The sirens pulled Ashe out of his silence.

  He sat hunched on the stairs, neck cramped, legs numb, listening—waiting—for some impossible sound. His parents’ footsteps. His mother’s voice. His father’s laugh. Anything that would prove this was just another nightmare.

  Instead, the wail of the sirens only confirmed what he already knew.

  The tears didn’t come back. There was nothing left in him to cry with; his emotions had been scraped raw, sanded dry. All that remained was a heavy numbness that radiated through his chest and down his limbs, like his whole body had gone to sleep.

  He pushed himself up from the floor one step at a time. Fingers found his walking stick. He moved through the house by habit, not thought, pulling a bag from his closet.

  Shirt. Pants. Charger. Toothbrush. Guild ID.

  He packed it all calmly, like he was getting ready for another training day and not walking away from everything he’d ever known.

  Then he slung the strap over his shoulder, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

  A shout cut through the heavy rain. “Freeze, hands up.”

  Ashe didn’t have time for this. He went still, then with a quick movement he grabbed his necklace and showed it. His guild necklace. For a second they wavered. “Your neighbours reported a disturbance.”

  Ashe nodded slowly. “My parents are dead.” The words came out dry, almost without emotion. “They came for me.”

  Before he could finish the thought, hands wrapped around him. His arms were yanked behind his back, cold metal biting at his wrists, and then a hard click as the cuffs locked into place. Great, he thought, as his walking stick clattered to the ground by his feet.

  “Can you get that? I can’t see,” Ashe said, nodding toward where it had fallen.

  As he felt the air shift and brush his knee, he considered it—just for a moment. He could bolt. Run. Use the chaos to slip away. But where would that leave him? No home, no parents, a blind kid on the run. It wasn’t a real option.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Before he knew it, they were guiding him headfirst into a car. The interior reeked faintly of old vomit, and the seat was lumpy at best, springs digging through the padding. Somehow, though, the sour stink made him feel cleaner; it covered the smell of blood that still clung to him, turning it into something distant, almost unreal.

  He let himself sink back into the seat, closed his eyes, and pushed the memories down as far as they would go.

  It must have been hours before they finally bandaged his face, questioned him, and left him alone again. The details of it all slid off him, a sideshow to the real horror of the night.

  He sat in an uncomfortable interrogation room. The place felt foreign, strange. All he wanted was to curl up in a ball and sleep, just for a second to forget what had happened. Instead he sat on a cold steel chair, arms resting on a plastic table in front of him.

  The door clicked, then swung open. He didn’t move. He just waited for more questions, more people who didn’t believe his version of the story.

  Instead, it was Amalia. Her voice was tight with concern. “What happened?”

  She crossed the room quickly; her hands trembled as they settled on his shoulder.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.

  She didn’t push, and he was grateful for that. “You’re out of here,” she said instead. “The injuries don’t match anything human.”

  Ashe nodded. He already knew that; he’d tried to tell them as much. It hadn’t mattered.

  “What was it?” Amalia asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ll find whatever it was.”

  He went through the motions as he collected his things and made his way outside. The streets hadn’t calmed; chaos still raged, horns blaring and people shouting. Even in the middle of the night, the cool air smelled different—sharper somehow—and that was the only way he could tell the time.

  They were close to the guildhall and walked in silence, Ashe just following the sound of Amalia’s steady, heavy breathing.

  The sliding doors opened as they approached, and the real chaos hit him. Whatever calm had been left inside the guild was gone. The words “Cross-species combat will now be allowed. Portals will now be the arena.” had clearly landed hard.

  He turned toward Amalia, a question on his lips that died before it made it out. He couldn’t be bothered to ask—but she answered anyway, as if she knew what he was about to say.

  “The scoreboards have expanded,” she said. “The sky’s lined with three lists now, each species’ hundred best warriors ranked.”

  She paused, choosing her next words. “On top of that, each kill of an opposing species earns us points and gives them the same amount in negatives. The guild thinks this is our chance to go on the offensive.”

  It made sense, in a way. But Ashe knew the others would be thinking the same thing. It sounded less like an opportunity and more like the start of a bloodbath everyone should be avoiding. His opinion didn’t matter, though. Neither did Amalia’s, not really. So he kept it to himself.

  He left her standing there, her voice still carrying orders to someone else, and dropped into one of the plastic chairs, his bag thudding to the floor beside him.

  It wasn’t his night, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to keep digging the hole any deeper.