Snowflakes danced outside the bus window, big and lazy. Runne pressed his forehead against the cold glass, watching them vanish the second they landed. A whole storm of them, but they couldn't even make a white blanket. It was a sad kind of snow.
In his lap, a small toy soldier stood guard. Runne's fingers traced the tiny, plastic helmet, worn smooth from countless journeys in his pocket. He imagined the soldier was his friend, and right now, they were on the most important mission ever.
From the seat in front, his little brother Kaelon started to squirm. "Are we there yet?" he whined, the sound muffled by the seat's fuzzy blue fabric. "I'm bored."
Their father's warm, low laugh rumbled through the bus. He reached over the seat and ruffled Kaelon's hair. "Almost, little wolf. Almost."
Their mother sat across the aisle, a small, peaceful smile on her face as she watched the grey world slide by. Runne thought she was the prettiest person in the world. She didn't have to say anything to make him feel safe; she just had to be there. He knew they were leaving the North because things were bad, because there were no more jobs for Dad. He didn't need to know more than that. The South would be better. It would be warm, and he and Kaelon could play outside without shivering.
Kaelon popped his head over the seat, his eyes bright. "Are you thinking about the new house?"
Runne nodded, a shy smile on his face. "And the sun."
His father chuckled again. "Always curious, my boy. Just be careful. You know what they say about curiosity and cats."
Runne knew the rhyme. He'd heard it a hundred times. But then his mother turned from the window. Her eyes seemed to hold a secret, something big and old.
"And yet," she said, her voice soft as the melting snow, "it is the one thing that can save us."
Her words were strange. They felt important, but they floated right over Runne's head, like a cloud he couldn't catch. He just looked at her, confused, until she gave him that gentle smile and turned back to the window.
The bus began to slow, the brakes letting out a long, tired hiss. Outside, a massive building of glass and steel grew larger and larger. Fortuna's Gambit Airport. The mission, Runne thought to his toy soldier, was about to begin.
The bus doors hissed open, and Runne followed his family into a building so big it felt like it had swallowed the sky. The air inside was weird. It smelled cold, like metal, but also like the popcorn stand he could see far away. And underneath it all was that other smell, the one from right before a big thunderstorm. It made the hairs on his arms feel fizzy.
Runne's father put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him and Kaelon close as they walked into a forest of grown-up legs. It was so noisy, but it was the wrong kind of noise. There were no kids laughing or shouting, only the rumble of suitcase wheels on the shiny floor and the low, worried hum of voices. Men in bright red coats were talking loudly, but they weren't smiling.
"Why is everyone so grumpy?" Kaelon whispered, sticking close to their mother's side.
"Just a busy day, little wolf," their father said, but his hand squeezed Runne's shoulder a little tighter. "Stay with me."
Runne's eyes scanned the giant room. Over by a thick pillar, he saw soldiers. They looked just like the toy in his pocket, but bigger, and real. They weren't smiling either. They held their big, black guns like they were boring, but their eyes weren't bored at all. They kept looking up at the ceiling, high, high up where all the lights were. Runne looked up too, but he couldn't see anything interesting. Just steel beams and wires.
He saw a man standing on a bench, talking to a small crowd. The man's face was shiny with sweat, and he kept pointing a shaky finger at the people watching him. Runne couldn't hear his words, but they must have been scary words, because some of the people listening looked like they were about to cry.
A bad feeling started to wiggle in Runne's stomach. It was the same feeling he got when he had a nightmare, the one where he was falling in the dark. He slipped his hand into his pocket, his fingers finding the familiar shape of his toy soldier. He was on a mission. He had to be brave.
Their gate, 12A, was just ahead. The line was full of quiet, tired people. Runne saw a little girl his age holding a pink bunny, her face buried in her mother's coat. No one looked excited to be getting on a plane.
"Almost there," their father said softly, nudging them forward. "Soon we'll be on our way."
Runne looked at his father's face, at his mother's, at Kaelon. He tried to take a picture of them in his head, to keep them safe there. The four of them, right here, about to start the next part of the mission.
A bright light on the ceiling above them blinked.
It went out, then came back on.
Then it went out for good.
The darkness was instant and absolute. It was a blanket thrown over the world, swallowing all light and sound in a single, silent gulp. Runne felt his father's hand vanish from his shoulder and his mother's warmth disappear from his side. For one terrible second, there was nothing.
"Dad?" Runne's voice was a tiny, trembling thing in the sudden, crushing silence.
Then the noise began.
"What's happening?" a woman shrieked from somewhere nearby. "Everybody stay calm!" a man bellowed, his voice already cracking with panic. A baby started to wail, a sharp, piercing cry that was quickly joined by others.
A low hum vibrated up from the polished floor, a deep, gut-rumbling thrum that made Runne's teeth ache. It wasn't a machine. It was the sound of something immense waking up. At the same time, a sickly green light began to bleed into the darkness from the high ceiling, not like a light being turned on, but like a wound opening in the sky.
It cast the terminal in a horrifying new light. The world was a sea of moving shadows and pale, terrified faces, mouths open in silent screams.
"Get down!"
Runne felt his father's body slam into his, pushing him to the ground and covering him completely. His mother did the same for Kaelon. A sound like a thousand tiny bells began to chime, a beautiful sound that was immediately followed by the crash and shatter of glass raining down from above. Shards pattered onto his father's back, a deadly rain that he was being completely shielded from.
"It's okay, Runne, I've got you," his father grunted, his voice tight with effort.
Through the gap under his father's arm, Runne saw it.
Against the pulsating green wound in the ceiling, a shape was descending. It wasn't a person. It was too long, too thin, its limbs moving with a slow, jointless grace that made the bad feeling in Runne's stomach twist into a knot of pure ice. It was a puppet made of shadows.
