Elliot's POV

"Only in death I shall rest, be it soon, be it late. But I will use what remains, so it shall not be in vain."

—Elliot Starfall

I run. My breath is steady. The sword in my grip is thin—too light to feel real. My arms are moving, but my legs feel like iron, like they're rooted to the earth. They tremble under me, but I keep moving, keep pushing forward through a pressure that presses down from above like a nightmare that won't break.

I'm not running toward anything. I'm running from something. I don't know what. My shoulders burn. The sword scrapes against the ground behind me, dragging in the dirt, ringing in the fog. Every scratch gives away my position, but I can't stop. I can't think.

My heart hammers in my chest. My eyes dart through the fog, searching—but there's no one. I am alone. Only me, and the tight coil of something unknown, something foreign—but not entirely. It's like a limb I forgot I had. Like memory trying to return through muscle.

My sprint fades into a walk. My feet hit heavier now, as if the entire world leans down on my back. As if my world has climbed on and refuses to come off. My knee gives out. I stumble forward, catching myself on my hands.

The ground is warm. Slippery.

My fingers sink.

It's blood.

My eyes go wide. The sword slips from my hand—was it even there to begin with?

There's nothing left but red.

I scream. It tears out of my throat, but the sound doesn't travel. I whip around, searching the mist, but it's no longer mist. It glows now. A dull red, like old wounds.

And then I feel it. A wet warmth drips into my ears. My legs are gone—swallowed by the blood of my kind. I try to stand, but I'm sinking faster. My chest tightens. The air thins. I reach for the light, for anything, but my arms are slow, and my head is already tipping into blackness.

I smell it. Copper and filth.

I taste it.

I can't breathe.

My eyes go under. My ears, my hair. Until nothing remains but silence. Until nothing remains but me and the dark.

All this time, I try to scream, but no sound escapes. Only tears.

"Golden Reaper," a voice murmurs from inside the blood.

It's twisted. Crooked. Familiar in the worst way.

"In this life you shall die for the greater good, and not for your selfish vengeance."

…

"Eos!"

The voice snaps through the silence like a knife. Sharp. Real.

My ears ring. I feel like I've been underwater. I blink. My eyes barely open. Light—faint and warm—comes from an oil lamp a few feet away. It flickers against stone and sewage.

Saliva pools at the corner of my mouth.

I sit up, barely, leaning on a shoulder—Cham's shoulder. He's tapping my chest lightly, looking worried.

A dream? No wonder after all these days of horror.

"What is it?" I ask, voice thick. My eyes squint against the flickering light. The smell hits first—shit and piss, old and fresh, the stench of blues.

Cham is thinner than most. Always has been. He's the runner, the messenger. He doesn't fight unless it's bad. And if he's waking me up...

I blink again, trying to keep the dream from creeping back. No, not a dream. Something else.

A vision? It has been weeks since my vision of Earth and its debris.

I rub my temples, trying to force clarity into my skull. My knee jerks as my boot kicks a dead rat across the floor.

"The blues have come, Eos," Cham says, his voice quieter now. His head is slightly lowered. I stare at his dark hair—stained rust-red from dried blood, not naturally so. It's black underneath.

I shift. Straighten my spine. "How many?"

Cham looks up. "A handful. Maybe more, Eos."

I spit to the ground. It barely leaves my mouth. Too thick, sticky. The sewer floor is narrow, and slick. A few steps ahead and I can see myself reflected in the water they shit in.

"Eos!" another voice shouts.

Not Cham. It's Gene.

The first of my kind I ever pulled out alive.

He's not fragile anymore. Not like the boy I found half-dead. His frame is solid now. Broad shoulders, filled-out cheeks—still gaunt, but stronger. Healthier. He's still filthy like the rest of us, but no longer broken.

None of us are as broken as we were.

Not anymore.

A grin tugs at my mouth. It isn't wide. It's the one I wear when I'm close to killing. When the air smells like sweat and blood and the hunt is coming.

I move fast. My boots splash near the edge of the water, almost stepping into it.

Gene turns to me. His auburn hair lifts in the breeze of movement. He's not grinning, but his eyes flash with something close to pride.

My breath stinks. I haven't cleaned it in days. Could be a week. Could be longer. Time is worthless down here. The night doesn't end. The sun barely matters.

