"He lied to me," Ira spits into the stillness of her apartment.
Her voice echoes off the cracked linoleum and stained drywall like something foreign—sharp-edged, animal.
"What a prick."
It's been seconds—moments—since he vanished. Since he revealed the truth like it was nothing, like it was just another odd fact about his magic world. A truth he had held behind his teeth while looking her in the eye.
And then—he left.
She doesn't know what enrages her more: the lie itself, or that he abandoned her again.
Her talons have continued to lengthen, inky black and razor-sharp, curving from her long fingertips. Her teeth have followed—stretching into menacing points that force her lips to part. Her eyes burn hot, glowing like deep red embers. And something stirs behind her shoulders—something she's never felt before—pressure, then pain, then the faintest tearing sensation, as if her body is remembering something ancient. The first prickle of wings, straining to break free.
The rage—the thing she's kept buried beneath grief and survival and grit—has finally overtaken her. And it feels good.
She gives in.
She rips the curtains from their hangers, shredding them into long, fluttering strips of fabric. Her sheets follow. Then her mattress—already worn to the coils—she tears it open at the seams, her talons slicing through fabric, foam, cotton stuffing.
She clears every surface of the room with her arms—dishes shatter, cups explode on impact with the floor.
She roars, her voice shaking the walls, with all the fury and betrayal surging through her bones. Arms outstretched, body shaking, she becomes the sound itself: guttural, animal, seismic.
When there's nothing left to destroy, she stands panting in the wreckage, heart pounding like a war drum. But she isn't finished. Her ring hums coldly against her skin, an anchor to a connection she no longer wants.
Without thinking, without stopping even to put on her shoes, she charges out into the street. The night greets her with cool, damp air. She doesn't grab her scooter. She doesn't need it. Her legs carry her like wildfire through the winding streets of Noctreign. The rage is adrenaline now, pure and wild. A single sprint is nothing. She could run through walls.
And she knows where she's going.
The forest.
The darkened tangle that rims the edges of the city like an old scar—massive, unknowable, and alive. The forest that has always whispered to her in some unknowable language. Not the ocean. Not now. The ocean reminds her too much of him—of deep blue eyes and flickering warmth, of stillness, of meaning.
No. She wants chaos. She wants the wild.
She wants to forget.
All of that hope. All of that dangerous, shimmering hope he'd sparked in her. All that soft possibility blooming in her chest, like maybe this time she wouldn't be alone. Maybe this time it would be different.
He'd taken it all in an instant.
The diner. The breakfast. The way he'd looked at her like she was real. The future she'd let herself see—just for a moment. Too soon, too much, she knew that. But she couldn't help it.
He'd made her feel that happiness was possible.
And look where that got her.
Nowhere.
Worse than nowhere. Because now she knew what she could lose. Now she knew what it felt like to be seen, held, chosen—and then abandoned anyway.
The wind howls past her as she runs, and she joins it in its song.
Kludde, Kludde, Kludde!
An image flashes, unbidden. A memory: her childhood bullies, circling her with wide eyes and twisted grins, chanting the monster's name when they saw her pointed ears and budding talons. That word—Kludde—ricochets through her mind like a curse. Like a prophecy.
She thought she'd buried it. She thought she'd left that part of herself behind.
But now? Now she feels it rising.
Let it rise.
She doesn't stop. Not when her bare feet ache. Not when her lungs burn. Not even when the city begins to fall away behind her and the shadowed edge of the forest rises to meet her like an open mouth.
Let it swallow her.
Let it take everything.
She disappears into the trees, her red eyes the last ember before the dark takes her.