As the shadow's twisted form emerged, the shadows swirling around him like a cloak, Kairon felt a chill run down his spine. The air grew colder, the darkness seeming to coalesce into a living entity that threatened to consume them all.
All the while, two teens had been wandering alone into a plaza not very far off from where Kairon's group were, laughing as they danced through cracked stone corridors, sparks trailing their fingers — literal sparks, bright enough to destroy fleeting shadows on the broken walls.
"Did you see that thing's face?" The boy crowed, spinning a short, jagged blade of pure light in his hand. "It didn't even touch us!"
"That mecha-thing folded like paper," Alia giggled, flicking a trail of living flame between her fingers. "We're untouchable, Terran. Face it."
Behind them, the remains of a shadow-human-mecha hybrid lay twitching, its augmentations sparking in the dust.
"The others are cowards," Terran said smugly. "All scared of a little darkness."
Alia pressed close, her flame-glow painting them in hues of gold and crimson. "Let them cower," she whispered. "We have better ways to burn our time."
They pulled each other into the ruins' deeper folds lustfully, laughter bright, reckless, and hungry.
Neither noticed the shift in the air — the sudden thickening of the dust, the silence swallowing even their gasps.
Until it was too late.
A ripple passed over the stones like a breath inhaling. From the fissures overhead, something larger than light, larger than flame, larger than them, unfurled in silence.
A tendril snatched Alia mid-kiss, her shriek muffled by the black. Terran swung his blade in wild arcs, sparks flying — but no edge found purchase in the abyss that devoured sound and heat alike.
Their screams split the air, raw and terrible. From across the shattered plaza, Kairon flinched. Vess grabbed Ashei's hand without thinking. Ynara stiffened, fury and terror warring on her face. Vael muttered a prayer under his breath. Nyra cursed low and viciously, readying her hands for a fight she knew they couldn't win. Still, they would not take their eyes off the shadow creature before them.
Even the great shadow, rising above them like a tidal wave of bone and rot, paused — turning toward the dying echoes with grotesque eagerness.
Kairon didn't hesitate.
"MOVE!" he roared, his voice cutting through the paralysis strangling them.
They sprinted into the deeper ruins, not looking back as something vast and monstrous descended on the fallen lovers.
Behind them, the air curdled.
The ruins did not mourn.
The earth swallowed their footsteps as they ran. Every breath dragged hot, metallic air into burning lungs. Dust clung to their skin like ash from a dying fire — thick, suffocating, cloying. The shattered stones loomed overhead, twisted into monstrous shapes by time and ruin. Where once the arena had stood proud, its bones now jutted toward the broken sky like the ribs of some vast, long-dead beast.
They didn't stop running until their bodies gave out. Until breath became a shallow whisper, and each heartbeat sounded louder than the crumbling world around them.
Kairon stumbled first, half-catching himself against a tilted slab of rock. The others tumbled in behind him — Ynara clutching a stitch in her side, Vess gasping and pale, Vael dragging a bloodied leg, Ashei eerily steady, Nyra with her fists clenched so tight her knuckles were bloodless, and Tarek — pacing even now, as if trying to outrun the memories clawing at his heels.
The hollow they'd found was barely wide enough to fit them all — a half-collapsed niche between two fractured archways, littered with rubble and relic shards.
Safe, for now. Safe enough to pretend the screams still echoing behind them didn't exist.
Safe enough to pretend they hadn't heard the awful, wet snap of bone and the silencing of a voice that had once made even terror seem laughable.
Cael.
The name burned on Kairon's tongue, but he didn't speak it.
Couldn't.
For a time, there was nothing but the sound of breathing — harsh, ragged, desperate.
No one spoke. No one dared.
The dust settled slowly around them like a second skin, turning them into statues — frozen by exhaustion, fear, and the crushing weight of grief left unshed.
Kairon sank to his knees, pressing blood-slicked palms to the ground. The stone beneath him was warm. Alive in a way a stone should not be. Veins of faintly glowing blue light pulsed under the surface — slow, like a dying heartbeat. He closed his eyes against the sight. Against the sick realization that the ruins themselves were no longer just a place. They were predators.
And they were awake.
"You're bleeding," Vess whispered into the brittle silence.
Kairon opened his eyes to see her kneeling beside Ynara, who slumped against the far wall.
