Elliot's POV

"Fate is cruel, and still, it is the source that leads us to our destiny."

—Elliot Starfall

A sharp, ghostly pain spears through my right arm—what's left of it, anyway. It's gone, hacked off, burned away, but I feel phantom fingers twitching in the dark, clawing at nothing. I press my left palm hard against my knee, feeling the damp fabric of my trousers soaked with the foul brown water of the sewers, this fetid grave for anything that can't crawl out. My teeth grind against each other as I fight the twisting in my shoulder. My stump jerks uncontrollably, rolling from side to side like a demented marionette, the phantom pain so vivid I want to scream.

There's no blood. The wound sealed thanks to that monster's blood I drank. My curse. My gift. The torn fabric of my shirt sticks to the redness and greenish-black bruising around the scar. It's healed in a way that should take weeks. But I don't feel blessed. I feel like filth. Like rot. The only good thing in my mouth is a sickly sweet metallic aftertaste I can't stand. I spit it onto the floor.

My legs shake. I'm shivering under the sheer weight of it all, like a mountain pressing on my spine.

What would Ren do?

My brother is dead. They killed him. Those blue-blooded creatures that pretend to be people. That's why I'm here, shoes drenched in blood. The cold-looking blood, but being ironically warm, half a man, staring at the wreckage of what we are. I try to stand, but the world swims, so I grab the slimy wall to steady myself. I'm lost. No plan. No future. Just this endless city mist, cold as death. Wandering. Hunting. Killing them. Dying.

No long life for me.

I correct myself. No life at all. Sooner or later, the city will swallow me whole.

I wipe the cold sweat from my brow and stagger a step forward, my boot slipping in the gore that used to be a man. A young man. He might have been a brother. A son. Just like Ren. My jaw tenses. My heart roars with hate, but it's empty too—a cold, silent void. Is that eternity? Just this hollow stare?

I push the thought aside. I force myself to look at them. Gene stands over the woman, his hand curled into a fist. I still feel myself left in the sewage, in the void. Cham stares at the ground, feet shuffling, refusing to see. There's a child in the corner—no older than fourteen—trembling so violently I can hear the fabric of her dress rustling.

My teeth ache as I clench them. My left hand tightens on my knee so hard the fabric nearly tears. I want to vomit. I already did, too many times. My stomach burns from the acid and the blood I drank instead of real water, real food.

Gene's voice cuts through it. "Don't move!"

He roars it at the woman, and she jerks but doesn't try to flee. He punches her in the stomach. The child sobs, high and thin, the sound of an animal cornered.

I watch it all. I don't move to stop him. Why would I? I don't believe them. They beg for mercy, these creatures. They cry when the knife is at their own throat, but laugh when they hold it at yours. They'd kill a human child and call it sport. They'd enslave us, whip us until the flesh splits, sell us off like cattle. And yet now they weep?

I lick my teeth and feel the rough plaque on them. Disgusting. My body feels like it's dying, shuddering under me, and deep down I know: I am going to die. It's not a question of if, only when.

Gene keeps hitting her, aiming for her belly. Not the face, not the legs, not the arms. He's careful. Deliberate. She's pregnant—belly swollen, unmistakable even in the dim light. I see it. Cham sees it, and he wants to stop him. I can see it in the way his eyes flicker, the tremor in his fingers.

But I don't stop Gene, and neither does Cham in the end.

Cham still has some humanity left in him. That tiny flickering spark that Ren used to have. That I used to have. But my light went out. I feel the shudder in my lungs, the fracture in my world. Hope is dead, and so is mercy.

That child in the corner? That unborn thing in her belly? Sooner or later they'll be just like the father—enslavers, torturers, murderers of my kind. It's only a matter of time. I can't risk it. None of us can.

So, I let Gene do it.

I watch her crumple to the ground, her eyes rolling back, mouth slack. She doesn't even moan anymore—just dead weight. The only sound is her daughter's thin, piercing cry that breaks and chokes in her throat.

I glance at the man Gene killed earlier. Or what's left of him. His head is unrecognizable, caved in like a rotten melon. Blue blood pools beneath it. I remember his face just before: low, angry eyes, thick brows, thin lips sneering at us. It's all gone now.

I take in the room. A kitchen, a broken table in one corner, and chairs overturned. The walls are cracked but not ruined, curtains drawn tight against the outside world. No candlelight. It's almost dark outside now, the sky is a bruise of purplish black, dull magenta. Faint stars flicker overhead, or at least they did before we broke in.

The girl tries not to cry anymore. She huddles deeper into the corner, face streaked with tears and filth. I see her eyes dart to Cham. He can't look at her. He tries to, but his eyes slip away.