The days blur.

I think of Ren. My brother.

My grin fades but rises again as I think of the other blood oozing from my mouth as I drink of their dead limbs.

I pivot left. My pace quickens. The stone tunnels echo with footfalls—ours and theirs. Our screams and theirs. The air turns metallic in my lungs.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek until blood fills my mouth. Bittersweet. Warm.

I lick it, savor it like something sacred.

Red strands of light begin to form. Only I see them. Only I feel them. Scarlet threads that dance across my vision. They rise with my heartbeat, tracing my limbs—feet, knees, hands, elbows, shoulders. They move with me. I don't guide them.

They guide me.

My kin call me Eos. Not for who I was. But for what I've become.

Hope. Rage. Fire in a dead world.

I duck right. Slide left. Crawl low, like an animal stalking prey.

"Eos!" someone calls my new name.

Christopher.

He's in the water—shoulder torn open, bleeding into the sewage. But he smiles. A real smile. Watching me move.

I hear him breathe behind me. I hear all of them. The rats. The blood. The others hiding, revolvers tucked against shaking ribs, held tight behind whatever stone and pipe they can find.

The air is thick. Too warm. Too wet.

"Damn cockroaches!" a voice echoes.

Not one of ours.

A blue.

Footsteps. More than a handful.

Derrik ducks behind a stone wall, aiming his gun low. His teeth grit. He doesn't blink.

Christopher stays low too, revolver in hand—same as the others. Same as me. All stolen. Nothing given.

They call us cockroaches.

Reds.

Vermin who live in the sewers after surviving two battles. It should've been more. We should've been dead by now. But we move. We kill. We vanish.

That's how we live.

We've taken others in. Rescued more. Killed more. Mostly at night. Once in daylight.

Ralph died because of that.

A few of us did.

But not me.

Not yet.

My steps quicken again.

I see them—the silhouettes of blues, blurry, tinged purple from my reddened sight. They don't know where to shoot. They fire blindly. Cowards. Afraid.

They see my red eyes. My pace doesn't break. My breathing stays calm.

I move through the filth, boots splashing in thick, stinking water, trousers soaked through. I haven't changed in days. I don't care.

Pow!

More bullets ring out—clumsy, panicked shots that echo through the tunnels like cracking bones. But they miss. As always. It's like the first time I used this. Like trying to strike fire with wet flint, only to find the blaze already roaring behind you. Their aim is blind, wild—like a child throwing stones into the dark.

I move faster.

So fast I feel the flies.

They're thicker now. Bigger. Some burst on contact with my skin. One hits my eye. It twitches, blinks hard—but I don't close it. I never close my eyes. Not anymore.

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My hand finds one of them. A blue. Police, soldier—it doesn't matter. Their name doesn't matter. What they are does. In their eyes, I'm filth. A cockroach. Something not even worth scraping off their boots.

Another shot.

Close.

Too close.

But the threads of light—those red strands that only I can see—they guide me. I feel where the next bullet will fly. I pivot. Smooth. Natural. My body moves as if I'm pulled by a wind only I can sense.

Then it hits me.

Not a bullet.

A sound.

A choke. A scream, low and broken. Another shot follows. Then curses. The threads twist my leg to the right, pulling my torso with it, letting me move with a strange grace—like a dancer on the edge of the wind.

But the gulping doesn't stop.

And something inside me does.

My finger twitches.

My smile fades.

In the corner of my vision, I see him—Christopher. A hole torn through his throat, hands trembling as they reach for me. His body sinks halfway into the waste.

His mouth moves. Wet and slow.

"Eos," he whispers.

He smiles.

It's small. Weak. But it's real.

I stare.

My ear starts to ring. Then ache. I touch it. My hand comes back red.

Only red.

He smiles again.

Then fades.

I've known him for two, maybe three days. But he was kind. Quick to laugh. Quicker to fight. Still full of life—just minutes ago.

His fingers slip from his gun. The revolver falls into the sewer water. His body follows.

Jimmy and Caroline lunge toward him, their silhouettes barely visible in the flickering blue lamplight cast by the enemy. I watch my own shadow grow larger behind them.

He probably was a better man than I ever was or ever will be.

But no tears come.

My cheeks are long dried from salt.

Only red awaits me. When I die, I'll go to hell. But I will not go alone.

