Draven:
The cell was silent.
I sat on the cold stone floor, my back pressed against the damp wall, my wrists raw from the iron cuffs. The flickering torchlight cast uneven shadows across the room, stretching my form long against the stone.
I had lost track of time.
Minutes. Hours. It didn’t matter.
The world outside this cell had already shifted.
I rested my head back against the wall, exhaling slowly. The weight in my chest didn’t fade. My thoughts coiled tighter, looping over the same questions with no answers.
I had killed Elias Rhyne.
I had killed the guards.
I had felt it—the certainty of it, the way my body had moved before my mind had caught up. I had relived it in flashes, sharp and visceral, but the memories weren’t truly mine.
Because I hadn’t decided to do it.
It had just... happened.
I clenched my fists, pressing my nails into my palms, grounding myself in the small sting of pain.
I needed to make sense of it.
But the more I tried, the worse it became.
Because if I wasn’t the one in control—if the choice hadn’t been mine—
Then what did that make me?
I closed my eyes, inhaling through my nose. The cell smelled of damp stone and rusted iron, of sweat and decay. I should have been repulsed. I should have been feeling something.
Guilt. Regret. Fear.
But all I felt was the weight of knowing.
I couldn’t stay here.
I shouldn’t stay here.
Evermere wasn’t safe—not from me.
Whatever had happened in that alley, whatever had taken over, it wasn’t gone. It was waiting. Coiling beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, a presence I couldn’t name but knew was there.
If it happened again—if something inside me snapped—who would it be next?
Selene? Alaric?
The thought alone made my fingers twitch. My body tensed with something sharp and unfamiliar, something I couldn’t quite name.
I exhaled sharply, forcing it down.
I wouldn’t let it happen.
I refused to let it happen.
I had already taken lives—people who hadn’t deserved it. I wouldn’t add them to the count.
Leaving was the only answer.
If I was the problem, then removing myself from Evermere was the only way to fix it.
But beneath the guilt—beneath the cold, sinking weight of knowing I had caused this—was something else.
Something quieter.
Something that had been lurking beneath my skin long before I ever set foot in this cell.
Leaving meant escape.
It meant never having to answer for what I had done.
It meant walking away before I had to face the truth of what I was becoming.
And maybe—
Maybe they wanted me to leave.
I thought of my parents, of the way they had looked at me when I stepped through the door. Their silence had been stretched tight, their gazes careful, measured.
I thought of the guards, how their grips hadn’t just been firm but cautious, as if bracing for something they didn’t understand.
I thought of Alaric and Selene.
Had they been watching me because they were worried—
Or because they were afraid?
The answer settled like a weight in my chest.
I swallowed hard, my fingers curling into fists.
No.
That wasn’t why I was leaving.
I was leaving because I had no choice.
Because if I stayed, the next body might be someone I couldn’t live without.
The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor.
I kept my head down, my wrists resting loosely in my lap, but my body tensed. No one had come to see me since they locked me in here.
Until now.
Keys rattled against iron. A low murmur of voices—one unfamiliar, one that made my chest tighten.
Then—
The cell door creaked open.
I lifted my gaze.
A guard stepped inside first, his posture stiff, his eyes flicking to me like he expected something unnatural to happen at any moment. He turned slightly, gesturing behind him. “Make it quick.”
Boots scraped against stone.
Then—
My father stepped forward.
Alistar Thorn carried himself the same way he always had—composed, deliberate, with his hands folded neatly behind his back. His expression was unreadable, his sharp gaze sweeping over the cell, taking in every detail before finally settling on me.
And yet—
Something in his face had changed.
He wasn’t angry.
He wasn’t cold.
He was just... tired.
The guard exhaled through his nose, already eager to be anywhere but here. “I’ll give you a few minutes.”
Then, without another word, he turned and left.
The cell door clanged shut behind him.
Alistar didn’t speak right away.
He stood there, silent, his gaze still pinned on me, as if he were trying to place something—some missing piece, some answer that refused to come.
I held his stare.
I didn’t ask why he was here. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak.
Because I already knew.
Finally, he exhaled.
“The Arbiter has decided your fate.”
His voice was even. Controlled.
But there was a weight to it.
I forced myself to breathe. My throat felt dry.
Alistar continued, his tone flat—too flat. “Your execution is set.”
The words landed heavy, like iron shackles locking into place.
“The Arbiter was close with Elias Rhyne,” he went on, each syllable deliberate. “Very close.” His eyes flickered slightly—just for a second. “Your guilt was never in question. There was never going to be another outcome.”
