The first sign was the silence.
No market shouts. No scavenger squabbles. Not even the screech of rusted carts on cracked streets. Just a hush, like the city had stopped breathing.
Kael crouched beside Ryn beneath the old piping beneath Sector Nine's waste channels. Their ears pricked. They'd been scavenging for wire when Mira's whisper, relayed through their comm patch, hissed into their ears.
"They're coming. Enforcers. Black Protocol."
Kael's heart thudded.
Not just patrols. Purge squads.
They peeked from the grate. Above, shadows moved in perfect formation—Enforcers in obsidian armor, their visors glowing faint red. No idle chatter, no swagger. These weren't the street enforcers who could be dodged or bribed.
These were death incarnate.
Kael grabbed Ryn's wrist. "We go. Now."
They scrambled through the tunnels, twisting through decades-old storm drains and forgotten shafts. Ash filtered down like snow. Kael's lungs burned, but the pounding in their chest was louder than the sirens now sounding above.
Too fast. They came too fast.
They emerged behind a collapsed train car, smoke curling up from nearby rooftops. Someone had already tried to resist. A scavenger's hut smoldered, torn apart by pulse grenades. Kael saw a charred book—a children's primer, maybe?—half buried in the soot.
Ryn cursed, low and shaking. "They're burning everything."
Kael didn't reply. Their mind was racing. Mira had warned this could happen—but they hadn't believed it would be now.
A drone buzzed overhead. The pair ducked into a drain culvert, Kael holding Ryn's mouth shut as the scanner swept past, emitting a low hum.
Then—boom—a blast echoed blocks away.
They flinched. Screams followed.
Kael pulled the pendant from beneath their shirt. The one that had pulsed when they first opened the book that spoke. It was faintly warm again.
The Library was calling.
"We need to get back to Mira," they whispered.
"She said to scatter—"
"She's in danger. And if the Enforcers reach the archives... it's over."
Ryn looked pale, but nodded.
They moved fast—cutting through side alleys, dodging searchlights and drone beams. Ashenfall was on fire. The Slag District burned in patches, buildings collapsing like paper.
They passed a dying man on the curb, coughing blood. An Enforcer baton lay nearby. Kael hesitated—but they couldn't stop.
At the edge of the district, near the bridge to the Library Ruins, they stopped short.
A barricade.
Enforcers.
Four of them. Heavily armed.
Kael cursed under their breath.
Ryn looked at them. "We're not getting past."
"We have to."
Then Kael saw it—a maintenance shaft behind the Enforcer outpost. An old vent they'd once used to escape a raid years ago.
It was risky. A tight crawl. One wrong move, and they'd be fried by motion detectors or trigger a collapse.
Kael turned to Ryn. "You trust me?"
Ryn's smirk was faint but brave. "Since you punched that butcher in Sector Four for trying to steal my boots."
They darted toward the shaft, sliding behind debris as the Enforcers moved. Timing was everything.
One breath.
Two.
Go.
They sprinted. Into the dark. Into the dust. Into danger.
Behind them, Ashenfall blazed like a dying star.