"MOMMY!" His little sister's scream split the hallway. She was crying hysterically, reasonable as it may be, "Help please help it hurts".
Hikari froze—didn't mean to, didn't even know what he'd done yet. Just heat, everywhere, chasing itself up the walls. Orange reflected in her eyes. Smoke poured under her door, but fire surrounded the entire building.
He heard his mother yelling, frantic footsteps, the scrape of something heavy. The air burned to breathe. The house, the world, shrinking—crackling, screaming, breaking.
He tried to run, to reach her. The doorknob blistered his palm. He stumbled back, coughing, eyes streaming. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry—" Over and over, but nobody could hear him now.
A shape pulled his mother away through the front door. He saw her face once, twisted with something worse than hate.
Only the cries behind the burning wood. Only the smell. Only the power still thrumming in his bones—answering a wish he never meant to speak.
"I never want to step foot in this house again. I just wanna live with my dad"
Chapter 1: Epilogue
Hunger had settled deep, an ache without edges. The feeling did little more than linger, quiet and insistent.
He hadn't eaten more than three or four times in the past seven days, half of it stolen. The rest scavenged—scraps pulled from bins seconds before the dogs.
But hunger wasn't the worst of it.
Hunger made people reckless. A sort of recklessness brought the wrong kind of attention.
He hadn't been out long, but he'd already learned what mattered; don't let your eyes linger, don't run, and don't stand out.
A ghost does not slink through the streets like prey. A ghost drifts. Moving around unseen.
But ghosts did not steal.
And ghosts did not shiver in the night, bare feet cracked from the cold.
He was not a ghost. No—if anything, he was more like a stray cat. Small. Skittish. Half-feral from malnutrition. Even in space, the boy seemed like he felt backed into a corner. A boy with those prerequisites—especially on his own—wasn't going to fit in the way he hoped.
He kept walking. No destination—just the instinct to keep moving. His eyes, dry and tired, wandered the city, if it could even be called that.
The Stray realized the night stripped any liveliness from the city. As soon as the sun set, doors were chained and vendor gates pulled shut. There was an unspoken fear that seemed to be obvious.
The lack of audience gave the streets a hollowed aura. A silence waiting to be filled.
The Stray's legs ached, his head felt light, and his ribs curled inward as if his body were trying to bind itself together. He stuck out like a sore thumb in a street where only dealers and junkies dared to be seen.
He'd known that long before the sun bled out behind the skyline, and the incoming night made him want to stop and rest. But the nights before had taught him—keep moving. Blending in was already hard enough with lime moss coating the street like snow, patchy where bare concrete broke through. Some of it crumbled underfoot. But the real problem was contrast, his torn mustard-yellow shirt lit him up against all that white. Even at night.
Rest made you an easy mark.
Someone had already tried to roll him once for the nothing he had. He hadn't made that mistake twice.
But the subtle shift of air behind him warned him he'd made a whole new mistake.
He turned.
"There you are."
The voice was closer than it should've been.
He had the look of someone used to getting what he wanted. He'd boasted broad shoulders, thick arms, a mouth caught somewhere between a smirk and a scar. He chewed something as he spoke, the crack of his teeth sharp against the hush of the street.
Another shadow moved beside him. Then another.
Three of them. Maybe four.
The Stray was counting—spacing, stride, the weight of the ground beneath him.
Above, the sky loomed in its final phase of night, deep red, almost black—like the embers of a dying fire, stained that way by the sea, just like everything else. It gave just enough light to measure the distance.
But what mattered now was what stood between him and the street.
And he had nowhere to go but back.
And backward wasn't a viable option.
The man exhaled sharply through his nose, shaking his head. "Took us a while to find you. Lotta people acted like they didn't see you." He cracked his knuckles. "Either way, here we are."
He began to chuckle, " you know being a tough guy has its consequences, right?"
The Stray shifted his weight, fingers brushing the handle of the rusted blade in his pocket. It wasn't much. It wasn't enough.
They moved first.
A fist drove into his ribs, folding him like he wasn't even worth the effort it took to break him. Before he could suck in a breath, another blow cracked against his temple, turning the world into a mess of noise and light.
Stray staggered. Someone caught the collar of his shirt, yanked him forward like a dog on a leash—then slammed him down.
Then came the boots.
Once. A sharp burst of pain in his side.
Twice. A crunch, something inside him giving way.
Again. And again.
His body caved in on itself, instincts screaming for him to curl up, to make himself smaller, to disappear—but they weren't done. A hand tangled in his hair, wrenching his head up, just long enough for a knuckle to split the corner of his mouth.
His vision swam. Black on the edges. Red in the center.
And then, the voice—flat, almost bored, like this was nothing new. Just routine. Just another body to leave behind.
"Should've stayed dead, kid."
The words barely registered. His mind slipped, dragging him back to the night that started all of this.
Not here.
Somewhere else.
That stink of liquor—he'd smelled it before.
Less than two days. That's all it had taken to find him again.
Stray hadn't let himself think about it. Buried it under exhaustion. Karma obviously had its own way of dragging things back.
He had felt these same fingers those days ago. A rough, drunken grip. A breath thick against his neck.
He hadn't screamed. He knew better than to scream.
Stray had reached for his only weapon—a rusted metal shard he'd found. Twisted fast and stabbed. He hadn't even aimed.
He recalled the whisper of rusted metal in his grip. No plan or hesitation. Focused purely on survival. The sound a blade had made when it sunk into something soft. The way blood steamed when it hit the cold pavement.
There was a loud, deafening, wince that was followed by a release.
He'd run. Never looked back. Never checked if the man lived. Didn't care.
By the time he'd stopped running, his hands had been shaking. Not even from the fear of what he may have just done. But right back to hunger.
A boot crashed into his ribs, ripping him out of the memory like a knife to the gut.
He gasped, something inside him straining against the force of it. Stray's body still attempting to fold inward, wanting to disappear into the cracks of the pavement.
But they weren't done yet.