The rusted hinges of their apartment door groaned in protest as Kael pushed inside, each creak echoing through the cramped space like an accusation. His legs trembled beneath him, exhaustion weighing down his bones like lead. The familiar scent of mildew and stale air hit him, but underneath it lingered something else... something metallic that made his stomach clench.
'Just get through this. Don't let her see.'
"Kael?" Lyra's voice drifted from the corner where her makeshift bed occupied nearly a third of their single room. "You're back early."
He forced his shoulders straight, plastering on what he hoped passed for a grin. The mirror by the door caught his reflection for a split second—hollow cheeks, new lines around his eyes, hair that had somehow gained streaks of premature gray. Twenty-three years old and looking like he'd lived twice that.
"Yeah, well..." Kael shrugged, moving carefully to avoid the loose floorboard that always squeaked. "Turns out the Wastes weren't feeling particularly generous today. Figured I'd come home and bother my favorite sister instead."
"I'm your only sister, idiot." But Lyra smiled, the expression lighting up her pale, thin face. She pushed herself up against the wall, wincing slightly at the effort. "Besides, you look terrible. Did you sleep in a ditch again?"
'If only it were that simple.'
"Hey now, this is my natural rugged handsomeness you're insulting." Kael dropped onto the wooden crate that served as their only chair, grateful to take the weight off his unsteady legs. "What've you been up to? Please tell me you didn't try to fix the window again."
Lyra's eyes brightened, and she reached for a stack of papers beside her bed. "Actually, I finished something. Look."
The drawings she spread across her blanket made Kael's chest tighten. Detailed sketches of soaring towers and clean streets, of gardens he'd described from his rare glimpses of the Inner Ring. Places she'd never seen, would probably never see, rendered in careful pencil strokes.
"They're incredible, Ly." His voice came out rougher than intended. "Really. You've got Mom's talent."
She beamed at the comparison, then tilted her head, studying his face with those too-perceptive eyes. "Kael... you sure you're okay? You look different somehow."
'Observant little...'
"Different how? More devastatingly attractive?" He waggled his eyebrows, earning an eye roll. "Or are you just now noticing my natural glow of—"
Lyra's response cut off in a harsh coughing fit that shook her entire frame. She doubled over, one hand pressed to her mouth while the other clutched at her chest. The sound echoed off their thin walls, wet and rattling.
Kael moved toward her, but she waved him back, the coughing gradually subsiding. When she pulled her hand away, he caught the flash of red on the cloth she quickly pressed against her palm.
Blood.
More blood than there had been yesterday. Or the day before.
His empty stomach twisted into knots as the reality crashed over him—no medicine in his pack, no credits in his pocket, and his sister was getting worse.
'What the hell am I supposed to do now?'
The morning market buzzed with its usual desperate energy, vendors hawking their wares to anyone with enough credits to spare. Kael pushed through the crowd, the weight of his salvage bag dragging at his shoulder. Every step reminded him of yesterday's failures—the empty medicine bottle, Lyra's worsening cough, the blood she'd tried to hide.
'Come on, Tobias. Don't let me down today.'
The old merchant's stall sat wedged between a food vendor peddling questionable meat and a woman selling patched clothing. Tobias himself looked as weathered as the electronics he traded, his gray beard streaked with grease stains and his fingers perpetually stained black from handling circuitry.
"Kael, my boy!" Tobias called out, then paused, his rheumy eyes narrowing. "Though... you look like hell warmed over. Older somehow. Rough night?"
'Rough life, more like.'
Kael forced a grin and hefted his bag onto the counter. "Just the usual charm and vitality, old man. You know how it is."
But Tobias's expression remained troubled as Kael emptied his meager haul. Broken circuit boards, twisted metal fragments, a cracked display screen that might still have salvageable components. The same scraps he'd been bringing for months, gleaned from the safer zones where competition was fierce and pickings were slim.
Tobias poked at the pile with one gnarled finger, his frown deepening. "This is... not much, boy. Market's been tough lately."
"Tough how?" Kael's stomach sank as he watched the merchant's expression.
"Medicine prices doubled overnight. Supply shortages, they're saying." Tobias lowered his voice, glancing around the crowded stall. "Word is the transport convoys are having trouble getting through. Creatures are getting bolder near the walls."
The whispers started then, drifting from neighboring vendors like smoke. Increased patrols. Missing scavenger teams. Something big moving in the wasteland beyond the Middle Wall.
Kael's hands clenched. "What can this get me?"
Tobias weighed the scraps, his mechanical scale creaking under the pathetic load. After an eternity, he reached beneath his counter and produced a small glass vial filled with amber liquid.
"Cough suppressant. That's it."
"That's it?" Kael's voice cracked. "Tobias, I need antibiotics. My sister—"
"I know, boy. I know." The old merchant's eyes softened with genuine sympathy. "But this is what I can do. Antibiotics are going for ten times what they were last week. Even the black market dealers are asking for blood money."
Kael stared at the tiny vial, his reflection distorted in its amber surface. A few hours of relief for Lyra's cough. Nothing more.
'This won't save her.'
The crowd pressed around him, voices blending into a meaningless buzz as the weight of impossibility settled on his shoulders. Somewhere in the distance, the city's warning bells chimed the hour.
Time was running out.