I swallowed hard, the cold pressing deeper into my ribs.
He said it like a fact. Like something inevitable.
Like something that had already happened.
Alistar stepped closer. “I want to be angry at you,” he murmured.
I tensed.
His voice was quiet. Measured.
And that made it worse.
“I want to tell myself this was your fault,” he continued, gaze steady. “That you chose to be the catalyst for this.”
The weight of his words pressed against me.
I should have said something. Anything.
That I hadn’t meant for this to happen.
That I wasn’t in control.
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That I didn’t ask for whatever had woken inside me, whatever had left blood on my hands.
But I said nothing.
Because I didn’t know if it would be true.
Alistar inhaled slowly. “But I don’t think you did.”
His expression didn’t shift.
“And that makes it worse.”
Something fractured inside me.
He wasn’t just condemning me.
He was grieving me.
Not as a father.
As something he had never truly understood.
Alistar’s voice remained steady, but there was something beneath it now—something strained.
“The border has shattered,” he said.
The words cut through me.
Not because of what he was saying.
But because of how he was saying it.
Like the fact itself was already old news.
Like he had known.
Like it was only now that he was saying it out loud that the truth had finally settled.
“The balance is gone,” he continued. “I don’t know if it can be repaired.”
His voice was calm. Too calm.
Like a man who had already accepted the inevitable.
The weight in my chest twisted. My fingers twitched, but the cuffs held, grounding me in place.
Then—
His gaze flickered, just slightly.
“Your mother didn’t come.”
A cold breath pressed against my throat.
Alistar studied me carefully, his face unreadable. “She won’t say it outright,” he said, “but no matter how she tries to explain it—”
His lips pressed into a thin line.
“She didn’t want to see you.”
The words didn’t cut immediately.
They sat there, sinking deeper, until I could feel the shape of them in my ribs.
I should have expected it.
Of course, she wouldn’t come.
Of course, she wouldn’t want to look at me.
I had been wrong from the start, hadn’t I? A disruption. A flaw in Evermere itself.
This city had never felt like home, but for the longest time, I had told myself that was my own failing. That if I tried harder, if I forced myself to belong, I would find a place in it.
That no matter what, my parents would always see me.
But they hadn’t.
And they never would.
A strange clarity settled into my bones.
I wasn’t losing anything.
Because I had never had it to begin with.
Alistar turned toward the door.
I should have been grateful that he had come at all.
That he had at least spoken to me.
But I wasn’t.
And then—
Something shifted.
A flicker.
A brief pull in my thoughts.
The same feeling I had when I killed Elias.
The flicker didn’t pass.
It rooted itself in me.
A hum beneath my skin. A pressure behind my ribs. Coiling, stretching, waiting.
Alistar reached for the door.
I moved before I even realized I had moved.
One second, I was seated against the wall, bound, restrained, weakened.
The next—
I was on him.
The force of my body slammed him against the iron bars, the sound of bone against metal splitting through the cell like the crack of a dying tree.
He grunted—not a scream, never a scream—just a sharp exhale, surprised but not afraid.
Not yet.
I fixed that.
The guards had stripped me of weapons.
I didn’t need them.
My hands curled into something else. Something sharpened. Something meant for this.
I dug my fingers into his throat, feeling the warmth pulse beneath his skin. A life measured in moments, in the brief rise and fall of a chest.
I pressed harder.
Alistar struggled. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t untrained. But his body was made for order. For control. For careful, measured steps and calculated movements.
I was none of those things.
I was instinct.
I dragged him to the floor. The back of his head cracked against the stone, his body convulsing, his breath breaking into short, ragged gasps.
The cuffs on my wrists were still locked, but they didn’t matter.
I didn’t need hands.
I had teeth.
I sank them into his throat.
The taste of iron flooded my mouth—hot and raw, thick with something deeper than blood. A final shudder passed through him, a last jolt of resistance before his body recognized what his mind already had.
It was over.
His movements slowed. Twitched.
Stilled.
The cell fell into silence.
My chest heaved, my lips warm with blood, my hands sticky with it.
And the worst part—
The part that made something deep inside me laugh—
Was that I wasn’t lost in a haze.
I wasn’t overtaken.
I wasn’t a passenger in my own body.
This wasn’t like before.
I had killed Elias in a moment of broken thought, my mind split from my body. I had slaughtered the guards in the wake of something I didn’t understand.
But now—
I was aware.
I was present.