Then the eyes opened. Two points of burning, molten gold, searing through the gloom. They didn't look angry. They didn't look hungry. They just looked.
From across the terminal, a new voice cut through the chaos, sharp and crackling with static. A soldier. "Command, do you copy? We have a hostile entity in the main concourse! I repeat, a hostile entity… it's not—" The voice cut out into a sharp squeal of feedback.
The world seemed to tilt. The monster in the air, the screaming people, the soldier's lost voice—it was all too much. Runne's mind felt like a TV that had lost its signal, just static and noise. This wasn't real. It was a movie. A nightmare. He just had to wake up.
Then his father's hand grabbed his arm, the grip painfully tight, yanking him back into the terrifying, real world.
"Runne. Run."
The word was a gunshot. Run.
And they ran.
Runne's legs felt like they were filled with water, clumsy and weak. His father was practically dragging him, his hand a manacle around Runne's small wrist. The world was a streaking, incomprehensible blur of green light and screaming shadows. He could feel tears streaming down his face, hot against his cold skin, but he couldn't hear himself crying over the roar. A deep, guttural sound tore through the air, a noise that wasn't from a person or an animal, and the floor shook with the impact of something massive landing.
Runne's eyes were locked on his mother just ahead, her form a desperate silhouette against the chaos. She was clutching Kaelon's hand, pulling him along just as his father was pulling him. Just keep up, his mind screamed, just keep up with Mum.
A sound like thunder cracked right beside them. One of the huge concrete pillars supporting the ceiling buckled, collapsing inward in a cloud of dust and debris.
It happened so fast.
One moment his mother was there, her red scarf a streak of colour in the gloom. The next, she was on the ground, a crumpled shape by the base of the broken pillar.
His father stopped, the pull on Runne's wrist vanishing. "Elena!" he choked out, his voice a raw, broken thing. He stumbled forward, kneeling beside her, his hands hovering over her still form as if he could somehow put her back together.
Runne stood frozen, his weak legs finally giving out. He stared. His brain couldn't make sense of it. Mum just fell. She needs to get up. We have to run. He opened his mouth to tell her, but no sound came out.
Then a cold dread, worse than anything he had felt before, washed over him. Kaelon.
He had been right there, holding her hand.
Runne's head snapped to the spot beside his fallen mother. It was empty. He spun around, his heart pounding a sick, frantic rhythm against his ribs. "Kaelon?" he whispered.
He scanned the chaos. The running people, the falling debris, the terrifying green glow. Nothing. Kaelon was just… gone. Not in the crowd. Not on the floor. Gone.
Runne looked up, back at the monster. It hadn't moved. It was just hanging there in the green-lit air, its golden eyes fixed directly on him. Waiting. Watching.
The world tilted and began to spin in earnest. Everything was too loud and too quiet all at once. His father's ragged sobs, his own silent scream, the monster's terrible silence.
Strong hands grabbed him from behind, hoisting him off his feet.
"There's no time! Go!" a woman shouted, her voice rough with terror. She wasn't looking at him; she was looking at the monster. She began to run, dragging him along, his feet barely touching the ground.
Runne didn't fight. He couldn't speak. He was a doll. He looked back one last time, at the scene of his shattered life: his mother, unmoving on the ground; his father, a broken man kneeling in the wreckage; and the empty space where his brother should have been.
The woman pulled him through the smoke and the screams, away from the green light, until the sounds of destruction began to fade.
Until the only thing left in his world was the cold, hard shape of the toy soldier, clutched so tightly in his trembling hand that its plastic edges cut into his palm.
Runne didn't remember the woman letting go. He didn't remember leaving the terminal, or the cold night air, or the frantic climb up the boarding stairs.
He just... woke up.
His body was heavy, his limbs made of lead. A harsh fluorescent light hummed above him, and his ears were filled with the deep, droning roar of jet engines. He was in a plane seat, a scratchy blanket draped over him. His cheek was stuck to the cold plastic of the window.
For a moment, nothing. Just the hum and the light.
Then the memory crashed over him. The green glow. The falling pillar. His father's broken shout. The empty space where Kaelon had been.
He sat up with a gasp, his throat raw and aching. His arms were outstretched, his small hands reaching for a hug that would never come. Reality was a physical thing, a crushing weight that folded him in on himself. He curled into a tight ball in the seat, a wave of dry, heaving sobs shaking his small frame until his chest hurt.
He passed out, a brief, dreamless fall into darkness, only to wake again to the same hollow ache. The cabin was alive with the ghosts of conversation.
"… A beast," a man was saying somewhere in front. "It was a damn beast!"
"Shut up!" a woman snapped, her voice thin and hysterical.
"My children… oh god, my children…" A soldier walked down the aisle, his face a grim, unreadable mask. "Try to get some rest. We'll be on the ground soon."
The words were just sounds, washing over Runne without meaning. He stared at the toy soldier, which he'd somehow placed on the windowsill. Its chipped paint glinted in the cabin lights, a tiny, broken thing in a big, broken world. A silent reminder of the promise he'd failed to keep. Be brave. Protect your brother.
He failed the mission.
He drifted in and out of awareness for the rest of the flight. Each time he woke, it was to the same nightmare. His mum's red scarf. The golden eyes. His own empty, outstretched hands.
When the plane finally began its descent, Runne was wide awake. The hollow ache in his chest had cooled and hardened into something heavy and permanent, like a stone. Through the window, he saw a land that stretched on forever, a vast, alien expanse of white that swallowed the horizon in a frozen embrace.
This wasn't the warm, sunny place from the posters. This was just… more cold.