The smoke hung heavy in the sky, its gray folds weighing down the earth. Crows hung pathetically in mid-air, their wings black against the drab light, bitter caws the sole lingering noise to disturb the quiet of the ruins.
Kael walked barefoot across the wreckage, the soles of his feet thickened by weeks of trudging through ash and stone. His stomach heaved against itself, rumbled so loudly it drowned out thought. He pressed one hand down on his stomach, as if to calm it, but the hunger only wailed more miserably. Hunger was now his best friend, steadier than memory, fiercer than grief.
He knelt where the bakery had stood. Its blackened stone oven gaped open, releasing a whiff of soot and something biting. Half-hidden in the wreckage, he found what seemed to be a loaf of bread, charred on the outside, but whole. His hands trembled as he pulled it out, the crust crumbling to dust in his hands.
He didn't think. He tore into it, through the grit in his teeth. Ash clung to his lips. Rancid was the taste, but his body welcomed it hungrily. Shame was nothing in such times as these. Only survival mattered.
"Oi!"
The bellow sliced through silence like a blade. Kael stood still, crumbs still on his lips.
A soldier stood outside the ruins, armor dented, cloak mud-streaked. On his breast was the red crest of the occupying kingdom, smeared and worn but unmistakable. His eyes were hard and cruel, the eyes of a man who had done the killing and come to like it. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword, ready.
"Hey, you," the soldier snarled, picking his way across a charred beam. "What are you doing here?"
Kael's throat closed. He swallowed. "I—just. bread. Please."
"Bread?" The man's laughter was rough and bitter. "Scavenging from the dead? Like a bird of prey?"
Kael moved back, clutching the half-loaf to his chest. "I didn't take. It was abandoned."
The soldier spat on the ash. "You're all the same. Rats coming out of the rubble. Better to kill you before you infect."
Kael's heart thrashed in his chest. His body ached to run, but hunger had eaten away at him, drained him. He could barely stand, let alone run.
The soldier drew his sword. Steel glinted in the gray light, humming as it sliced through the air.
Kael staggered backward, hands raised. "Please, I'm just—"
The blade came down.
Kael threw up his arm to shield himself, waiting for pain, for blood. But pain never came.
Instead, something cold ignited under his skin. A searing chill, sharper than fire, rushed through his veins. Black tendrils burst from his forearm, twisting like smoke made solid. They met the blade with a shriek of metal, halting its descent.
Both boy and soldier froze.
Kael watched in disgust as a symbol ascended his skin, black and twisting, alive like a snake beneath the skin on his arm. It pulsated with a nauseating rhythm, as if it were a separate heart.
The soldier backed away, his eyes wide with fear. "Witchspawn," he gasped. He shuddered, but rage arose as fast as fear. "Damation-born whelp! Far better to kill you here than to have you rot."
He swung again, sword wildly flailing.
Kael flinched, but the darkness spread outwards, boiling like a tide. The soldier was knocked off his feet, his body striking a fallen beam. His sword flew from his hand, clashing on stones.
For what seemed like an eternity, all one could hear was Kael's ragged breath and the thumping of the mark on his arm. The shadows stayed close to him, whispering without sound, oppressing his mind with the pangs of hunger.
The soldier leaped to his feet, wide-eyed as though seeing death itself. He stumbled backward, falling. "Demon's get," he gasped, his voice a mangled prayer. He stumbled away and fled, boots hammering ash.
Kael fell to his knees. His chest heaved as though he had run for miles, but he had not moved. He stared at the black veins crawling across his arm. The mark was starting to pulse again, and he could have sworn he felt it react to the hunger gnawing at him, stoking it, intensifying it.
"What… what are you?" His breath turned into the empty air.
The shadows did not answer.
Above them, the crows wheeled, their croaks grating and mocking, as if they were laughing at the boy in the blackness below who had wept for bread and got none.