The cold night air stings against Nadia’s cheeks as she bolts into the alleyway, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Her boots hit the wet pavement once—twice—before she pushes off the ground entirely. With a single beat of her wings, she soars into the sky, leaving behind the suffocating streets of Vampire City. The wind tears through her hair as she ascends, her body weightless against the heavy grief pressing in on her chest. Tears streak her face, dissolving into the night. The scene at the restaurant replays over and over in her mind. The father being dragged away, the child wrenched from his mother’s arms, the way everyone else simply… ignored it entirely.
‘This is normal now,’ she thinks. Such a cruel and depressing thought, yet it’s not nearly fiction.
