The city was louder than she expected — and colder.
Amara pulled her thin shawl tighter as she wandered aimlessly through unfamiliar streets. People passed by in blurs, faces full of purpose while she had none. Her stomach had stopped growling hours ago. Now it just ached.
She hadn't eaten since the day she escaped. That night, she'd waited until the house was quiet, then climbed out the window and ran barefoot for hours. No one had followed. No one had even tried to stop her.
She was nothing to them — not even worth chasing.
Now, in a city full of strangers, she was just another shadow.
Amara curled up in the corner of an abandoned warehouse that night, her body trembling from hunger and cold. She thought she would die there.
Until they found her.
A boy with rough hands and wild eyes nudged her awake with the tip of his boot. "You alive?"
She blinked up at him, dazed.
Behind him stood two more. Teenagers, not much older than her. Dirty, but alert. Like wolves in human skin.
"You got a name?" the first one asked.
"...Amara," she whispered.
"You got family?"
She hesitated, then shook her head. She wasn't sure they still counted.
He nodded. "Then you belong to no one. That means you're free — for now."
They called themselves "The Hounds." A gang of small-time thieves and runaways surviving on scraps and stolen goods. They gave her food. A blanket. A place to sleep.
In return, they asked only one thing: loyalty.
"You want to eat?" the leader, Tayo, had said one night. "Then you ride with us."
She agreed. What other choice did she have?
Her first job was supposed to be simple.
They'd scoped out a quiet estate in the suburbs. Wealthy. Isolated. Easy to break into, Tayo said. Just in and out — grab what they could and vanish before dawn.
But nothing went as planned.
The house was bigger than expected. Someone had called security. Lights turned on. A gun was fired. Then another.
Amara had never heard screaming like that before.
She ran — blindly, her legs moving before her mind could catch up. She didn't stop until she was blocks away, lungs burning, shoes soaked with blood that wasn't hers.
She never looked back.
She heard the news the next day.
Three gang members were dead.
One was in a coma.
And the family they'd robbed... only one had survived — the daughter.
She was in critical condition. No name was released. Just a blurry photo of the house on the morning news and flashing headlines:
"Brutal Home Robbery Leaves Trail of Blood."
"Young Heiress Fights for Her Life After Violent Break-In."
Amara stared at the screen, her mouth dry.
That could've been her lying in that hospital bed. But it wasn't.
Instead, she was walking the streets again. Alone. Afraid. With blood on her hands and nowhere left to go.
End of Episode 2