I was sane.
A deep exhale left me, slow and steady. My tongue flicked over the corner of my lips, the taste of metal settling on my breath.
Then—
The sound of footsteps.
Heavy. Rushing.
Many of them.
The door to the corridor burst open.
I turned my head slowly.
The guards had arrived.
The scent of blood was thick in the air.
Warm. Sharp. Unmistakable.
I barely moved. My pulse had already settled, my body still thrumming with awareness, but my breathing was even. Controlled.
The cell door slammed open.
Boots rushed in, the clatter of weapons being drawn filling the space. A voice—sharp, commanding—cut through the air.
“Step away from him!”
I didn’t.
I simply turned my head.
Slowly.
Their movements faltered.
They had expected to see a monster.
A rabid, frenzied beast.
But I was still me.
Sitting there. Calm. Breathing.
Sane.
And that terrified them more than if I had been anything else.
One of the guards—a higher-ranking officer by the way his insignia glinted in the torchlight—regained his voice first.
“I said step away!”
I met his gaze.
He flinched.
A ripple of uncertainty moved through them, a hesitation barely perceptible but there.
They weren’t just afraid of what I had done.
They were afraid that I had done it with purpose.
With control.
That there had been nothing broken about it at all.
The air in the cell was thick.
The torchlight flickered against the walls, casting long shadows across the blood-slicked stone.
No one moved.
The guards stood rigid, hands clenched around their weapons. Their eyes darted between the body on the floor and me, calculating, processing—hesitating.
The uncertainty in the room was louder than their orders.
One of them inhaled sharply. A step forward. The shuffle of armor.
The moment was about to break.
And then—
The city bells rang out.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
Their heads snapped up.
Panic flickered across their faces. Not because of me.
Because of something else.
Then—
A voice, distant but carrying through the prison corridors.
A scream.
And that was the moment the city broke open.
Selene:
The bells tolled.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
The sound rolled through Evermere, deep and shuddering, vibrating against the walls. It wasn’t an ordinary toll. It wasn’t the usual, rhythmic chime that marked time or signaled a gathering.
It was urgent. Wrong.
I stiffened, my fingers gripping the table’s edge. My heartbeat slammed against my ribs, matching the distant echoes of panic now rising in the streets.
This wasn’t a drill.
This wasn’t a mistake.
Something had happened.
Alaric was already moving, his steps sharp, restless. “What the hell was that?” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair.
I swallowed hard. “It— I don’t know.”
I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Outside, through the window, the fracture in the sky stretched wider, flickering with colors that shouldn’t exist. I could see people now, standing in the streets, pointing, whispering, backing away—but no one ran.
Not yet.
Because they didn’t want to believe it was real.
Then—
The first scream cut through the air.
Loud. Raw.
A second followed.
And then Evermere finally broke open.
The sky fractured.
Not in a way that made sense—not like glass, not like stone. It wasn’t something solid breaking.
It was reality itself.
Thin, jagged pieces peeled away, curling as they fell, shards of something that had never been meant to be seen.
I expected them to hit the rooftops, to crash against the stone streets, to leave devastation in their wake—
But they didn’t.
The pieces of the border fell through Evermere.
Through buildings. Through people. Through the world itself.
They left nothing behind. No damage. No broken structures. No impact.
But I felt it.
A hollow, sinking pressure in my chest. A silence beneath the noise.
Because whatever had been holding Evermere together was gone.
And the city knew it.
The screams spread faster now, rippling outward, growing wild and panicked. People stumbled away from nothing, shielding themselves from the shards that couldn’t touch them, their bodies reacting even when their minds couldn’t understand.
I turned to Alaric.
He was frozen, his eyes locked onto the sky, his lips parted slightly—like he wanted to say something but had lost the ability to speak.
A part of me wanted to tell him to move. To grab his arm, to run.
But where could we go?
The city was already gone.
A sharp crackling filled the air—then a voice.
"By order of the Arbiter, all citizens are to remain calm."
The announcement echoed across the city, rising over the screams, weaving through the breaking illusion of safety.
"The situation is under control. The city’s defenses are active. Military enforcement is securing the districts. There is no reason for alarm."
Lies.
The border had shattered. The sky was still peeling apart, pieces of it falling through the world like they had never belonged here to begin with.
There was every reason for alarm.
Alaric let out a sharp, humorless laugh, finally breaking out of his frozen stare. “Yeah,” he muttered. “That sounds convincing.”