A dark line of blood ran down Ynara's arm, a thin but steady trickle.
Vess reached out with trembling fingers, but Ynara flinched away before contact was made.
"It's nothing," Ynara rasped, her voice raspy.
She ripped a strip from the hem of her torn tunic and wrapped it tightly around the wound, the fabric quickly soaking through with red.
Vess's hand hovered uselessly for a moment, then fell back to her lap.
Vael leaned against a cracked pillar, his head bowed low. His fingers tapped erratically against the stone — a twitching rhythm out of sync with the heavy, hollow stillness around them.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Pause.
Tap.
Kairon watched him for a moment, feeling a deep, cold knot form in his gut. Vael wasn't just tired. There was something unraveling behind his blank stare. Something worse than exhaustion.
Near the alcove's mouth, Ashei sat cross-legged, her posture unnervingly straight. Eyes closed, hands resting lightly on her knees, as if meditating. But her fingers moved almost imperceptibly, tracing invisible shapes into the dust. A language only she could read. Or perhaps a memory only she could remember. Kairon didn't know which would be worse.
Tarek paced tight circles just beyond Ashei, hands flexing open and closed like a man reaching for weapons he no longer had. His muttered curses bled into the thick air — angry, broken things not meant to be heard.
Kairon caught fragments all the same: "Dead because of them... blind leading the blind... idiots playing at survival..."
Every word was a stone thrown into the fragile pond of silence. Cracks spiderwebbed outward.
Kairon drew a shallow breath. It wasn't just the wounds and exhaustion. Something deeper coiled around them all — a thin, invisible noose tightening with every heartbeat.
Grief. Blame. Despair.
They had survived the arena. They had fled the shadows that devoured the lust-blinded teens. But survival came with a cost they hadn't yet named. And it was claiming them now, in silence. Finally, Kairon forced himself upright, ignoring the protests of his battered body.
"We can't stay here," he said, voice low, raw. The words barely cut through the heavy air. "We best move before the ruin finishes waking."
For a heartbeat, no one answered. Then Nyra laughed. A short, sharp, humorless bark of sound that made even Tarek pause in his pacing.
"Move?" she echoed, spinning to face Kairon fully. Her face was a battlefield — grief, fury, betrayal all warring for dominance. "Move where, Kairon?" Her voice cracked but she didn't care. "Deeper into the deathtrap? Toward whatever thing ripped Cael apart like a rag doll?"
Kairon's hands curled into fists at his sides. Somehow, he felt the guilt of being responsible for the deaths. "I'm not a god. I'm not a king. I'm a survivor. You want something better?"
Nyra took a step closer, the shadows of her abilities crackling off her like lightning. "You think surviving is enough?" she hissed. "You think running makes you a leader? You think surviving is enough? Cael survived right up until he didn't!"
She jabbed a finger into his chest, hard enough to make him stumble back a half-step.
"You — you have no powers, Kairon. You don't feel the ruin, they barely react to you. You don't hear the relics. You barely fought at all. What makes you think you can lead us anywhere but into another grave?"
The words struck deeper than any blow. Because they were true. Being the oldest didn't make him immune to errors. And because Kairon had thought them himself, in the dark corners of his mind he dared not voice them. He had nothing. No elemental surge. No relic resonance. No living weapon stitched into his flesh by the whispers of the past. Only blood and bone and a will that refused to break. Was it enough? He didn't know. But he straightened his shoulders all the same.
"I'm alive," he said. Quiet. Firm. "And so are you." He let the words settle. Let the silence stretch. "We move because standing here arguing doesn't change anything. It doesn't bring Cael back. It doesn't save us."
He looked at each of them in turn — Nyra's burning gaze, Tarek's sneer, Vess's wide, fearful eyes, Ashei's unreadable mask, Vael's broken stare, and Ynara's hollow grief.
"We move because it's that, or we die here. We move because that thing is still out there and I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to give up yet. I'm not going to stay here and find out what happens when it comes back. We won't survive like this. And I'm not giving up, not while there's still a chance, no matter how slim."
The ground beneath them rumbled — a deep, seismic growl. Dust rained down from the broken ceiling. Somewhere beyond the alcove, a sound like stone grinding on bone echoed through the ruins.
The ruins weren't sleeping anymore.