I hold my half-torn ear, feeling the pain spread. I scream—but no sound. Just a breath stretched too long. My feet touch the water—lightly. Just enough to balance before I pivot.

They shoot again.

Three faint lights glow at the end of the tunnel—orange dots against the dark. The blues. Their skin blurs in my vision—bluish, but in my eyes, it's purple. Dull. Dying.

They step back.

But I'm faster.

My fingers rake across the first one's forearm. He gasps as his grip on the revolver breaks.

The second—I drive a kick straight into his gut. He buckles forward, breathless, gasping like my brother did before he died. I drive two more punches into his throat, hard and clean.

The last—I duck under his swing, weave right. My shoulder brushes the wall as I pivot and spring off it, slamming my foot into his wrist. His gun flies free just as he fires. The bullet clips my calf—sharp, hot—but not deep.

"Eos! Christopher!" Caroline screams behind me.

I stop.

I turn to her.

Her voice is shaking. She's bigger than most women, broad in the shoulders, and Christopher's sister. Her hands are stained from shit, her arms streaked with bruises and ash. She's sobbing.

"He's not to be saved," I say. My voice is colder than I intend it to be.

But it's the truth.

They see me as a god.

Eos. Dawn. The first light after long darkness. The red hope.

But I cannot raise the dead.

I can heal. Mend wounds. Slow blood. But I cannot call back what's already gone.

"Please!" she cries.

I flinch.

My teeth clench. My fists tighten. I turn away.

"More are coming," I say flatly.

I see the glows of our own—the red pulses that linger just beneath the skin. Jimmy. Caroline. Gene. Myself.

Further off, near the bend—Cham. Sixteen years old, and too bright-eyed for this world. Like those of my brother.

Three more of us still stand.

Which means more have died.

Beyond the walls—shadows. Five more blues. And farther… green.

More bullets. Louder this time. Sharp. Like a slap straight into my eardrums.

How the hell didn't I wake up before?

So it really must have been a—

My thoughts snap in half as pain pierces through my skull.

My eyes flicker. My stomach churns.

I vomit.

Red. Blue. Black.

Too much blood.

I haven't eaten anything but bread—stolen from broken bakeries before we vanished below again. The rest… has been blood.

Theirs. Ours. Mine.

My hands shake as another wave rises.

I vomit again. This time the taste burns in my nose. Acid. Rot.

The red in my eyes dims.

The light vanishes.

The warmth leaves me.

The threads are gone.

Only darkness remains.

The flickering lamp behind me casts long shadows—but the heat, the clarity—it's gone.

My fingers twitch next to an unconscious blue.

I grab his gun.

I throw up again—violently—as if I'm pulling out a lung. But I lift the revolver with both hands, even as my body convulses.

I fire.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Somewhere in the dark, they scream.

I don't drink this time. I don't consume their blood. I could. I should. It's made me stronger before. Given me powers I still can't understand.

But we need to move.

A green is in these tunnels.

"Fast—we need to leave!" I scream. The command rolls out of me with weight.

And they listen.

Jimmy grabs my arm. Gene catches up beside me.

Caroline stays.

She's still holding Christopher. Her sobs echo down the walls. She's pressing his face to hers, as if he could still be brought back.

She can make the ground slicker than ice—that blueblood trait in her—it's saved us before.

But now, she just sits. Holding her brother. Rocking gently.

"Come!" Jimmy shouts. But it's not me calling her.

I don't. I won't.

I won't drag her away from the only person she had left.

I vomit again. Less blood. More bile. My stomach's empty now.

"There is a green," I say. My voice flat. Cold. "Make this terrain as slippery as you can. If you don't want your brother's death to be in vain."

She doesn't answer.

But I know she hears me.

Caroline—loudest of us. Strongest in heart.

She won't come.

But she'll buy us time.

We leave her.

She stays.

I would've done the same. I wanted to. But I can't. Not yet.

I won't let my brother's death mean nothing.

Not one more breath in a blue chest while Ren lies in the earth.

I loosen my grip on Jimmy and Gene, walking ahead of them now. Alone.

The world narrows.

Everything is dark. The ground beneath my feet slick with blood and shit, rat bones and rot. Barely a meter wide. Claustrophobic. But it's all we have.

The threads are gone. My strength, fading.

