The ruins swallowed me whole.
I ran until the sound of hovercrafts vanished behind me, and my lungs burned like they'd been scrubbed raw.
The city crumbled around every step I took. There was no straight path anymore—just broken roads, fractured glass, rusted steel, and silence so deep it rang in my ears.
Kael was gone.
She kissed me goodbye, and then ran toward the storm like she was born in it.
I wanted to scream, to turn around and drag her with me, but the pulse in my Mark—and the voice whispering in my chest—kept me moving forward.
"You are the seventh flame."
The voice came in fragments now. It didn't sound human. Not male or female. Just... old. Etched into my bones.
As I stumbled through another alley half-eaten by vines and time, I realized something:
I wasn't afraid of dying.
I was afraid of surviving.
The sun didn't rise the next day. Or maybe it did and the sky just forgot how to show it.
I found shelter inside an old tram station. Its glass roof was shattered, vines growing between the benches. There was a vending machine still upright, but long dead. I broke into it anyway and found one energy bar that hadn't rotted.
As I chewed, I turned Kael's words over and over.
"You won't be alone. The voice will be with you."
I reached under my sleeve and looked at my wrist. The Mark was brighter than before, like fire trapped under my skin.
"You know how to get me killed," I muttered.
It pulsed once.
Rude.
I followed the signal it gave me.
North.
Through forgotten neighborhoods and over bridges collapsing into nothing. The landscape changed. Less city. More dust and bones. Statues of the Queen still stood in some areas—tall and smug, her hands raised in false peace.
I flipped her off every time I passed.
Eventually, I came across an outpost. Burned. Bodies scattered around it. All young. All Marked. I checked their wrists one by one.
None of them were glowing.
None of them had heard the voice.
I buried one girl whose face reminded me of Kael. Her hands were curled like she died reaching for someone. I left her my last match.
On the fifth day, I found a living one.
She was maybe thirteen. Filthy. Starving. Holding a metal pipe like a sword.
When she saw me, she screamed. "STAY BACK!"
"I'm not here to hurt you," I said.
She didn't believe me.
"You're with them. I saw the uniform. I saw—"
I held up my wrist. The Mark glowed faintly. Her eyes widened.
She dropped the pipe.
"You hear it too?" she asked.
I nodded.
Her name was Lio. She hadn't eaten in days. Her parents were taken by soldiers. She hid in a drain pipe for three nights before crawling out.
"I kept waiting for someone to find me," she said, chewing slowly through a protein bar I found in my pack. "I thought it was gonna be my mom. But it was just you."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"Do you want me to leave?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"No. I think... I was waiting for you."
We traveled together after that.
The Mark pulsed stronger the farther north we went, like it was calling us. We slept in old houses and once in a tree when we heard scouts nearby.
Lio talked a lot. Mostly about music. She used to play the violin before the world turned to dust. She swore she could still hear music when the wind blew just right.
"Maybe it's the voice," she said once.
"Maybe," I whispered.
I missed Kael. Every minute. Her eyes. Her fire. The way she made fear feel like a weapon instead of a curse. I missed the way she looked at me like I wasn't broken.
I missed how she never asked me to be brave. Just to survive.
Then came the Watchers.
We heard them before we saw them.
They didn't walk. They floated. Half-human, half-machine, faces masked and eyes glowing blue. They moved in slow, calculated patterns. Searching. Hunting.
"Don't let them touch you," Lio whispered. "They erase you. From everything."
We hid beneath a broken bridge for six hours while a pair of them scanned the ruins. My Mark dimmed to almost nothing, like it was trying to play dead.
One came within ten feet of us. Lio held my hand so tight I thought she'd break my fingers.
Then—
They turned and vanished.
We kept moving.
On the ninth day, we found a safehouse.
Old resistance tech. Shielded. Secure. There was even food left inside.
But there was something else too.
A name scratched into the wall.
KAEL WAS HERE.
Below it, a date. Yesterday.
I nearly collapsed.
She was alive.
"She's waiting for you," Lio said.
"How do you know?"
Lio tilted her head. "The voice told me."
That night, I dreamed.
I was in a black field. Flames danced in the distance. And Kael stood at the edge, her back to me.
"Don't let the light blind you," she said.
"I don't understand."
She turned. Her eyes were crying blood.
"You're not just a flame, Rae. You're the spark."
I woke up screaming.
Lio sat up beside me. "It's almost time, isn't it?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
My Mark had begun to crack.
To be continued...