Serina's POV
The sound of Finn's breathing stopped.
I jerked awake on the cold floor, my heart hammering against my ribs. For three terrible seconds, I heard nothing from the corner where my little brother slept. Then came a wet, rattling gasp that sounded like someone drowning on dry land.
I scrambled across our tiny room, my knees scraping against the rough wooden planks. "Finn? Finn, breathe!"
My ten-year-old brother's eyes fluttered open. In the dim moonlight streaming through the cracked window, his skin looked wrong. Grey patches spread across his cheeks like spilled ash. His left hand, resting on the threadbare blanket, had turned completely stone-colored and hard.
The Grey Rot was winning.
"Rina..." Finn's voice came out as a whisper. "Hurts... to breathe..."
I pressed my hand against his forehead. His skin felt cold and rough, like touching a statue instead of a living person. Panic clawed at my throat, but I forced it down. Finn needed me to be strong.
"I know, little fox. I know." I grabbed the cup of water from beside his mat and helped him take tiny sips. "But you're going to be okay. I promise."
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue.
Three weeks ago, the Grey Rot had appeared in the slums like a nightmare made real. It started with a cough. Then your skin turned grey and hard as stone, spreading from your fingers and toes toward your heart. When it reached your chest, you couldn't breathe anymore. Then you died, frozen like a statue.
The healers in the Upper City had medicine that could cure it. But healers didn't come to the Lower Ring where people like us lived. And the medicine cost more gold than I could steal in ten lifetimes.
I'd tried everything. I begged the temple priests—they threw me out. I snuck into a healer's shop and got caught—the guards beat me so badly I couldn't walk for two days. I even went to Uncle Castor and asked for help.
He'd laughed in my face.
Now Finn's breathing sounded like grinding stones, and the grey had spread past his elbows. Maybe two more days. Maybe less.
"Tell me... the story," Finn whispered. "About... the dragons..."
My eyes burned, but I wouldn't cry. Not in front of him. "Once upon a time, dragons ruled the sky," I started, my voice steady even though my hands shook. "They were strong and free, and nothing could cage them—"
The door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall.
Uncle Castor stood in the doorway, his face red and twisted with anger. The stink of cheap ale rolled off him in waves. "What did I tell you about making noise at night?"
I stood up, putting myself between him and Finn. "He's sick. He can't help—"
"I don't care!" Castor's hand shot out and grabbed my arm, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "I have important people visiting tomorrow. Merchants who might actually pay good money for my business deals. I can't have them hearing some dying brat wheezing all night!"
"He's not dying!" The words exploded out of me. "And he's your nephew! Your own blood! How can you—"
The slap sent me sprawling backward. My cheek exploded with pain, and I tasted copper in my mouth.
"Don't you dare talk back to me, girl!" Castor loomed over me, his fist raised. "I took you and that worthless boy in when your parents died. I gave you food and shelter when I could have thrown you both into the streets. You owe me everything!"
I touched my burning cheek and felt wetness. Blood or tears, I couldn't tell.
Behind me, Finn tried to sit up. "Don't... hurt her..."
"Stay down!" I hissed at him.
Castor spat on the floor near my feet. "Tomorrow morning, you're taking the boy to the death house. The priests will take him off our hands, and I won't have to listen to that horrible breathing anymore."
Horror turned my blood to ice. The death house was where they took people with the Grey Rot who couldn't pay for medicine. You went in alive. You never came out.
"No." The word came out small, but I meant it with everything I had. "No, you can't—"
"I can do whatever I want. This is MY house." Castor turned toward the door, then paused. "And if you try to run away with him, I'll call the city guards. They'll drag you both back, and I'll make sure you spend a month in the punishment stocks before the death house. Understood?"
He didn't wait for an answer. The door slammed behind him, and I heard his heavy footsteps going down the hallway to his bedroom.
I sat there on the floor, my whole body shaking. Not from fear—from rage so hot it felt like fire in my chest.
"Rina?" Finn's voice pulled me back. "I'm... scared now..."
I crawled back to his side and took his good hand—the one that wasn't grey yet. "Remember what I always tell you?"
"Nothing... can cage... a dragon..." He managed a weak smile.
"That's right." I squeezed his hand gently. "And you're my little fox, remember? Foxes are clever. They always find a way."
But as I sat there holding Finn's hand, feeling how cold and hard it was becoming, I knew the truth. I had no way. No money, no magic, no power.
In this world, people like us didn't matter. We were born powerless, and we died powerless.
Unless...
A memory flickered in my mind. Two weeks ago, I'd been stealing bread from the market when I overheard two drunk soldiers talking in a tavern.
"They say the old Shrine of Calamity holds treasures from the Dragon Age," one slurred. "Magic crystals that can cure anything. Bring the dead back to life, even!"
"Idiot," the other laughed. "That shrine is in the Crimson Wastes. The forbidden zone. Anyone caught going there is executed on sight. Besides, even if you made it past the guards and the poisoned mists and the corrupted beasts, the shrine is cursed. They say the World-End Dragon is sealed inside, and anyone who enters never comes back."
I'd dismissed it as drunk talk. Old legends and fairy tales.
But now, watching Finn struggle for each breath, feeling his hand turning to stone in mine...
What did I have to lose?
After Finn finally fell into a fitful sleep, I moved quietly around our tiny room. I grabbed my old traveling pack—the one from when Mama and Papa were still alive, when we'd had enough to eat and sometimes even laughed. I stuffed in a water flask, a small knife, the last piece of stale bread, and the scratchy blanket from my sleeping mat.
My hands shook as I tied the pack closed.
The Crimson Wastes were a death sentence. Everyone knew that. The red mists that covered the wasteland were poisonous. Corrupted beasts hunted there—animals twisted by old magic into monsters. And if you somehow survived all that, the King's soldiers patrolled the borders with orders to kill trespassers on sight.
But Finn was dying. And Uncle Castor would throw him into the death house tomorrow morning.
I had to try.
I knelt beside Finn one more time. His face looked so small and grey in the moonlight. I brushed his dark hair back from his forehead and kissed his cold cheek.
"I'm going to save you, little fox," I whispered. "I promise."
Then I stood, threw the pack over my shoulder, and climbed out the window into the night.
The streets of the Lower Ring were dark and empty. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. The smell of sewage and rot hung in the air—the smell of poverty.
I'd lived my whole life in these streets. Learned to steal here. Learned to fight here. Learned to survive here.
Now I was leaving, possibly forever.
I turned south, toward the city gates, toward the Crimson Wastes beyond. Toward the forbidden shrine that everyone said was cursed.
The cobblestones were cold under my worn boots. Each step took me farther from everything I knew, closer to something that terrified me more than anything in my life.
But I'd meant what I told Finn.
Nothing can cage a dragon.
And I wasn't going to let death cage my little brother either.
I didn't notice the shadow that detached itself from the wall behind me. Didn't see the figure that followed me through the dark streets, staying just out of sight.
Didn't hear the whispered message sent through magic to someone far away: "The girl is heading for the shrine. Just as you predicted."
Or the cold, satisfied laugh that answered back.