Lili stepped outside beside Cova, the evening air cool against the exposed skin she wasn’t used to showing. The base’s hallway spilled them into the open lot where the others waited, and immediately, she felt it—eyes of every head turned. Her stride didn’t falter, but her jaw tensed. “I will find a way to avenge this humiliation, Cova,” Lili muttered through clenched teeth.
Cova’s smirk was shameless. “You’re welcome.”
Outside, two cars waited beneath the silver light. Katika leaned casually against one, dressed in her electric-blue triko, arms crossed and expression unreadable. Luke stood near the second vehicle, sharp in black accented with crimson. Adam, brooding in a dark gray getup, had his arms crossed as well, eyes scanning Lili from head to toe without shame. Notori stood near the first car with Katika and Adam, in his familiar black jacket and pants.
Notori’s gaze found Lili as she stepped closer and then froze. For a brief moment, his expression cracked, surprise blooming across his face. His eyes swept over her, then darted away as if burned. He looked anywhere but at her, afraid she might misread his reaction, afraid she’d think he was just like the others while he spent too long earning her trust.
Cova gave Lili a sideways glance. “Still sure you don’t like the attention?”
Lili let out a sigh. “I’d rather be invisible.”
“You’re many things, Lili. Invisible will never be one of them.”
“Will you move faster?” Luke snapped, casting an impatient glare at Lili as she approached the car. “I’m eager to get this over with. Can’t stand your ugly face for any longer.”
Notori stepped forward. “Watch it.”
Katika turned her eyes on him. “Seriously? You sound like fucking lovers. That would explain why you didn’t end her the second you knew who she really was.”
Lili froze mid-step. The words cut, deeper than she expected. She felt the crack inside her chest stretch wider—hurt turning hot, turning violent. Her eyes shimmered black, then bled into red, that cursed color of her Gift and rage. She met Katika’s gaze. “What’s up with you clawing at Notori’s personal life again?” Lili stepped closer, her red eyes burning. “Jealous he’s not into spiteful hypocrites?”
Katika’s smirk faltered for half a second before returning sharper. But it was enough. Silence dropped between them. Notori looked away, jaw clenched. Adam whistled low under his breath. Cova lifted a brow, mildly impressed.
Lili turned and walked toward the second car without another word.
***
The moment they stepped out of the vehicles, the targets already loomed in the distance—dark silhouettes gnawing at the horizon.
“We’re following the plan?” Lili asked, her voice low and threaded with unease, eyes narrowed against the open stretch of night.
Notori glanced over his shoulder, flame already curling beneath his boots, lifting him inches from the ground. His smirk came too easily. “Yes, Lili. You and I strike first. Clear the way. The rest will catch up on foot.”
She blinked once, measuring him—wondering whether that confidence was trust… or calculation. Whether he believed in her strength, or simply wanted her far from the others when blood inevitably spilled.
Luke said nothing. He stood a few steps back, arms crossed, jaw locked, eyes sharp. A faint red shimmer pulsed beneath his skin.
Lili closed her eyes, drew a breath, and reached inward—past the ache lodged in her shoulders, past the old names stitched into her, past the whisper of a life she had burned and buried. Shadows stirred behind her, listening, gathering. Then, with a silent rupture, the ground loosened its hold, and she rose.
Fire and darkness split the night. Notori streaked toward the port in a living flame. Lili dove toward the storage facility, shadows swallowing her descent whole.
By the time Cova and Luke crossed the outer threshold, Lili’s shadows had already struck down the first guards, dropping them soundlessly into the dark.
Something clawed at the edge of Lili’s awareness, a pressure behind her eyes, a tightening that had nothing to do with danger and everything to do with recognition.
“Guys,” she said into the coms, breath tightening despite her control, “this doesn’t feel right. There should be more guards. This place was never this empty. Notori—how’s the port?”
A beat of static. Then, “It’s enough here,” Notori replied, calm but distant, attention already pulled elsewhere. “Manageable.”
“Inside,” Cova’s voice cut in. “We’re moving.”
Luke didn’t speak, but his gaze flicked toward Lili’s back as if daring her to admit this was a set up. His blood stirred, restless, suspicious.
She nodded once and moved deeper. The facility swallowed her.
Her footsteps made no sound, her breath dissolving into a new rhythm threading through the dark—a soft, mechanical pulse that did not belong.
Tick.
Her shadows tightened instinctively.
Tick.
Behind her, Luke felt it too. “I don’t like this,” he muttered, fingers curling as if readying for impact.
Tick.
“Wait—” Lili started—
The floor dissolved beneath her.
A shadow surged up from below, slamming into her with force. Lili vanished in a burst of dust and fracture as she was dragged down, pinned hard against broken stone. The impact tore the breath from her lungs. Tendrils wrapped her wrists, her throat, her spine—tight, intimate, familiar in a way that made her stomach twist.
Above her, the world dissolved into dust.
