The city had gone quiet. Too quiet.
Ash and smoke still clung to the streets, but the immediate chaos had faded. Fire crews rushed in, their sirens distant echoes. Aubrey pulled his hood low, slipping between shadows, avoiding the flashing lights. His body ached with every step, his veins still warm with fading fire.
He shouldn't have been alive. That thought kept circling, biting at the edge of his mind. He shouldn't have been standing. But he was.
The Watchers' words burned just as much as the fight had. The Bloodfire has chosen.
He didn't want to be chosen. He wanted answers.
Aubrey cut through the alleys, boots crunching glass and ash, when a voice stopped him.
"Hey—wait!"
He spun, fists half-clenched, heat sparking through his veins. But it wasn't a Watcher. It wasn't Varric. It wasn't another Ashborn.
It was her.
A girl, maybe his age—seventeen, eighteen. Short black hair tucked behind her ears, a backpack slung over one shoulder, a cracked phone in her hand. Her eyes locked on him, wide, unsettled, but not afraid. Not yet.
"You were up there," she said, nodding toward the ruined block behind them. "On the roof. With… that thing."
Aubrey froze. His pulse jumped. "You shouldn't be here."
She stepped closer anyway. "Neither should you. But you are."
Her words cut sharper than he expected. She wasn't trembling, wasn't backing away, wasn't calling for the cops swarming a few blocks down. She just stood there, steady, her gaze locked on him like she was daring him to admit the truth.
"What did you see?" he asked, voice low, cautious.
"Enough." Her eyes flickered down to his fists, where faint crimson veins still pulsed under the skin. "Enough to know you're not normal. And enough to know you didn't let that thing kill everyone."
The silence stretched between them. For once, Aubrey didn't know what to say. He'd lived so long as shadow, fighter, survivor—never seen, never known—that her words hit deeper than he expected.
Finally, she gave a half-shrug, like she'd already made peace with the madness of the night. "I'm Mara," she said. "And before you tell me to forget I saw anything… I can't. And I won't."
Aubrey clenched his jaw, but the fire in him didn't flare this time. It simmered, uncertain, tangled. He should've walked away. He should've disappeared back into the smoke. But something held him still.
Mara tilted her head, studying him. "Whoever you are… you're not alone in this. Not anymore."
Before Aubrey could respond, distant footsteps echoed from the alley behind them. Heavy. Too heavy.
Varric emerged from the shadows, weapon strapped across his back, eyes narrowing at the sight of Mara. "Who's this?" His tone was sharp, protective, but with an edge of suspicion Aubrey didn't like.
Mara straightened. "Someone who saw enough to know you two need help."
Varric snorted. "Or someone who's about to get both of us killed."
Aubrey's fists clenched, his chest tight. For the first time, the fight wasn't against a monster. It was against the impossible choice unfolding in front of him.
He met Mara's eyes again. There was no fear in them—only a strange, stubborn fire.
A different kind of fire.
And Aubrey realized, with a sudden weight in his chest, that this night had given
him more than Bloodfire. It had given him a crossroads.