Lucian didn't slow as he passed beneath the rust-scored arch that marked the edge of the Shroud's reach and the beginning of the Obsidian Wastes.
The Shroud churned behind him like a dying beast, its grey tendrils writhing upward toward the bruised sky.
Lucian didn't look back, but he felt it. The weight in the air shifted. It did not become lighter, not safer, just… different. Less suffocating than the Shroud, more human in its ruin. A rot born of abandonment rather than magic.
Selene clung quietly to the crook of his arm. She was feather-light, frighteningly still, her small hands curled into fists against the fabric. Lucian had tried to hide her from the eyes that were gonna follow him through the Wastes.
He adjusted his grip on the throttle. His old magitech bike kept humming beneath them, low and silent.
Ahead, the Obsidian Wastes stretched like a half-collapsed lung, coughing dust and flickering magelights through streets choked with shadow.
Going through the main road was risky. So he swerved the bike towards an alley. But still eyes watched. The deep night did little to hide them from the staring people.
He wasn't alone. He never was in this place.
Here, at the outer edges of the Wastes, life limped on.
A half-lit marketplace flickered between rows of crumbling buildings. Dominion power lines, barely maintained, hummed with sputtering energy above them, casting uneven halos of light that seemed more like threats than comfort.
Somewhere beyond the decay, if he moved fast and careful enough, lay the one place that could offer them refuge.
Raine Ashford's clinic.
If Raine hadn't skipped town already.
"Don't think like that," Lucian told himself grimly.
Ash kicked up under his tires as he swerved through broken alleyways, weaving between skeletal lamp-posts that sputtered weakly against the dim. His senses were sharp, tuned to every whisper, every wrongness in the air.
The Umbral Blades would be coming.
He could feel it like a splinter just under the skin. They would have watched the Shroud.
They would have seen the ripple.
Known something, someone, had disturbed the shroud and it's creature's.
And Lucian had no illusions about their orders.
They wouldn't just want Selene dead.
They would want him dead too, to erase the evidence. Or erase the disloyalty. To clean the Dominion's ledger neat and bloodless.
"Should've walked away," he thought.
"Should've left the girl where she stood."
But even now, when he risked everything, when every rational part of him screamed to abandon the burden in his arms...
He tightened his grip on the throttle.
And he chose to run. It was too late to change his mind.
Lucian veered sharply down a collapsed tramline, heart pounding a steady rhythm in his ears.
Above them, the shattered overpasses and broken towers loomed like teeth.
People peered as he drove past them. Ghosts of the forgotten and runaways watched him from the gutters, from behind the broken windows. Gaunt men and women, both dangerous and submissive, dragged their vision along with the bike.
Selene stirred slightly against his chest, as if the city's grief whispered too loud for her to sleep.
Lucian pulled her tighter, shielding her face with his cloak further.
Not far now.
If he could make it past Siltwater Cross, the Blades wouldn't risk open pursuit. Too many old wards lingered there, and Raine's clinic sat buried just beyond.
But the Umbral Blades had other plans.
A shimmer flickered at the edge of his vision, movement in the derelict ruins.
Lucian cursed under his breath.
They were here.
Three dark figures emerged from the crumbling stonework, cloaked and masked, their blades flashing dull against the dusk.
Silent. Ruthless. Bound by the blood-oaths of the Dominion.
Lucian didn't slow.
Instead, he leaned forward, whispering into the bike's horned frame, the magelights along the handlebars pulsing once with his breath.
The bike answered, a sudden burst of speed, a jolt of raw energy surging into its battered bones.
The Blades lunged too late.
Steel clashed against empty air as Lucian and Selene shot past them. They were barely a whisper in the crumbling dark.
Selene flinched but made no sound.
Lucian's lips curled into a grim, humorless smile.
"Good girl."
But he wasn't foolish enough to believe he had lost them.
They would track him.
Follow the thread of his existence like hounds on a blood trail. Watchers are all over the place, and they wouldn't miss a thing.
He took the back ways, roads that barely existed anymore, paths known only to the forgotten and the damned
He wove between husks of broken trains, over canals long drained of water and filled with ash and dust.
Above, the smog began to thicken, a sign he was close to Siltwater Cross.
Closer to Raine.
Selene shifted again against his side, murmuring in her sleep. A wordless sound, a ghost of a breath.
Lucian's heart twisted.
He dared not comfort her, dared not stop.
The air behind him shivered again.
They were still following.
But the closer he drew to Siltwater, the more the air itself seemed to push back against them.
