other guy though... He said we could leave or come with them. Said we were free." She laughed—a quick, jagged sound without humor. "Like hell. No one does that. None of it made sense."
Her voice cracked slightly, desperation creeping back in. "Some left anyway. Maybe most. Idk, I guess the idiots thought it was their chance. But it felt wrong—felt like a trap. Like a test. I don't know."
"Do you know who it was?" Elara held her stare. Ignoring almost everything else, Elara's heart was in her pelvic region. "Who took Hikari"
The girl flinched, eyes darting back again to check the emptiness. "Who else? Celaris. Had to be them. No one else would attack the Foundation. No one else could."
Elara didn't respond immediately. The girl stared at her, eyes pleading—like she expected answers, reassurance, anything.
But Elara had nothing to give. She stayed quiet.
After a long silence, the girl broke first. She exhaled hard, frustration mingling with her fear. She backed away slowly, ready to run again.
"Doesn't matter," she muttered, voice flat now. "If they did it once, they'll be back to finish us. I won't wait around for that."
She continued looking at Elara, but Elara wasn't in the same room mentally. After an awkward pause the girl turned around and walked down the hall, bare feet slapping on tile. Elara didn't watch her go, She'd been so stuck in her own thoughts she may as well have been blinded temporarily.
Then, sudden as lightning, Elara bolted out the same door she'd entered.
She knew where to go.
All the times her and Hikari had snuck out—Elara knew her way around the 3rd sector of the outer ring, but she had no intentions of touring this sector anymore. Elara was headed directly for the gate.
The civilians had no curfew tonight. Not anywhere close to the street Elara was on. There were no guards to enforce it, not that they would've done so either way. There were only empty watch posts. Floodlights still humming from their towers, unmanned. The streets beyond weren't silent. People were watching from the dark. Elara could feel it—behind barred windows and alleyways.
And tonight?
Tonight, every one of those eyes knew something had changed. They noticed the increased number of children, in especially dirty white robes running around, hiding.
And they were afraid.
Elara moved fast through the main arterial paths. Her boots struck the moss that covered the sidewalks, patched cement in the streets. Elara hated the way the night sky resembled a blood ocean. But not even that was something she'd noticed while running.
Her thoughts kept circling.
Celaris.
She'd never seen them. Never met anyone who had. Not that they were hidden, or even hard to find. But celaris had been one of the most inaccessible groups in the world. Within the most inaccessible county.
Celaris made you envy them.
Whispers always said they were kynenn, some of the strongest ever. They never were forced into an eclipse, matter of fact they were protected by the Eclipse's winners. The celaris was too dangerous to be controlled. Rumors say they were near immortal. A last generation of warriors—perfected and discarded.
But truth is, no one really knew. The instructors, even in their conversations between each other, never acknowledged them. Never said their name. Elara had only heard it once, muttered by a drunk instructor. But now, to ensure the safety of her only friend? Elara fully intended to test each and every rumor.
She reached the outer slums—a stretch of collapsed rooftops and mildew-choked brickwork, where water damage clung to every surface like old grief—was the gate.
The same one Hikari had slipped through years ago, back when he still visited his father. He never talked much about those visits. Most of what Elara knew, she'd gathered in pieces, fragments laid bare over seven years of silent observations and emotional slips.
If she'd known more, maybe she would've prepared differently.
Instead, she stood frozen, staring at the checkpoint—lined shoulder-to-shoulder with enforcers, barriers stacked three-fold, sensors embedded into the concrete like seeds in fresh soil.