My eyes are no longer red.

Just blue.

Only my breath keeps me moving. Shallow. Hollow.

I walk forward. Slowly. Toward Cham.

We reach him.

His face lights up—briefly—before twisting into horror.

Then it happens.

The scream.

Caroline.

Just one scream.

High. Ripping.

The kind that doesn't echo—it stays.

And we all know—we all know—that scream.

It is the scream of someone who has seen death, not just as concept, but as fact.

As final.

It is the scream of my brother.

The first of five hundred eighty-one.

The last breath before silence.

The silence that always comes after someone truly dies.

…

The shrilling silence after death. It's louder than the shots. A sound that drills into the eardrums and sinks deeper, into the marrow, the bones. It wraps itself around the spine and squeezes, silent but deafening, raw and merciless. It's the kind of silence that makes your blood feel heavier in your veins, the kind that makes your heartbeat the only sound left in the world.

I can hear it now—my heart—thudding faster and faster. With every beat, my lungs drag in air, shallow and useless. It's as if my body is desperately trying to cage my soul, to hold it in with nothing but blood and brittle bones. Pain crawls across my skin like tiny needles, pricking from the inside out. Sweat clings to my temples and drips from my jaw, lost to the rot-soaked ground.

Cham looks up at me.

His eyes are wide, trembling. Eyes that don't belong here—too young, too innocent. He's not meant for this world, not for this kind of death. I should never have brought him. It was selfish. But after I saw him trailing behind that shabby man, the one who looked at him like a possession, like a toy—I couldn't let it happen. I couldn't ignore it. Not when his eyes reminded me of Ren's.

That same innocence. That same fragile light.

Now his eyes burn red.

So do Gene's. So do the others'. But my red is gone. It faded with the last blood I gave. My glow is dimmed, cooled. Blue now. Like the sun after dusk. Blood overused.

And I, the one they call a deity—the one they believe in—I'm hollow.

A burden wrapped in myth.

"What shall we do, Eos?" Gene breathes into my ear, low and quiet, as if speaking any louder might break what's left of me.

I've always had a plan. Always. But now?

I look at Cham again, and his silhouette flickers. For a moment, it's not him I see—but Ren. Just Ren, standing in that same posture, staring up at me like I'm something more than I am. The image blurs, and I blink it away, squinting as if I can force reality to stay still.

Think, Elliot. Think. They don't call you Eos for nothing.

The sewer stretches ahead, a long, narrow corridor of filth and stone. A straight path for a few hundred meters, then it curves, then splits again. I try to trace the route in my mind, see it clearly—each bend, each alcove—but even as I think, my legs have already started moving. The others follow, wet boots slapping into sewage.

The green is behind us.

Fast. Inhuman.

The last one I faced had speed no red could match. Bullets didn't work. Skin like armor. Movements like nightmares. But I killed one.

Didn't I?

I remember its blood—how it gave it to me. How I drank it. How it healed me completely. And then how it exploded.

Why?

My skull pulses with pain. My vision warps. Images flash—pictures I don't recognize. Voices whisper in tangled tongues. My stomach turns, and I retch mid-run. Nothing comes out.

Too much blood.

The sound of running water mixes with our breath—flat, rapid, heavy. Gene is steady beside me. Cham stumbles but keeps pace—the sound of running multiplies.

The green is closer now.

Then Jimmy stops.

He grunts and lifts his revolver.

"For Eos!" he shouts.

Panic seizes my lungs.

"Don't!" I yell, spinning my head back, but it's too late.

He fires.

And the green steps into the flickering light.

It's paler than death. Faceless, but for a grin carved impossibly wide into its blank head. Its arms and legs are long—longer than they should be—its bones stretched and twisted, like a spider forced into human shape. Cruelty made flesh.

The memory of the last one burns into me. The grin. The emptiness.

This one is worse.

The gunshot fades into the dark. My mouth dries.

"Fucking run faster!" I shout, slamming my palm into Cham's back. He stumbles forward, eyes wide. Gene surges ahead of him, his heavy build clearing the path.

Cham picks up speed.

Now I lag behind.

The visions hit me again. The voice returns, buried deep in my bones.

'Golden Reaper.'

I whisper it without realizing. Just breath, escaping my lips as I move faster—faster than most humans ever could.