The ancient wards still buried under the Cross whispered protection. Not strong, but enough to slow their pursuit.
He just had to reach the clinic.
At last, tucked behind a broken wall of collapsed brick and rusted scaffolding, he saw it, a small iron door, half-concealed beneath dangling ivy and soot-stained cloth.
No signage. No lights.
Just a single, almost invisible rune etched into the corner, a ward of hidden welcome.
Lucian skidded the bike to a stop, tires biting into cracked concrete.
He dismounted, helping Selene, now awake, down on her feet.
Lucian rapped a sharp pattern on the iron door, three knocks, pause, two knocks.
There was a pause, and then movement from inside.
A muttered curse. A bottle being set down with too much force. A shuffle of bare feet against creaking floorboards.
Finally, the door cracked open, revealing Raine Ashford.
Barefoot. Shirt unbuttoned.
Hair a mess of dark waves that looked like he had lost a fight with his pillow and lost spectacularly.
And an expression of deep, unfiltered disappointment.
Raine Ashford had the look of a man who had given up on a great many things, sleep, sobriety, and possibly life itself, but had somehow kept going out of sheer spite.
Raine squinted. Then looked at Lucian. Then at the little girl standing beside him.
Then back at Lucian.
"…You realize this looks bad, right?"
Lucian exhaled sharply. "She needs food. And a bath."
Raine leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his mouth curving into something that wasn't quite a smirk.
"And here I was thinking you didn't do charity work."
Lucian's jaw ticked. "Just—take her in for the night."
Raine's dark eyes flickered back to Selene. She was still watching him. Not like a lost child. Not like a scared one. She just… watched. Her silver eyes gleamed faintly in the dim light.
Something about that made Raine's smirk fade. His voice was quieter when he spoke. "You sure about this, Lucian?"
Lucian hesitated.
Then nodded. "Yeah."
Raine sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Alright, kid. Let's get you warmed up."
Selene hesitated. And, for the first time, she looked uncertain.
Lucian crouched slightly, meeting her gaze.
"I'll be back."
Selene didn't speak. But she nodded. Then, without another word, she stepped inside.
Raine gave Lucian one last look—something between amusement and quiet understanding—before shutting the door.
And just like that, Lucian was alone again.
------
Raine's apartment was exactly what one would expect from a man who spent his days stitching people back together.
It was small but crowded, lived-in, filled with the scent of burnt herbs and metal. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with vials of things that shimmered strangely in the candlelight, glass syringes filled with unknown substances, and rolls of bandages stacked next to an old bottle of whiskey.
A surgical kit lay open on the counter, the metal tools glinting under the low glow of flickering magelights.
A faded, tattered couch sat in the corner, next to an ashtray overflowing with half-burned cigarettes.
And, somehow, despite the mess, everything had its place.
Raine sighed, rubbing a hand over his face before turning to Selene.
"Right," he muttered, stretching his back. "Bath first or food first?"
Selene didn't answer immediately.
Then, quietly, "Food."
Raine raised an eyebrow but didn't argue.
He moved through the space with effortless familiarity, lighting the small magitech stove, pulling a battered tin pot from a cabinet.
Within minutes, the scent of herbs and broth filled the air, replacing the stale scent of alcohol and old magic.
Selene sat on the edge of the worn-out couch, feet barely touching the floor, hands tucked in her sleeves.
She was watching him.
Again.
"Alright, kid, you can stop staring," Raine muttered as he stirred the soup.
Selene blinked.
"You're not scared," she said.
Raine snorted. "Of you?"
She nodded.
"Should I be?"
A pause.
Selene tilted her head slightly, as if weighing the answer.
"Most people are."
Raine glanced at her, brow raised.
"Yeah, well," he muttered, "most people are idiots."
Selene tilted her head the other way, considering that.
Then, softly, so quiet it almost wasn't there, she smiled.
Just for a second.
And Raine?
Raine pretended not to notice.
Instead, he ladled the soup into a chipped ceramic bowl and set it in front of her.
"Eat," he said. "Then we'll deal with the rest."
Selene wrapped her small fingers around the bowl, pulling it closer. She took a slow, careful sip, as if she wasn't used to hot food.
Raine watched her for a moment longer, then sighed.
He wasn't good with kids.
Didn't like them. Didn't trust them. They were messy, loud, fragile things.
But this one?
This one was different.
And Raine had the distinct, creeping feeling that whatever Lucian had dragged to his doorstep wasn't just a lost girl.
She was something else.
Something the world wasn't quite sure how to handle yet.