The bread had gone bad four weeks ago.
Now it was something else entirely—black, swollen, pulsing faintly in the corner of the cupboard like a dying god's heart. Garret hadn't touched it since it twitched.
He didn't sleep much. No one still alive in the Slag did anymore.
Sleep was for the hopeful.
Every time he shut his eyes, he heard the chewing. Not rats. Not dogs. Those were luxuries of the old world. This was deeper. Something in the walls. Something beneath.
Something famished.
And worst of all—it was patient.
---
He sat on the floor of their shack, spine pressed against the cold stove that hadn't held a flame since the last meal—which might've been a year ago, or yesterday. Time didn't feel relevant in the Slag anymore. It had better places to be.
It wasn't winter-cold. This was colder.
The kind of cold that clung to marrow and whispered, You were never alive to begin with.
Hunger had a climate, and it had drained every trace of warmth from his bones.
He'd wrapped Siege's old coat around himself—the one from when the boy was fourteen and thought himself invincible.
It barely fit anymore, but it still smelled like his son: steel, smoke, and dogged stubbornness.
He hadn't heard from Siege in weeks. Not since the inner city sealed its gates with that arrogant finality unique to people who think stone walls mean safety.
He regretted not moving to the inner city like Siege had asked. He had said it was too posh for him. That he was already too used to life in the Slag.
He regretted it so much.
No calls. No notes. No broken weapons flung through the barrier.
Just silence.
At first, he'd told himself Siege was safe. The academy was built to outlast gods, after all.
But then time began to pass without any positive change to their situation..
And gods burn just like people. They just take longer.
Now, all that remained of the Slag and outer city was a funeral ember flickering on the horizon, sulking like a wounded star.
---
The Slag was quiet.
Not dead. Listening.
Garret knew the difference. He'd lived through the Black Thirst, the Red Wastes, and the Day of Shattered Teeth when the Outer Dark broke into the Citadel and spilled monsters that wept fire and sang in backwards tongues.
But this? This was worse.
People didn't scream anymore. Screaming was a waste of calories.
They whispered. Moaned. Gnawed on cloth and their own fingers. Some didn't even move. Just sat in their doorways with blank eyes and prayers rotting in their mouths.
Waiting.
For what, Garret didn't know.
But it would come.
And it wouldn't rush.
---
He rose slowly, his joints groaning in rebellion.
He used to be strong. He'd built half the Citadel's spine with his bare hands. Now, he felt like a paper soaked in kerosene—waiting for the match.
He checked the door. Still barred with old Citadel steel and bolted wood. It wouldn't hold. Nothing did. But it might delay the inevitable by a breath.
He lived for borrowed breaths.
He shuffled into the back room—Siege had called it "the war room" once, like children pretending they were kings.
Now, just a hole with a cracked window and wind that howled like a mourning mother.
No birds. No vermin.
Just that gnawing again.
Closer now.
He pressed a hand to the wall.
It was warm.
No. Wet.
He pulled it back. A smear trailed his palm—red and slick threaded with something like veins.
The walls were weeping blood.
---
Garret sat on the edge of the old mattress, staring at his hands. They were shaking. Not from fear—fear had packed up and moved out weeks ago.
Hunger didn't leave space for fear. Just calculation.
He thought of Siege.
He wondered if the boy remembered the lullaby his mother used to hum. The one about the stars watching over them. Probably not. Siege had been too strong for lullaby's.
But maybe he remembered him.
That was his ember.
And embers, like men, flicker. Fade. Fail.
---
A knock.
Three taps.
Too precise to be wind. Too soft to be man.
Garret stood, reached for his makeshift spear—a rusted pipe bound with broken glass. It looked ridiculous. Felt worse. But it was something to hold.
He leaned in.
"Who is it?" he croaked.
Silence.
Then—
"I'm hungry," whispered a voice.
Not from the door.
From the wall.
Garret stepped back. The pipe trembled in his grip like it knew the ending already.
The voice came again—thinner, younger. Almost tender.
"I'm hungry, Mister Garret. Can I come in?"
He didn't know the voice. But it knew him.
His heart ticked in slow, uneven beats. Like a broken drum echoing down a dead hallway.
Then came more knocking—inside the walls, under the floor, above the ceiling.
Dozens of tiny fists.
Garret gripped the pipe even tighter and grimaced.
"Fine," he muttered. "Just bring wine. And maybe some cheese, if you monsters do dairy."
---
He ran.
Not through the front—never through the front.
He burst out the back window, crashing into a cold puddle of something half-slush, half-carcass. The scream caught in his throat but didn't come out. Screaming was too much effort these days.
The freezing cold fog smothered the alley. Thick, sour, and faintly pink like spoiled milk left out in the sun.
Shapes moved in it—bent ones, twitching ones.
Garret didn't look. Looking meant seeking trouble.
He ran.
His lungs heaved like dying bellows, but he ran—through alleyways that remembered his boots, across rooftops that forgot what weight was, past murals that bled when the rain came too hard.
The hunger didn't chase.
It didn't need to.
It just was.
Like gravity. Like rot. Like memory.
---
He collapsed in the hollowed remains of an old watchtower. His friend Marten had died here. The bloodstain was still married to the floor—dried, cracked, but faithful.
Garret curled into the corner.
Clutched the coat.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I thought if I stayed, you'd come back."
He waited—for sleep, or death, or the gentle forgetting that sometimes visited broken minds.
Instead—
A voice.
"Pa?"
His breath snagged.
It came from the coat.
Trembling, he turned the fabric over.
A mouth had opened along the seam.
Small. Toothless.
It whimpered,
"I'm so hungry."
And beyond the tower's shattered door—
A chorus answered.
Wet. Ragged.
Joyful.