The climb to the rooftop nearly killed them both.
Kael's legs trembled with each step, exhaustion from the day's failed scavenging run weighing him down like lead chains. Lyra clung to his back, her fevered breathing hot against his neck as he navigated the crumbling stairwell. The building's upper floors had been abandoned years ago, leaving only rust-stained walls and broken dreams.
'Should have stayed inside. Should have let her rest.'
But when Lyra had asked—*pleaded*—to see the stars one more time, something in her voice made refusal impossible.
The rooftop door groaned open, revealing Bastion's sprawling nightmare in all its diseased glory. Three concentric rings stretched before them like infected wounds: the Outer Ring's ramshackle tenements bleeding into the Middle Ring's industrial complexes, which gave way to the Inner Ring's gleaming towers that scraped the poisoned sky.
"There," Kael whispered, settling Lyra against the low concrete barrier. "Happy now?"
She smiled, that ghost of her former self flickering in the starlight. "Look at them, Kael. The gardens."
Following her gaze, Kael spotted the distant green spaces nestled between the Inner Ring's pristine structures. Even from here, miles away, they seemed to glow with impossible life.
"I've heard they have flowers there," Lyra continued, her voice barely audible over the city's mechanical heartbeat. "Real ones. Not the plastic decorations in the market."
"Maybe someday—"
"No." Her interruption cut through his hollow promise like a blade. "Don't."
Kael turned, studying his sister's profile against the amber glow of distant patrol lights. When had she gotten so thin? When had her eyes become so... knowing?
"I know we can't afford the medicine anymore," she said simply.
The words hit harder than any wasteland creature's claws. Kael's chest tightened, denials crowding his throat, but Lyra's steady gaze stopped them cold.
"The cough suppressant won't last long," she continued, matter-of-fact as discussing the weather. "And after that..."
"After that, I'll find another way." His voice sounded foreign, desperate. "There's always another way."
Lyra reached over, her fever-hot fingers closing around his wrist with surprising strength. "Promise me something."
'Here it comes.'
"Promise you won't do anything dangerous. Not for me." Her grip tightened. "Whatever schemes are rattling around in that stubborn head of yours, forget them."
Kael opened his mouth to lie, to give her the comfort she needed, but the words died unspoken. Lyra's eyes held too much understanding, too much acceptance of what they both knew was coming.
"I promise," he whispered instead, the lie tasting like ash.
She smiled then, genuine warmth breaking through her exhaustion. "Good."
Minutes passed in comfortable silence as patrol lights swept the walls like searching fingers. Gradually, Lyra's breathing deepened against his shoulder, her weight settling into sleep.
Kael stared out at the Inner Ring's impossible gardens, his sister's warmth the only real thing in a world of shadows.
'I'm sorry, Lyra. But some promises are meant to be broken.'
The cracked mirror hung askew on their apartment wall, its fractured surface reflecting a dozen versions of Kael's face. He stood before it in the dim pre-dawn light, studying the stranger staring back.
'When did that happen?'
New lines carved paths around his eyes, deeper than they'd been three days ago. His hair, once uniformly dark, now bore streaks of premature gray at the temples. The changes were subtle but undeniable—the face of a man who'd aged years in a single afternoon.
Two, maybe three years stolen in exchange for Mira's life. The math was brutal in its simplicity.
Behind him, Lyra stirred in her sleep, a wet cough rattling her chest. The sound made Kael turn, abandoning his reflection for something infinitely more important.
She lay curled beneath their threadbare blanket, fever-flushed and fragile. But it was what surrounded her that made his breath catch.
Red threads.
Gossamer-thin strands of crimson light wound around her form like a spider's web, pulsing in rhythm with her labored breathing. They were faint—barely visible unless he concentrated—but unmistakably there.
'The same threads I cut from Mira.'
His fingers twitched involuntarily. It would be so easy. A simple gesture, and Lyra's illness would vanish like smoke. No more coughing fits that left blood on her lips. No more watching her waste away while he counted their dwindling coins.
But her words echoed in his memory: *Promise you won't do anything dangerous.*
Kael's hand fell to his side. The threads continued their deadly dance, weaving tighter with each passing moment.
'Some promises are worth keeping.'
Moving quietly, he retrieved a battered notebook from beneath a loose floorboard—his secret documentation of the impossible. The pages chronicled every detail he could remember: the sensation of cutting through fate itself, the cost extracted from his own life force, the terrible clarity that came with wielding power over death.
His pen scratched across paper in the darkness:
*Day 3: The aging appears permanent. Estimated loss: 2-3 years. The threads around Lyra grow stronger nightly. Without intervention, perhaps two weeks remain.*
He paused, ink bleeding into the cheap paper.
*I can save her. The question is whether I'll survive long enough to matter.*
Lyra coughed again, more violently this time. Blood speckled her lips in the pale light filtering through their single window. The red threads pulsed brighter, as if feeding on her deterioration.
Kael closed the journal and returned it to its hiding place. His reflection caught his eye again—older, wearier, but resolute.
'Control. That's what I need.'
If he was going to save his sister without destroying himself, he needed to understand his power. Master it instead of letting it master him.
The first rays of dawn crept across the Outer Ring's broken skyline. Somewhere in the distance, the morning work bells began their harsh summons.
Time to begin.