But not fast enough.

A scream.

High. Piercing.

One of Ren's.

Number 581.

Then nothing.

Just the silence again.

I didn't know Jimmy or the others for long. A week at most. But they followed me. Sacrificed for me. Believed I could be their salvation. Believed I was the one to bring meaning to this shattered world.

Maybe I led them to believe it.

Maybe I wanted to.

But I can't die here. Not in this pit. Not for a handful of names when the world above still suffocates under colored rule. Not while billions suffer. I must live.

And yet my hands tremble. My breath hitches.

I'm afraid.

Afraid of the green.

Afraid of what it will do to me. To us.

Cham's still running, revolver tight in his hands. Gene grips his too. But Cham can't fight. He's too weak. Gene's stronger—he can harden the blood in his body, shield his vitals—but he's no match for this thing.

None of us are.

The green could rip us apart with one swing.

And still, they run beside me. For me.

They believe.

The rest are gone.

The green took them. A monster like the ones that took Ren. My boots are soaked through. My toes curl, wet and cold, pressing against the walls of the leather. I glance back.

Darkness.

Movement.

The crackling sound of its limbs echoes against the sewer walls, sharp and rhythmic—like bones clicking together. Faster. Closer.

Then—

Splash.

A scream.

I slow down.

Its scream.

And mine.

It overpowers me. I fall. My legs give out, and I crash into the sludge.

It's on me before I can rise.

My body sinks. I scream.

Why?

Why did I do it?

Why for them?

They're not Ren.

I should've done this for him.

Not them.

Its jaw clamps onto my arm—not with teeth, but something worse. Gums. Suction. A mouth that drinks, that pulls, that feeds. My skin tears.

I scream louder as warmth splashes across my cheek. My own blood.

My vision flickers.

I try to vomit, while screams escape my mouth filled with agony, but nothing comes. My legs twitch. I kick. I twist. I aim for its limbs, for its core.

It doesn't move.

It's stronger than blue. Stronger than anything I've fought. And I'm a red. I'm nothing to it.

I scream again. My throat tears with it.

No tears fall.

Just pain.

I hear the crack of bone before I feel it. My shoulder splinters. Flesh peels back. More blood flows.

Explode. Just explode. Let me die with dignity.

But it doesn't stop.

It sucks harder. Like an infant at its mother's breast.

I curse under my breath. Not enough strength to shout it. My eyes shift. My vision distorts. The voice returns.

'Golden Reaper.'

I look to my right, my eyes flicker from pain.

My arm is gone.

Gone.

A limb torn from me. Separated.

And yet, they're still there.

Cham. Gene.

I see them. Standing. Watching.

I scream again. But they stay frozen.

I want to curse them.

But all I can do is scream—silent now, raw and dry.

It hurts.

It fucking hurts.

A phantom pain tingles through where my arm used to be. Warm. Cold. Both.

My breath shortens. Rapid. Shallow.

My eyes flicker again.

Explode. Please. I don't want to die.

I should've let them go ahead. Let them make the noble sacrifice. Why did I do it instead? I'm their god! I was supposed to live. For Ren.

"Golden Reaper," I whisper as I hear this crooked voice, a distant memory inside my head from all angles. It whispers.

Another scream—again crooked and twisted this time. Not mine. Familiar, and yet… not. A voice I almost know, stuck on my tongue, and it continues to scream from within. No whispers anymore.

My heart pounds once more.

Then fades.

Explode already. Please. I beg you!

A tear forms. The only one. It slips down my cheek as the scream dies.

Please!

My mouth is open. My limbs go slack. My fingers stop fighting. My legs stop twitching.

The green enjoys it.

I can hear it now. Its voice, thick and wet.

"Delicious."

My eyes find Cham and Gene one last time. Their faces are frozen in horror.

"You should have left," I whisper; however, they can't hear me.

Another pop. Wet and sharp.

Its mouth still pressed into the ruined stump of my shoulder, feeding greedily from my blood.

'Golden Reaper?' I hear it again, but this time, slow and distant.

My eyes start to close. Just barely. The edges rise, softening.

I see Ren.

A light at the end of the tunnel.

I smile.

Just a little.

Ren… I've missed you.

My final tear mixes with the sewage on the ground.

My eyes close.

And all I hear is the silence of death.

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