We took them as hostages. We needed supplies. Makeup to disguise ourselves as blue-blooded scum. Weapons. Food. Anything. We told the man of the house to go out and buy it. He's been gone more than half an hour. Almost an hour now.

Gene grows impatient. He kills the woman.

I feel sick. I'm barely standing. My legs are numb. The blood I drank should give me strength, but I'm spent, my body screaming for rest. I lean heavily against the wall, the rough surface scraping my arm.

Gene hits the woman again, even though she's limp. Her stomach is caved in, dark stains spreading. The girl in the corner sobs once, then clamps her hands over her mouth.

Cham shuffles his feet, looking for somewhere, anywhere else to put his gaze. He's too pure for this. Too human. Ren would have tried to stop it. But I can't. I won't. My mercy died with my brother.

I watch Gene's face as he hits her. He's not angry. He's not gleeful. He's focused. Efficient. Like he's killing a pig for meat. It's easier that way. Cleaner.

And then I hear it.

A sound outside. Heavy, lumbering. The door creaks.

I turn my head just as light cuts through the darkness. I see him—the man who left, the husband. The father. He bursts in like a bomb going off, clutching bags to his chest. His eyes haven't adjusted, he can't see properly. He's panting, sweat soaking through his shirt. His belly is round, fat from years of comfort while people like me had to suffer.

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He drops to his knees immediately, the bags falling from limp fingers. I see them tumble—food, soap, maybe tools, I don't care. He doesn't look up. He just collapses forward, pressing his head to the floor.

"Please…"

His voice breaks. It's raw, ragged. He sounds like someone dying of thirst in the desert. "Please, let my wife and child live!"

I hear his sobs catch in his throat. He sounds like the Golden Reaper from my visions, the voice I hear from time to time—a croaking death-rattle. But he's no reaper. Just a man.

I glance at Gene. He's walking toward the girl now. The mother is done, slumped in blood. The husband finally dares to lift his head, and when he does, he sees what we did.

His wife's belly is torn and punctured. Blue blood pools around her. There's so much of it that there's no chance she'd survive even with help. He wails when he sees it, an inhuman sound ripped straight from his gut.

He tries to crawl forward. Tries to reach her. His tears drip from his chin to the filthy floor.

Pathetic.

He did this. They all did. He reaped the rewards of selling people like me, of seeing us chained, of watching Ren die. And now he's too slow, too fat to save the only things he claims to love.

Gene doesn't hesitate. He reaches the girl, and she's frozen, eyes wide. She makes a tiny, pitiful sound, like a trapped mouse, but Gene doesn't say a word. He raises his fist and brings it down on her head.

Once. Twice. Three times.

He shows no mercy.

I see something in his eyes that I recognize in my own, and something I rarely see in others. He likes it. He's lost something precious, though I've never asked him what it was, but I know he has. And now Gene lets out a bitter laugh as the man with fingers like fat sausages stumbles back, trembling. He's grieving for what he lost, but even then, he turns away. No matter what they lose, they never want to die. They cling to their lives like the filth they are. And in answer to that pathetic tenacity, the urge of the reaper grows in Gene's heart. He lunges, punching the big, soft-bellied man in the ribs, cracking something inside. Gene refuses to grant him a quick death like the child before. Instead, he draws it out.

…

While Cham and I shower off the blood and filth, while we scrub the stink of sweat and fear from our skin, Gene is still with the man. We check the bastard's belongings, count what little coins he had, take anything useful. And Gene tortures him for a full hour before finally killing him. He's slow about it. Deliberate. He won't let the man scream too much. Doesn't want to attract anyone. But he makes sure every breath is agony before it's over. Only when he's satisfied does he come to clean himself, silent and sour and spitting flecks of blood into the drain.

Time feels so vivid.

Outside, the breeze of the cold town catches my hair, whipping it across my face. The day itself is a lie: hot, glaring, the sky lit by that blue sun like something out of a faerie tale. A sun that looks cold as ice but burns like fire. By nightfall it all reverses. The darkness swallows the glow, and the moon dominates the heavens, with real coldness. The kind that seeps into your bones and feasts on you from the inside.

I look up at the golden moon. It's so close it feels like it's going to crash down and annihilate us all, craters as big as the old colorless moon I remember from the nights with Ren only a month ago. I wouldn't mind if the world ended now, if every last one of these monsters was pulled with me into hell, I'd welcome it.

I exhale into nothing, watching the fog catch the light of the gas lamps in a swirling golden haze. At night, it isn't pitch-black, not really—there are streaks of dark violet across the sky. The stars burn through them, bright and indifferent. Too beautiful for a place like this. Too beautiful for eyes like mine. Or for the eyes of those monsters who sleep safe behind those sharp-peaked roofs, oblivious and dreaming of better days.

