The night swallowed him whole.

  Kael ran until his lungs burned, every breath scraping his throat raw with smoke and ash. Behind him, the orphanage collapsed in fire and ruin, its walls breaking like bones beneath the weight of the flames. Sparks leapt into the sky, higher than the towers of the city, higher than the moon itself—as if to announce the birth of a monster.

  His monster.

  He stumbled into the alleys at the city’s edge, clutching at his face. His left eye seared with agony, veins glowing like molten threads beneath the skin. Golden light flickered wildly, spilling through his fingers as if it meant to burn him from the inside.

  “Stop… please stop…” His voice cracked, desperate. He pressed harder against the eye, but the heat only deepened, splitting through his skull.

  And then—silence.

  The glow vanished, leaving only emptiness. Kael gasped, pulling his hand away. The world had shifted. He blinked once, twice. His right eye caught the faint lanterns burning against the far wall. But his left…

  Nothing.

  No shapes. No color. Just black.

  He staggered, nearly collapsing into the mud. His hand trembled as it brushed the ruined flesh around the socket. Swollen. Blistered. Hot.

  “No… no, no…” His voice shrank to a whisper.

  The Eye had burned itself hollow. His left vision was gone.

  A cold wind swept down the street, carrying the distant call of horns. Kael froze. At the far edge of the city, red banners unfurled beneath torchlight. Riders. Wardens of the High Council, their cloaks a river of blood in the night. They poured into the district, shouting orders, hunting.

  For him.

  Fear surged through Kael’s veins. He turned and fled into the twisting backstreets. His steps rang hard against the cobbles, each stride clumsy from exhaustion. With only one eye, the world tilted dangerously—corners rushed at him without warning, shadows lunged from nowhere. He clipped walls, tripped over gutters, slammed into doorframes. Still, he didn’t slow.

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  The city recoiled from him. Windows slammed shut at his passing. Dogs snarled from their chains. A drunkard cursed and hurled a bottle at the “cursed boy,” the shards scattering like teeth across the stones.

  Kael did not look back. He only ran.

  By the time he reached the outskirts, his chest was hollow, muscles trembling like drawn bowstrings. Beyond the gates stretched the wildlands: rolling fields drowned in shadow, the jagged line of the forest crouching at the horizon.

  The guards were gone, pulled to the fire. Only half-burnt torches marked their posts. Kael slipped through the gap, bare feet striking dirt.

  And suddenly—quiet.

  No horns. No screams. No collapsing beams.

  Only the whisper of grass in the wind and the faint rasp of crickets hidden in the dark.

  He dropped to his knees. His body shook with sobs, though no tears came. His eyes had burned dry in the fire.

  “I didn’t mean to…” His voice broke, thin as a child’s. “I didn’t mean to…”

  The words sank into emptiness.

  No one answered.

  Pain pulsed in his skull, a cruel reminder. He pressed a palm to his ruined eye and hissed as another lance of fire stabbed through his temple. His right eye, still normal, blinked against the night—while the left remained nothing but a dark pit.

  The air was sharp and cold. He drew his ragged tunic tight, but the cloth was little more than burnt scraps. Sparks had left blisters across his arms and neck. Each breath stung as if he were inhaling knives.

  Survive.

  The thought came like a whisper, raw and instinctive. Not from guilt. Not from the Eye. From something deeper. He couldn’t die here. Not yet.

  Kael forced himself upright. His legs trembled, his body screaming, but he moved. Away from the glow of the city. Toward the shadows of the forest.

  Branches reached like claws, scratching his arms. Roots curled beneath his feet, tripping him. Every sound—the hoot of an owl, the rustle of something unseen in the brush—tightened his chest. With half his sight gone, shadows multiplied. Each gap in vision birthed new shapes, beasts conjured by the dark.

  But he kept walking. He had no choice.

  At last his legs gave way. He collapsed beside a fallen log, chest heaving like a broken bellows. He lay still, staring through the branches at the sliver of moonlight above.

  His body cried for warmth, for rest, for safety. None came.

  The forest watched him with cold indifference. Vast. Unblinking.

  Memories clawed at him—faces of the children, the matron’s weary smile, laughter echoing in halls that no longer stood. He had wanted to protect them. He had only wanted the fear to end. But instead…

  Instead, he had destroyed everything.

  Hunger twisted his stomach, sharp and merciless. Smoke still coated his throat, each swallow tasting of ash. He pressed his forehead into the dirt, wishing he could disappear, sink deep enough to escape himself.

  But the whisper returned.

  Survive.

  Kael clenched his fists, nails carving crescents into his palms. He was weak. Broken. Half-blind. Yet he could still move. He forced himself upright again, swaying, dizzy. The forest loomed, vast and merciless—but somewhere within it might lie water, food, shelter.

  One step. Then another.

  Blood streaked his heels where stone and root had torn his feet. Scratches stung across his arms. Each gust of wind carried with it the phantom roar of fire. Yet he stumbled forward, deeper into the woods.

  Sometimes he thought he saw eyes gleaming in the branches. Yellow glints between the trees. Shifting figures at the edge of sight. Perhaps beasts. Perhaps tricks born from his fractured vision. He could not tell. The right eye saw clearly. The left gave him only void. Together they twisted the world into something cruel and unstable.

  Still, he went on.

  At last, dawn bled across the horizon, pale and cold, painting the trees in shades of ash. Kael collapsed once more, body too spent to rise.

  Alone in the wilderness, branded cursed by those he had once called family, half his sight gone, he had nothing.

  No

  thing but the fire smoldering deep within the Eye that had betrayed him.

  And the will to survive.