Cova and Luke staggered as the floor partially gave, coughing as debris and smoke swallowed their vision. They couldn’t see her—only feel the tremor, hear the echo of her body hitting far too hard below.
“Lili!” Cova shouted, dropping to a knee at the edge of the rupture.
Luke’s blood snapped violently to attention. “She’s under us,” he snarled, eyes searching through the choking haze.
Below, pinned in the dark, the voice came directly into Lili’s mind. Why are you fighting?
The certainty was suffocating. You already belong to us.
Her heart stuttered. For a second, surrender felt easy.
“No,” she rasped, fury and fear tearing through her veins. “Not again.”
“RETREAT!” she screamed into the coms, voice cracking raw as the ticking grew louder. “There’s a bomb—this is a trap!”
Above, Luke spun toward Cova, blood lashing instinctively around them.
“One of them is inside—one of the shadows—GO! NOW!” Lili screamed back from below, shadows thrashing violently against the thing holding her.
“We’re not leaving you!” Cova yelled, already scrambling closer to the edge—
“DON’T!” Lili roared, desperation shredding her voice. “I’ll catch up—GO!”
The ticking accelerated.
Luke swore viciously. He grabbed Cova’s arm, hauling her back as blood lashed outward, clearing falling debris. “We move,” he snapped, teeth bared. “Now!”
Below, Lili tore inward—past fear, past memory, past the whisper that promised belonging. Her shadows screamed with her rage, ripping outward in a violent backlash that felt like tearing flesh from bone.
The presence recoiled—wounded, confused.
She broke free and ran toward the gap in the walls, already forcing her shadows into the wings.
Above, Cova and Luke were already sprinting toward the exit.
The explosion tore the world open. Light devoured sound. Heat swallowed air. The warehouse erupted in the roar, hurling them into the dirt as fire and steel clawed at the sky. The ground convulsed. Smoke rose thick and choking, the facility reduced to a blazing ruins in the night.
Cova hit hard, rolling, coughing ash. Luke skidded beside her, blood sealing cuts torn open by flying debris.
They scrambled upright together.
Cova turned toward the inferno, terror ripping her open. “LILI!?” she screamed.
Luke stared into the fire, jaw clenched, blood humming violently beneath his skin—not with anger now, but with something like fear.
No answer came through the smoke.
Then—
“What the fuck just happened?!” Notori’s voice ripped through the coms, raw and unfiltered, stripped of command and calm alike.
Cova coughed hard, smoke scraping her throat as she forced air back into her lungs. “I—” Her voice broke immediately, shattered by the weight of it. “The bomb. It was—” Words failed her. She pushed herself upright on trembling arms, ash streaking her skin, dust clinging to her lashes until the world blurred at the edges.
But her mind locked onto a single name.
“No—no, no,” she whispered, already moving.
Her hand shook as she reached into the marrow of her power. The ground answered. Bones cracked and rose from scorched earth, skeletal soldiers clawing their way up through soot and ruin. “Search,” Cova ordered, her voice sharpening into something brittle and dangerous. “Search everything. Now.”
She staggered forward, every step a small act of defiance against the numbness creeping up her spine.
Her gaze snapped sideways.
Luke stood a few paces away, strangely too still. His posture was loose, casual, as if they hadn’t just outrun annihilation. As if the air didn’t still taste like burning metal.
“You don’t seem worried,” Cova snapped, anger clawing its way through fear. “Can you feel her? Can you sense anything?”
Luke shrugged. A small thing. A careless thing. “There’s… something,” he said, voice even, eyes unreadable. “Maybe. It’s fuzzy.”
“Seriously?!” Rage flared hot and sudden in her chest, eclipsing even the terror. “That’s all you’ve got after this?”
Before the argument could ignite further, the ground itself seemed to shift.
They both froze.
Just beyond the fractured stone, something was gathering. At first it looked like smoke—too thick, too dark. Shadows oozed from the cracks in the earth, drawn toward a single point. They coiled. Swelled. Folded inward.
And then—
It rose.
Breath caught in both their throats as the mass began to take shape, darkness sculpting itself into something achingly familiar. Limbs formed. Fingers curled. Shoulders rolled back. A head tilted upward, as if greeting the sky that had tried to kill her.
Then light flickered and the blackness peeled away.
Lili stood there pale and fragile. For a second, she looked like something newly born—eyes wide, unfocused, her expression distant and hollow, as if she were still deciding whether the world was worth staying in. Her arms lifted slowly, trembling, as though gravity itself were unfamiliar. A breath snagged painfully in her throat. Her knees buckled. And without a sound, she collapsed into the rubble, shadows scattering from her body.
“LILI!” Cova screamed, already running, her voice tearing apart as she closed the distance.
The coms crackled.
“What the hell was that?!” Katika’s voice cut in first, sharp and furious.
“I saw the blast from here!” Adam followed, breathless, stunned. “Was that the storage facility? What happened?!”
