Chapter 22: Some Gifts Come with Fire
The sun never truly rose that morning. It hovered behind thick, unmoving clouds like a swollen bruise, pulsing dimly against the skyline. The air felt like it had absorbed too much from the night before — smoke, screams, the static buzz of collapsing silence — and now it hung there, heavy and motionless, as if the sky itself was holding its breath.
They were only halfway back to the apartment when the world reminded them it hadn't finished breaking.
Selene walked ahead, her strides calculated, boots striking pavement with muted precision. Her blade remained sheathed but ready, her fingers brushing the hilt every few steps. The tension in her spine hadn't eased since they left the bakery, and Aria could feel it humming between them like a live wire. She followed a few steps behind, both hands gripping salvaged bags of supplies. Her muscles ached with the kind of exhaustion that didn't come from running, or fighting, or sleeping on cold floors — it came from bracing herself for the next blow that never came. Her thoughts spun in loops, tangling between memories of last night's escape and the look Selene hadn't given her since.
She hadn't said a word since the crawlspace. Hadn't looked at her, not really. Aria wasn't sure which part of her silence hurt more.
Then the sound came.
It wasn't loud. Just wrong.
A metal drag, like claws scraping asphalt. Then a scream — fractured and raw, something between an animal cry and a dying radio signal. Both of them froze mid - step. Selene lifted one hand, motioned for stillness, but it was too late.
They spilled out from a building's collapsed entrance. Three figures, vaguely human in shape, but wrong in the way they moved — jerky, twitching, uncoordinated like broken marionettes. Their faces were fractured too. One had no eyes, just a gaping hollow beneath a browbone. The second's mouth hung open sideways. The third — Aria couldn't look. Her brain refused.
One of them lunged.
There was no time to run. No time to think.
Aria dropped the bags. Her fingers rose of their own accord, stretched out toward the thing barreling toward her like it could stop physics.
And then the air broke.
A golden - white rupture split the space between her and the creature, searing the world like a tear in reality. It wasn't clean. It didn't shimmer or glimmer like something sacred — it shrieked into existence, a raw-edged scream of matter collapsing inward. Wind and debris twisted into its pull. Glass shattered. Asphalt lifted. The metal bench beside her groaned, wrenched into the void like paper.
The creature — gone. Erased mid - lunge.
So was half the street.
Then everything went black.
Aria collapsed in a sprawl, blood pouring from her nose like a faucet had opened. Her limbs hit the ground gracelessly, eyes unfocused, skin pale and radiating heat. She didn't stir.
Selene moved before thought. She caught Aria mid - fall, her knees bending beneath the dead weight. Aria's body was burning — not warm, not feverish — radiating something thick, something alive. It wasn't just the heat of magic. It was the heat of awakening.
She adjusted her hold and lifted Aria fully off the pavement. Her arms screamed in protest, but she didn't let them shake.
The rupture in the air was still shrinking behind her, a jagged wound folding in on itself.
"She's evolving too fast," Selene murmured, though her voice held no real surprise. She'd known this might happen. Had feared it. The Aria she remembered before the fractures in their world, before things began sliding sideways — she had always been like this. Wild. Too much. She bent the laws of nature without asking permission.
Selene didn't have time to think about what it meant.
She didn't look back at the crater Aria had left behind. She didn't check if the others were gone. She didn't call for help.
She just walked.
Because what she carried wasn't a girl anymore. It was a weapon still learning its name.
The city around them was bleeding. Fires burned in three directions, sending up slow plumes of smoke that choked the horizon. Cars lay flipped. Windows were blown out. The only sounds were distant — sirens long past help, footsteps echoing from streets no one should be on. Somewhere people screamed. Somewhere else, people didn't anymore.
Selene made it to the apartment and didn't even flinch as she kicked in the warped door. Inside, the room was as they'd left it — bare mattress in the middle of the floor, blankets pulled tight, weapons by the windows.
She set Aria down gently, brushing damp strands of hair off her forehead. Her skin was soaked with blood and sweat. Her eyes fluttered but didn't open. Her hand twitched once — and the space above her palm flared again.
The glow this time was jagged. Alive. Gold and white, flickering with sharp edges like a glass heart beating in the wrong rhythm.
Selene reached forward, her hand hovering over the light. It didn't burn her, but the heat was undeniable. Pressure filled the room — temporal, electric, almost gravitational. It made the walls creak. Time slowed.
Selene pressed her palm into Aria's, steady and sure. "You did that," she whispered. "You did that all by yourself."
Her voice broke a little as the words left her mouth.
"Please… don't leave me again."
She didn't know if Aria could hear her. Maybe she couldn't. But Selene held her hand tighter, anchored them both to the mattress, to the ground, to this reality trying to spit them out.
"You're scared," she said, quieter now. "I know you are. So am I. But you're still here. That matters. That's real."
Another flicker of light flared. Aria's entire arm twitched, her jaw clenched. The pulse of power in her hand surged again — harder this time. Louder. Like something was screaming to be born.
Selene leaned in close, her voice steady.
"You don't have to control it yet. You just have to survive it."
She didn't know if Aria understood, but her fingers curled tighter around Selene's. Not much. But enough. Enough to make Selene breathe.
"You're not alone," she whispered again.
This wasn't a reassurance.
It was a tether.
Outside, wind screamed through shattered alleyways. The city buckled under its own weight, foundations unraveling one street at a time. But inside the room, the center held.
For now.
Aria's eyelids fluttered once, then again. Her gaze didn't fully sharpen, but she looked up. Looked at her.
Selene felt something shift — deep, subtle, electric. Not memory. Not recognition. Not yet. But weight. History without language. A thread too old to name.
Selene stayed close, forehead nearly touching Aria's.
"I've got you," she said.
Aria didn't answer.
But her grip didn't loosen.
And the golden fire in her palm quieted.
The room held its breath.
The city did not.
Because the first blood is always slow.
But fire comes next.
And some gifts are meant to burn.