"There was a hut that burned before the flames ever touched it. She too was gone, consumed before we even played our hand."
—Area 306 Hunt Coordinator
---
Deep within a stretch of forest owned by the magistrate but untouched by mercy, stood a frail structure ,little more than warped planks nailed together by desperation. It leaned with the weight of years, smelling of damp wood and old prayers. Around it, the trees closed in like the bars of a cage. This was no sanctuary by design; it was a hunting ground, where the marked released the unmarked for sport—season after season, blood after blood. Cameras hung high in the pines like blackened fruit, and somewhere beyond the treeline, drones whispered as they scanned.
It was never meant to be a home. Only a hiding place. Only to buy a little more time.
Tonight, that time had run out.
Through the murky twilight, the forest stirred. Insects scattered. Birds fled. Even the nocturnal creatures—the foxes, the owls—had grown silent, as though the very air warned them to leave. The sound of boots broke the hush: heavy, deliberate, relentless. Machinery hummed deeper in the woods, and the damp soil trembled under the slow approach of iron.
Inside, the door slammed. A woman stumbled in, thin frame quivering from panic and cold. Her clothes were torn from years of running and months of hiding; her breath came in ragged gasps. But her eyes—wild, hollowed by exhaustion—still burned with resolve. She had lived like this for three years, hunted like a feral thing ever since her husband was cut down on the island where they thought they would be safe. God had hidden her this long. Many times His hand had turned the hunters aside, sent their hounds astray, clouded their drones. But she knew this night would come—He had told her. If they ever found her, it would mean the price had come due.
She fell to her knees before her sons, clutching their faces with trembling hands.
"Run."
The word cracked from her lips like a dying ember flaring one last time. She turned to the older boy, gripping his cheeks tighter.
"Take your brother and run."
Abisha—eight years old, too young to bear such a command—tightened his arms around the limp bundle beside him. Yitzhak, pale and frail, blinked up at her, barely stirring under his ragged blanket. He looked more like a forgotten doll than a living child, his breaths shallow and uneven, his illness still gnawing at the edges of his small frame.
Their mother kissed Abisha's forehead, then Yitzhak's, her tears hot despite the chill.
"The Angel of the Lord will protect you," she whispered, voice breaking on the name.
Then, louder, firmer:
"Hide. Run when the angel instructs you. Do not come back. Do you understand? Do you hear me?"
Abisha's throat closed. His body wanted to stay. His heart wanted to fight. But he nodded—because she had prepared him for this night. Because he was neither big enough nor strong enough to stop what was coming. Because he remembered his father's blood on the rocks.
She brushed his hair aside, her fingers lingering as if to memorize him.
"You're the older brother," she murmured. "And you see how your brother is. Take care of him. That's what big brothers do, right?"
A rumble answered her from beyond the trees—dull, mechanical, growing nearer. It was the sound of machines breathing, of chimeric boots sinking into moss.
There was no more room for love or longing. Only action.
Abisha dragged the small mat aside, revealing loose planks and a hole beneath. He pulled Yitzhak after him, sliding into the tunnel carved for such a night—the tunnel his mother had told him was "just in case," though he had seen her weep after saying it.
Above them, the door creaked shut. Their mother straightened, turned to the holes in the roof, and raised her face to the cold sky.
"Lord God," she breathed, "You promised. Send Your angels. Hide my children. Guide them… please."
She thought of her husband then—how he had begged for one more chance to save Yitzhak, how his disobedience had brought the hunters swarming. She did not know if this was punishment or mercy, only that her time to stand had come.
The first wall came down in a roar of splinters as a drone tore through the trees, its claws raking bark like a predator marking territory. A figure followed—more beast than man, a hound of the Overseers, its flesh stitched with iron, breath steaming in the dark. Behind it marched soldiers: machines, cyborgs, human chimeras. Their armor was black, their machines groaning like distant thunder, red lights slicing through the mist.
They had followed her trail for weeks, perhaps months. And now they had found the end of it.
But in the woods, there was silence.
---
An angel—unseen, radiant—knelt beside the boys. His light pressed against the dark like a heartbeat.
"This way. Follow me. Do not turn back."
Abisha's eyes widened. He saw the glow in the tunnel ahead, soft and beckoning like dawn through the cracks of a prison. Yitzhak stirred faintly, but his gaze was clouded; perhaps he sensed warmth, but no more.
Each step erased their scent. Each breath was hidden from the hounds of death. The boards above groaned as the soldiers passed. Abisha held his brother's hand and moved, feeling the mud suck at his bare feet, the cold biting through his thin clothes.
---
Back at the hut, the soldiers pressed forward—until the fire came.
It erupted without spark or fuel, engulfing the walls before they could blink. Dry rot became a furnace, damp moss a wick. Within the blaze stood another angel, his wings like blades of dawn, his eyes like burning gold.
"You know not what you do," his voice thundered, though none could hear it. "But the blood of the King's child you sought—its curse will follow you all your days."
Their leader froze. His hand, halfway to his weapon, trembled. None of them saw the sword raised over them, nor the judgment that held them at bay. They only saw the flames consuming their prize and felt the chill of having been too late.
"Target confirmed," one chimera rasped, though his mechanical eye whirred uncertainly.
"Negative," said another, a machine voice over a human jaw. "Target no longer viable."
The cameras above flickered. The drones hissed static. Somewhere, a nobleman watching from afar slammed his cup to the floor, demanding answers that would not come.
---
Far from the fire, the children moved —guided and cloaked by the angel, they were untouched by any enemy.
By the time their mother's ashes cooled, the forest had already begun to forget her. But Heaven had not.
And neither had Abisha.
---
The forest kept its silence.
No one came to search. No one mourned. The boy who walked out of those trees carried its ghosts in his chest.
When dawn broke, the path behind him was gone—as though it had never existed. Only mud and mist remained.
---
The forest spat him out at the edge of civilization—a shanty town clinging to the bones of a forgotten road. Abisha walked until his legs gave out. Late evening bled into night, and Yitzhak lay limp in his arms, and his own breath ragged and torn.
Rain came pouring with the darkness and the cold, heavy, and unending. It drowned the streets and hammered his small frame until the world blurred in his eyes.
He did not know he had collapsed infront of a gate much less the name if their was one of the street he was lying on. He did not know who would open that gate or if anyone ever would.
He only knew the prayer that forced itself past cracked lips:
"God… please...please..help me."
As he passed out.