Sleep didn't come easy. Aubrey lay on the worn couch in his cramped apartment, staring at the ceiling as the city's glow bled through the blinds. His body ached, but it wasn't the pain keeping him awake. It was her voice.
You're not the only one burning.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her — that hooded figure with eyes too calm for someone who had just walked away from fire and chaos. She'd been watching him. Waiting. Testing. And the choice she left him with — save or chase — gnawed at him.
He hadn't chased. He'd saved. And maybe that was exactly what she wanted to see.
A sharp knock rattled his door.
Aubrey sat up fast, hand already sparking faintly red. Nobody knocked at this hour. Not unless they were desperate… or dangerous.
The knock came again. Three raps, deliberate.
He moved carefully, silent, until he was just beside the door. "Who is it?"
"Someone who owes you thanks," came a muffled reply.
The voice — a woman's, shaking but determined. The mother from the fire.
Aubrey hesitated, then opened the door a crack. She stood there, soot still streaked across her face, her kids clutching her coat. Their eyes widened at the sight of him, but there was no fear this time. Only gratitude.
"I don't know what you are," she whispered. "But you saved us. And they'll come for you because of it."
Aubrey frowned. "Who?"
She glanced nervously down the hall, then pressed something into his hand — a folded scrap of paper, edges burned. "Keep moving. Don't stay in one place. They don't forgive debts."
Before he could stop her, she was gone, hurrying down the stairs with her children.
Aubrey unfolded the paper. A single symbol was scrawled across it in black ink — a circle with jagged lines cutting through it, like a sun cracked in half. He didn't recognize it. But his blood did.
The veins in his arms pulsed crimson, burning hotter the longer he looked.
He shoved the paper into his pocket and stepped back inside, heart hammering.
That was when he noticed it — on the window.
A mark. The same cracked sun symbol, etched faintly into the glass as though burned there by unseen hands.
And for the first time, Aubrey realized: the watchers weren't just following him. They were marking him.