The city's ruins still smoked from the night before. Aubrey moved through them like a ghost, every step crunching glass beneath his boots, every breath dragging in the bitter tang of burnt plastic and charred metal. The alleys he knew so well felt different now — not empty, but watched. The Bloodfire inside him burned low, not dormant but simmering, restless.
It had been hours since Lilith fell. Hours since the streets split open and molten veins turned the night into a furnace. But the silence that followed wasn't peace. It was pressure, like the city itself holding its breath.
He caught his reflection in a cracked shop window. Eyes ringed with shadows, faint crimson veins still threading across his forearms. He yanked his sleeves down, jaw tight. The fire inside him was a weapon, yes, but it was also a beacon. The kind of thing that would draw hunters.
And the hunters had already begun.
On the rooftops, shadows moved. He'd seen them twice since dawn — cloaked figures who didn't bother to hide the gleam of metal at their belts. They weren't Talons; the gang operated like rats, not hawks. No, these were different. Disciplined. Patient. Watching.
Aubrey tugged his hood lower and pushed deeper into the streets. He couldn't stay in one place, not now. Movement meant survival.
Yet movement carried him toward memory.
He passed the cracked façade of an old school building, its windows shattered, paint long faded. Once, he had watched kids his age filter in through its doors, laughing, carrying bags filled with notebooks and half-broken tablets. He had never gone inside. He'd been busy climbing rooftops, scrounging scraps, dodging debt-collectors and Talons.
But for the first time in years, he wondered what it might have been like. To sit in a classroom. To talk to someone his age without fists clenched, without fear in his chest. The thought was foreign, almost painful.
He shook it off. The city didn't allow "what ifs."
A crash broke the silence — metal against stone. Aubrey spun, Bloodfire sparking instinctively along his fingertips. A figure stumbled from a side alley, clutching their shoulder. A boy, no older than sixteen, face pale beneath a smear of dirt.
"Help," the boy rasped. Behind him, three Crimson Talons spilled from the shadows, knives gleaming, laughter cruel.
Aubrey didn't hesitate. He closed the distance in a blur, crimson fire bursting across his fists. The first Talon swung low with a blade; Aubrey caught his wrist, twisted, and slammed him into the wall. The second lunged; Aubrey's heel snapped up, catching him in the jaw with a crack that echoed down the street.
The third froze, eyes flicking from Aubrey's glowing veins to the unconscious bodies at his feet. Then he bolted, fear cutting faster than loyalty.
The boy sagged against the wall, eyes wide. "You… you're him. The one from last night."
Aubrey's pulse skipped. "You don't know what you saw."
"I saw fire," the boy whispered. "And the thing you killed… people are saying it wasn't the first."
Aubrey's chest tightened. Rumors already spreading — he'd known it was inevitable, but so soon? He crouched, gripping the boy's collar. "Forget it. Whatever you think you saw, it'll get you killed."
The boy swallowed hard, nodding fast. But Aubrey saw the spark in his eyes — curiosity, even awe. That spark was dangerous.
He released him with a shove. "Run. Don't look back."
The boy fled into the maze of alleys, footsteps fading. Aubrey exhaled slowly, flames receding into his skin. The Talons weren't his biggest problem anymore. It was the whispers.
And the whispers already had a name attached.
As he slipped deeper into the city, voices drifted from a cluster of street vendors huddled around a barrel fire. He lingered in the shadows, ears sharp.
"…swear I saw her, cloak pale as bone. Said her name was Selene."
"You're making that up. Nobody like that comes down here."
"I'm telling you, she asked about him. The fire-blooded one. Said she was looking."
A chill cut through Aubrey's chest sharper than any blade. The name was foreign, but it felt heavy, weighted. Selene. Whoever she was, she was already tied to him in the mouths of strangers.
He left before the vendors could notice his stare. But the name clung to him, repeating in his head like an echo: Selene.
Night stretched long. He found shelter in the gutted skeleton of an office tower, its roof open to the stars hidden by smog. He sat on the cracked floor, knees drawn up, the glow of his Bloodfire faint against the dark.
Sleep refused him. Every creak of the building, every whisper of wind through shattered glass, felt like breath on his neck. Watching. Waiting.
And somewhere in that silence, he heard it — faint, distant, but real. A woman's voice, carried on the wind like a thread of song.
"…Aubrey."
He jolted upright, heart pounding. No one was there. Just the dark, the city's hum. But the voice lingered in his skull, soft, certain.
He pressed his palms against his temples. "I'm losing it," he muttered. Yet the fire inside him pulsed in rhythm with the name. As if it knew something he didn't.
Selene.
The night grew colder, but Aubrey didn't move. He sat in the ruins, staring at the horizon where the city's towers stabbed at the sky. Something was shifting. The streets were no longer his alone.
And somewhere, someone was calling his name.