My gaze wanders across the stars. Some pulse and shimmer, others dim, but most remain cold and fixed. Ren would have found a way to understand them. He would have found a way to understand these creatures. He wouldn't have killed that child. And I—I wouldn't either.

Once.

But the world changes in a moment. A single loss and everything you were collapses into nothing. My morality snapped when Ren died. I should have stopped Gene. I should have restrained him, should have spat in his face and refused. But my brother is gone. With him, my world.

So I don't stop.

I will never stop. Not until every last one of them is dead. Men, women, children. No exceptions. A plague doesn't discriminate, neither will I. And maybe—maybe—there's another way. But I refuse to think about it. I want only revenge, and their deaths will suffice.

I lower my eyes to the wet asphalt, reflecting the glow of the gas lamps. They're set every dozen meters in perfect lines, making sure the street never truly goes dark. The fog curls around them, the light diffusing in ghostly halos. My boots thud softly with each step, Cham and Gene's footsteps matching my own, echoing through the empty street.

I'm a wandering soul. Drifting. Searching. But for what? There's something inside me, gnawing and hungry. I don't know what it is. In a fight, I want to drink blood, when I see their eyes, these monsters responsible for my loneliness, I want to kill them, watch the light leave their gaze. There's something more to it, too, but I can't name it.

Not yet.

"So, what now?" Gene grunts with a raw voice, spitting blue-tinged saliva onto the stones and adjusting his collar.

We've drunk more blood than water these past days. It isn't good for us. I know it. He knows it. I can feel the parasites, the worms, and maggots in my stomach. It is in our feces and vomit, but mostly in mine. Even now, I taste iron on my tongue, feel the heat spreading through my veins. It's a drug, worse than any I've ever known, even though I never took any. Moreover, I couldn't, I had to care for Ren after all.

Only Cham seems untouched. Or at least, he doesn't let it show. Maybe he doesn't feel the urge at all, or he's just stronger at resisting. He's small, quiet, but there's something hard in him. I glance at him, noting how his face is lowered, hidden under the shadow of his dark hair.

I reach out and pat his shoulder—both of us dressed now in formal clothing, faces caked in blue makeup to hide our true colors. It'll last the night and the next day, as long as we don't sweat too hard or get caught in the rain.

"Just follow me," I say, voice flat and cold. "And Gene, spit the rest of that shit out of your mouth."

Gene obeys without complaint. He doesn't even glance at me as he wipes his lips and hawks a wad of blood onto the street.

Ren would have hated what I've become. He'd have tried to talk me down, reason with me. But he's dead, and I'm all that's left. So I bear the pain, the agony in my ruined arm, and keep moving.

It hurts. Gods, it hurts so much I want to scream. The tears sting my eyes, and I have to bite down hard not to sob like a child. But I don't stop.

"Eos…" Cham's voice is small but clear, cutting through the night. His hand finds the stump of my missing arm. He looks at me with that same expression—sad, lost under the glow of the gas lamps and golden moon.

I shake him off, jaw clenching. I don't want his pity. For some reason, I have to keep going down this street. It's more than a choice. It's a compulsion. Like déjà vu that wraps around my throat.

My eyes go wide.

I know this place.

My pace quickens, not quite a run, but faster than a walk. I leave them behind, though they scramble to keep up.

I round a corner, taking in the rows of houses stretching off into the golden fog. Some have lit windows, one in particular spilling weak yellow light onto the street. I can hear voices. A man and a woman, and the tiny warble of a child. A family.

Gene shoots them a murderous look, his eyes glinting with rage at their laughter. He's starving for blood. I catch the smell of soup and cooked meat, and my stomach growls in answer. But I force myself to keep going.

Cham keeps his eyes on the ground, like Ren always did when he was thinking. It twists something in my gut.

My entire body begins to itch. Not the phantom pain I always feel on my missing side. This is something else. Deeper. As if my bones remember something my mind refuses to see.

I slow, scanning the stones beneath my feet, the cracked bricks of the buildings, the heavy fog that clings to the walls. The gas lamps barely push back the gloom, making the street seem even more unreal.

The itching spreads to my neck. Sweat beads on my forehead, dripping into my eyes.

And then—I see it.

I stop dead in my tracks. Cham bumps into me, his small frame glancing off my side. Pain flares in my arm, and I can't stifle a choked moan.

But I keep my eyes fixed forward past him.

It's the bar.

The same one, I—Aston was.

It's dark now, the sign gone or maybe just unlit. But the shape is the same. The cracked door. The warped windows. The memory hits me like a blade to the gut.

I've been here before.

I feel something in me lock into place, as if I've been following an unseen thread all this time. I know I have to go inside. I don't know why. I don't know what I'll find.

But I have to.

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