Then Notori. “Lili?” His voice came stripped bare, panic naked and unhidden. “What happened to Lili?! Tell me she made it out!”
Silence stretched again—thick with static, ash, and dread.
Then Luke spoke. “You wouldn’t believe a word I’d say anyway.” His tone was cool. Detached. Almost bored.
The channel went dead quiet.
The car arrived moments later, tires grinding against debris as it skidded to a halt, dust curling up around the wheels.
“Get her in,” Luke said shortly, already moving.
Cova didn’t answer—she was on her knees beside Lili, hands shaking as she slid an arm beneath her shoulders. Lili was too light. Her head lolled weakly against Cova’s chest, breath shallow but stubbornly there, a fragile thread refusing to snap.
Together, they hauled her into the back seat, movements frantic but careful, as if any wrong touch might scatter her to ash. The door slammed shut with a sound that felt far too final.
Luke climbed into the passenger seat without ceremony, voice flat as he keyed the coms. “We’re heading back to base.”
The engine snarled as the driver punched the accelerator, the car lurching forward, fleeing fire and ruin.
Only then did Cova notice it. The truth Luke thought he’d hidden. The faint tremor in his fingers as they clenched around the door handle. The rigid set of his shoulders. The way his eyes flicked once to the back seat.
Lili lay crumpled there like something dropped from a great height. Her skin was pale, her breathing shallow but steady. Shadows still clinging to her as if afraid to let go.
Cova swallowed hard, pressing her palm against Lili’s wrist, counting the fragile beats beneath her skin. One. Two. Still here.
Cova kept glancing back at Lili, her heart beating out of rhythm, her breath never quite settling. The image refused to loosen its grip—the way the black mass had crawled from the rubble, slow and deliberate, knitting itself into a body that should not have stood again. The way Lili had risen from it, half-formed, only to crumple moments later. That had unsettled her more than the blast.
The coms crackled. “We’re returning as well,” Notori’s voice cut through, stripped of its usual composure. There was something frayed beneath it now, something raw. “Already in the car. Is it really that hard to say whether Lili is alive?”
A breath passed.
Then Cova answered. “She’s… alive.” The word felt fragile on her tongue. “I don’t know how. She was at the center of it. Right inside the blast.”
Static swallowed the channel for a moment.
The rest of the drive passed in a silence. Even Luke sat rigid, eyes fixed forward as though the slightest glance backward might split something open again. His hands rested loosely on his knees, but Cova could see the tension buried there—the way his fingers flexed and stilled, flexed and stilled, as if his blood still hadn’t decided whether the danger was over.
Lili lay motionless, shadows clinging to her skin. They shimmered faintly along her arms, restless even in sleep, as though standing guard over something fragile and unfinished.
The base came into view.
That was when Lili screamed. She surged upright with a sharp gasp, hands clawing at her chest, her throat, her eyes wild and unfocused—still trapped somewhere between flame and darkness.
“Lili!” Cova twisted around immediately, gripping her shoulder. “Hey—hey. You’re safe. It’s over. You’re here.”
Lili’s breath tore through her lungs, jagged and frantic. Her gaze skidded around the car, panic flaring—until it caught on Cova’s face. Something steadied.
“I was—” Her voice broke, raw. “I thought I—”
“I know,” Cova whispered. “But you didn’t. You’re still here.”
The car rolled on, meters from the gate now.
It barely stopped before hands were already yanking the doors open.
Mike stood there, face drawn tight, eyes scanning the vehicle. Beside him, Margherita was already pulling on gloves.
“Can you walk?” Mike asked, voice strained.
Before anyone could answer, Lili moved.
She rose slowly from the back seat, swaying, one hand catching the doorframe as a soft sound escaped her—half breath, half pain. But she stood pale, shadows still flickering uncertainly around her. She looked less like someone who had survived and more like something that had been returned.
Margherita swore under her breath. “She should not be standing.”
“She is,” Cova said quietly, awe and dread tangled tight in her chest. “We saw her pull herself back together out of nothing.”
Mike said nothing. His eyes stayed on Lili, searching for a name that fit what he was seeing. He nodded once, slow and heavy, as if accepting something he did not yet understand.
Another car screeched in behind them.
Notori was out before it fully stopped, panic etched deep into his features. He moved straight for Lili, unchecked, unthinking.
“Wait—” Mike stepped forward.
“She needs medical attention,” Margherita snapped, intercepting him. “Now.”
Lili scowled, exhaustion sharpening her tone. “You shouldn’t care this much,” she muttered, eyes flicking to Notori. “I’m fine. I’m going to my room.”
“No, you’re not,” Margherita said. “You’re going to the medical wing. And if you argue again, I will strap you to a bed.”
Silence fell hard. Lili glared. Then exhaled, sharp and bitter. “Fine.”
She turned and started toward the building. Everyone watching could see it: the stiffness, the pallor, the tremor she couldn’t quite hide.
She was walking. But she was not whole…
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