It had been a while since he'd seen anyone—or heard from anyone, for that matter. So far, he hadn't come across a single one of his classmates.
Still, his ranking remained high. Somewhere around two hundred, at least.
Silas moved through the forest with quiet confidence, each step unhurried, deliberate. There was something about the woods that felt… familiar. Intimate. As if they recognized him—as if he belonged to them, and they to him.
He didn't just walk through the forest.
He lived in it.
And wherever he passed, flowers bloomed in his wake—petals unfolding as if drawn to his presence, as if he carried something divine in his blood. As if he left behind the trace of a golden touch.
He paused by the riverbank, crouching near a patch of clay. His fingers ran across the damp earth as he scanned the area for natural pigments—berries, bark, minerals—anything he could use in his next painting. Even now, in the middle of the Ember Games, his mind wandered to color, to texture, to the way the light hit the canopy above.
Then a shrill beep pierced the silence.
He glanced down at the tracker strapped to his wrist.
It had been only a few hours since the start of the Games.
And yet—
The rankings were shifting. Fast.
His brow furrowed as names began to vanish from the list. One after another. Disappearing, not dropping.
Not falling behind.
Erased.
He stood slowly, the forest still blooming around him.
But something was different.
A harsh squawk rang out above as birds burst from the trees, wings beating in frenzied panic. He turned, startled—just in time to notice the smaller animals that had been trailing him slipping away into the underbrush.
Gone.
As if the forest itself had… withdrawn.
As if something had shifted.
The peace had cracked.
And now, the woods were holding their breath.
The bushes rustled—then tore open as a figure stumbled through, collapsing onto the path ahead.
Silas froze.
The boy was covered in blood, caked with dirt, staggering forward as if by sheer instinct. His uniform was shredded, soaked red, and it took Silas a moment to recognize the face beneath the grime.
A classmate.
Or what was left of him.
The boy took another step, then another—until his knees buckled.
That's when Silas saw it.
His intestines were spilling out, trailing like ropes from the gash in his stomach. With trembling arms, the boy tried to shove them back in, fingers slick with gore.
His eyes met Silas's. Wide. Terrified.
"Run…" he croaked, blood bubbling at the edge of his lips.
"Run."
Then he collapsed.
Ah. His name was Julian. Or Jacob. Jack, maybe.
It didn't matter now. Not when his intestines were slick in his own hands. Not when his blood was pooling fast and hot in the soil like spilled wine.
Silas stepped forward, calm despite the gore. His gaze swept over the boy's body—clinical, composed—but beneath it, something sharp flickered in his eyes.He walked forward with the calm of someone who'd seen bodies before. Who had knelt in blood before. Who had learned long ago not to waste grief on things already breaking.
The injuries were worse than he'd imagined.
Deep lacerations carved across the abdomen, flesh split open, muscle exposed. The boy's intestines coiled between his hands like serpents. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and fast, soaking into the earth.
But healing was Silas's specialty.
His birthright.
He dropped to one knee beside the boy, one hand already glowing faintly as he pressed it gently to the torn flesh. His lips moved in low murmurs, steady, patient. Threads of golden light laced through the wound, desperately trying to weave muscle, seal arteries, slow the inevitable.
Then came the growl.
His ears twitched. They always did that. They heard things they shouldn't—the whispers of roots, the way breath caught in the throat of a deer three miles away, the slight shift of a rift before it tore open.His ears were far too sensitive—always had been—and they caught everything.
His ears were a curse.
And a gift.
He looked up.
The rift was bleeding.
The creatures that spilled out didn't walk—they crawled. Dragged. Twisted. They didn't look alive, but they moved like they'd tasted life before and wanted it again. No breath. No voice. Just claws. Bone. Hunger.
Low snarls. Wet dragging. The soft, sickening scrape of claws against moss.
They crawled from the rift like maggots from a rotted wound—limbs too long, too many joints, bone exposed and shimmering beneath layers of blackened hide. They didn't breathe. They didn't speak.
They just moved.
Silas didn't flinch.
His glowing hand left the boy's chest and drifted to the earth beside him. Fingers pressed into the soil. Something pulsed beneath his touch—slow, deep, like a second heartbeat.With whatever lived in the marrow of his bones, whatever trembled beneath his skin when the moon was too full or the trees leaned in too close.
The forest answered.
Vines uncurled from beneath the moss. Pale green tendrils slithered out of the underbrush, wrapping around his wrists and ankles like loyal serpents. Flowers bloomed again, but this time their petals gleamed with thorns.
Where his blood had soaked the ground, the grass had turned gold.
Behind him, the boy let out a weak gasp.
The bleeding had stopped.
But Silas didn't look away from the rift.
The first creature stepped fully into the world—part shadow, part bone. Its head twitched at an unnatural angle. It paused. Sniffed.
It had sensed warmth.
It had sensed life.
Still, the boy was Silas's priority.
He called to the forest—not with words, but with something older, deeper. A resonance that pulsed through root and leaf, bark and soil.
And the forest responded.
____
From above, the battlefield looked like something torn from a fever dream—fog curling through the trees, smoke rising in tendrils, the ground scorched in places, flooded in others. The rift still pulsed at the edge of the clearing, a jagged tear in reality that bled monsters like pus from an open wound.
And in the center of the chaos—
Three figures stood like opposing forces of nature.
One was cloaked in darkness , a silk blindfold covering his eyes monsters lunged—jagged limbs tearing through foliage, eyes gleaming like wet glass, mouths wide and dripping with rot.
They surged towards the boy first.
Ezra had thought that he would be the easiest to kill.
But the boy didn't even flinch.
His head tilted slightly, as if listening to the way the creatures moved. Then—without a word—a weapon appeared in his hand. Not summoned, not drawn, but manifested. A blade of shadow—sleek and curved, pulsing with darkness that shimmered like ink under moonlight.
He moved with terrifying stillness between each motion—like the eye of a storm, deceptive in its calm. His blade whispered through the air, slashing through monsters before they even fully emerged. Limbs fell. Heads rolled. He never hesitated. His blindfold fluttered slightly with each shift in the wind, but his strikes were always exact.
Below him, his shadow moved independently, growing longer, sharper, more violent. It coiled like a serpent, struck like a beast, impaling smaller creatures before they could reach him. When he turned, it turned faster. When he stilled, it hunted.
Ezra barely had time to process it before Nora charged forward.
The girl who never stopped talking—burned.
Her hands ignited first, a sudden bloom of heat sparking along her knuckles. Then the glow spread—up her arms, across her shoulders across , through the strands of her orange hair until it shimmered like wildfire.Her vitiligo shimmered beneath the flames like sacred maps burned onto skin.
Her claymore tore through the horde like a divine judgment, each swing cracking the air, leaving trails of fire in her wake. From above, her path was obvious—a spiral of scorched earth, her flames radiating outward, burning the vines, the roots, the twisted flesh of anything foolish enough to get close.
Nora ignited.
Her flames weren't delicate, nor elegant—they were destruction made manifest. Every strike from her claymore sent waves of heat rolling across the battlefield, her fire crackling along the edge of the blade as if the weapon itself could barely contain her wrath. She didn't wield her power with restraint.
She let it spill.
It scorched the roots. It ignited the sky. It tore through monster after monster with unrelenting ferocity. The air around her shimmered from the heat, the scent of ash thick and clinging.
When he saw her flames—wild, brilliant, all-consuming—he finally understood.
They weren't just different.
They were opposites cut from the same wound.
Hers burned to break the world apart.
His burned to keep it from falling.
Her flames screamed of ruin, wild and furious—his only ever whispered, desperate to save what was already falling apart.
They were different yet so alike .