He turned away from the window, pacing again, his movements quick, tense, like he was trying to physically escape the thoughts slamming into his head.
I forced myself to breathe. “They don’t have it under control.”
“No,” Alaric said flatly. He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers curling at the base of his neck. “They don’t.”
We had seen it before they even admitted it.
The fractures. The sky. The city’s silence, the weight in the air that everyone had felt but no one dared to speak about.
This had been coming for days.
And now, there was no stopping it.
The speakers crackled again.
Then—
"Attention. This is an emergency broadcast under the Arbiter’s directive."
The voice was controlled. Too controlled.
"Citizens of Evermere, proceed to your assigned sectors. Barricades are active. Military enforcement is in place. Do not engage. Do not interfere. Await further instruction."
Then, a pause.
A silence too long to be normal.
And that was the moment I felt it.
The weight in the air.
Like something pressing down on the city.
Like the moment before a storm broke.
Alaric stiffened beside me. He had felt it too.
Then the announcement continued—lower, sharper.
"By order of the Arbiter, this is a Level Three Containment Protocol."
My breath hitched.
That wasn’t normal.
That wasn’t ever normal.
We had heard protocols before—small lockdowns, curfews, the occasional security breach near the outer walls.
But Level Three?
I had never heard it spoken out loud before.
And neither had anyone else.
The weight pressing against my ribs tightened.
Something heavy was coming.
And we weren’t ready for it.
The bells had tolled.
Evermere had broken.
And we were still standing here.
Alaric let out a slow breath.
The announcement had stopped. The silence in its wake was too thick, too unnatural, like the city itself was waiting for something to happen.
For something to arrive.
The Level Three Containment Protocol.
That wasn’t for a city under control.
That was for a city on the brink.
I swallowed, my throat dry. “If we’re going to run—”
Alaric cut me off with a sharp look. “We don’t even know what we’re running from.”
That didn’t matter.
I could feel it in the air, in my chest, in the way the fractures in the sky kept spreading, pieces of the border still falling through the world like they had never belonged here to begin with.
The city was going to break.
We had to leave before it did.
I clenched my fists. “Alaric, we—”
“Where?” He cut in, voice sharper than before. “Where do we go, Selene? You think the Arbiter is just going to let us walk out? You think Evermere is just going to let us leave?”
I hated that he had a point.
Evermere wasn’t the kind of place you left. People didn’t just walk away from the Arbiter’s rule. The city was built on control, on structure, on a balance that had never been questioned until now.
But wasn’t that the point?
The balance had already fallen apart.
And if we didn’t leave now, we weren’t going to get another chance.
I exhaled sharply, my pulse hammering in my ears.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, but the words felt thin.
Alaric let out a humorless laugh. “Figure it out,” he echoed. “Great plan. Sounds solid.” He turned, pacing again, dragging his hands through his hair. “Do you even hear yourself?”
I glared at him. “I hear myself just fine.”
“Then you’d hear how stupid that sounds.”
Something inside me snapped. “You have a better idea?”
Silence.
His jaw clenched.
But he didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t have one.
I exhaled sharply, turning away. My hands were shaking. I curled them into fists to stop it.
Running wasn’t a solid plan.
But neither was staying here.
I didn’t know what was coming.
But I knew Evermere wasn’t going to survive it.
The silence stretched too long.
Then—
Alaric cut the topic entirely.
“This started with Draven.”
My stomach twisted.
I turned back to face him. “We don’t know that.”
“Don’t we?” His voice was hard, his eyes sharp. “Because every time something unexplainable happens, every time the city shifts, every time things start falling apart—he’s always right there.”
I hated that I couldn’t argue.
Because I had seen it too.
I had tried to ignore it, tried to push it away, but I had seen the way people looked at him, the way the air moved around him, the way things seemed to bend when he was near.
And now Evermere was crumbling.
Alaric let out a slow breath, shaking his head. “I used to think we knew him better than anyone.” His fingers curled slightly, pressing into his palm. “But I don’t know what we were looking at yesterday.”
Yesterday.
Draven, surrounded by guards he had torn apart.
Draven, standing in the middle of something unrecognizable, flickering between human and something else.
Draven, moving too fast, too precise, cutting through them like it was nothing.
I swallowed. “He’s still him.”
Alaric held my gaze.
And I hesitated.
Because even I wasn’t sure.
A part of me still wanted to believe—wanted to tell myself that Draven was still the same person we had known for years.
But the truth sat between us, too heavy to ignore.
We had seen him flicker.
And now, Evermere was breaking.