The sun finally touched my face again—
but the earth had stolen the sky, drowning it in flame, ash, and smoke.
I ran, or tried to. My legs felt like fragile clockwork, metal bones dragging through debris and fear. At some point, Heiwa had taken the lead, her hand gripping mine, pulling me forward as though the fire itself chased us.
The streets—once alive with vendors and laughter, the hum of morning prayer and the scent of grilled rice—were now charred bones of a city that had forgotten to breathe. Buildings burned like pyres, collapsing in silence behind veils of smoke.
"What the—" I tried to shout, but my voice broke instead.
We turned a corner. And there they were.
The bodies.
Men, women, children—all caught mid-flight, their faces twisted in unfinished screams. A doll lay beside a mother's open hand. My stomach turned, and I stumbled back, gagging on the smell of iron and burnt hair.
"Oh my God…" I whispered, though no god here would listen.
Heiwa stopped. Her eyes—calm, sharp, and somehow distant—met mine. She didn't flinch. Her hands trembled once before she spoke, voice steady as the edge of a blade.
"Dew of Serenity ."
A soft blue light coiled around her arm. She pressed her palm to my forehead before I could protest.
"What are you—" I began, but the panic never came. It dissolved—like frost in sunlight. A strange, cool serenity swept through me, numbing the horror until it became something I could bear.
"Better now?" she asked quietly, her hand still resting on me. "We should go."
I nodded weakly. "Yeah… I'm sorry."
"Don't look," she said. "Just keep moving."
We pressed on—through streets that groaned beneath their own ruin. Somewhere in the distance, gunfire crackled, and the deep thud of cannon fire answered. The railways hissed like wounded serpents, but even that sound seemed far away—like something from another life.
"We'll take the forest," Heiwa decided. "The tracks are done for."
I didn't argue. There was no room for reason—only motion. I thought we'd finally outrun it. The sound of our feet against wet earth almost felt human again.
The deeper we ran, the colder it became. The air felt wrong, thin and sharp nothing like the coming winter. The trees stood like black sentinels against the blood-red sky. For a moment, the silence almost seemed peaceful.
Almost.
Then Heiwa stopped. Her shoulders went rigid.
"We might have a problem," she whispered.
I froze. "What do you—"
"Ice Palm."
Her hand flashed up, a shimmering disk of frost spiraling from her palm—just in time to catch a bullet. The sound cracked through the silence like thunder on glass.
Someone was shooting at us.
My heart clawed at my ribs as I turned, trying to spot movement between the trees. Heiwa's eyes darted ahead, focused. There—a small clearing, and three figures waiting as if we'd wandered onto a stage already set.
Three figures waited in the clearing—a scene already staged. The hitwoman. The wounded professor. And the prisoner in chains—the Executioner.
They stood in perfect balance, three points in a triangle of tension. Watching. Measuring. Predators sharing a single shadow.
"No sudden movements," Heiwa murmured, tracing a sigil quick and precise across her palm—it glowed once before fading.
Seliregina tilted her head, her voice smooth but cold.
"Why would I be sent after you?" she asked the Professor. "If you were just going to tell me you now work for the same people who sent me?"
The Professor sighed, almost irritated. "I can make an educated guess what their plans were."
Her tone wasn't mocking—it was tired. Like someone too familiar with betrayal to still be surprised by it.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. The forest held its breath.
Then the Executioner sighed, lifting a stolen gun. "I don't have the time for this."
Before anyone could react, he fired.
The crack was sharp, final—the kind of sound that leaves silence limping behind it.
The Professor's eyes widened. She looked down at her hands, now painted red. Her lips parted in disbelief.
"What the… what was in that—"
Her voice broke off as she fell.
Silence swallowed everything—the forest, the fire, even the distant screams of the dying city.
The Executioner lowered his weapon, staring at it like it had spoken a truth too cruel to hear.
"I was a bit confused when you went on and on," he said softly to the fallen woman.
"All that talk of alliances, pacts with demons, high-born sponsors." He sighed. "Didn't know whether to kill you or walk away." "I did not get the joke."
He thought to himself eyes still on his weapon.
In the now quiet forest the wind whispered, it voice a chilling thing.
He glanced at Seliregina. "You're the reason I'm here. So, I thank you.
And I've taught you something—
a pact with a demon doesn't make a human bulletproof. Not if the demon decides you're useless." "and that is a punchline."
Heiwa's grip tightened around my hand. I could feel her pulse—steady, deliberate, waiting for the next move.
Seliregina's calm cracked at last with a smile. "That was my job—would you like I thank you?" she asked, voice thin with disbelief and venom.
He didn't answer immediately. His eyes lifted, meeting hers with a flat, empty stare. Then his voice came again, quiet and almost bored.
"Why should you? I'm sending you—and your partner—after him."
A gust of wind swept through the clearing, carrying the scent of ash and rot.
I stood frozen, pistol shaking in my hand. The world had narrowed to heartbeats and shadows. The smell of blood hung thick—metallic, heavy, too alive.
"They just killed a person…" I thought, but the words never made it out.
Heiwa didn't move. Her face was unreadable—not fear, not anger, just understanding.
As if this had always been the ending, and she'd already accepted it.
The Executioner holstered his gun. "The city's gone," he said quietly, almost to himself. "You should run while you still can. This place is done—black and white and ash."
Then he turned and walked away—back into the smoke, vanishing like a ghost too tired to haunt.
Seliregina lingered for a heartbeat longer, her gaze fixed on the fallen Professor. Her lips parted—maybe to curse him, maybe to pray—but no sound came. She simply turned and followed.
The clearing was empty again. Only the body remained—and the silence that followed it.
I was still looking at the strangers as they disappeared into the thicket like people that just had their fill with their play date and the both of us—ignored props.
Heiwa's hand slipped from mine. She took a slow breath and said quietly,
"Let's go before the next act starts." I followed her gaze to the now-dead Professor—blood on the grass, red on her green.
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak, my hands tightening in hers to stop the shivers.
As we ran, the forest thinned. The sky above us had no color left—just smoke, just ghosts.
And I realized something terrible. Something I hadn't been able to before.
We weren't fleeing the war anymore.
We were walking its veins.
Everything—sky, smoke, blood, bone—
had turned the same shade of gray.
Black and white and ash.