ONE
SOREIA
The claws find me between one heartbeat and the next.
I jerk awake with the phantom sensation still raking through my ribs, dragging downward, splitting flesh from bone. My magic gutters in my veins—that sick, failing flicker I’ve learned means death is close. The world goes silent around me in the dream, the way it always does right before the end. No wind. No screams. Nothing except the wet sound of my own body giving up.
Then I’m gasping in a ruined watchtower, spine pressed against cold stone, fingers already wrapped around the knife I sleep with. Dawn light cuts through gaps in the collapsed roof. Dust motes float in shafts of weak gold.
I’m alive.
For now.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I force them flat against my thighs and count my breaths until the tremors ease. The dream clings to me like a second skin—the specific angle of those claws, the precise moment my magic unraveled. Not a prophecy. Never a prophecy. My visions don’t show futures. They show the instant before death catches me.
Every time, the dream ends in the same place. That breathless pause where survival tips toward extinction.
Every time, I wake up alone.
I push myself to my feet and take stock. The watchtower was probably beautiful once—carved stone lattice, a signal platform at the top for warning fires. Now half the structure lists dangerously to the east, and the stairs have collapsed into rubble. I climbed through a gap in the wall last night, too exhausted to find better shelter.
Below me, the border settlement spreads like a corpse left too long in the sun.
I don’t need to go down there to know what I’ll find. The smell reaches me even at this height—old blood, burned wood, the particular sweetness of bodies the ash storms haven’t buried yet. The watchtower’s elevated position gives me a clear view of the destruction: market stalls overturned, defensive walls breached at multiple points, shapes lying in doorways that might be people and might be piles of rags.
The silence is the worst part. No birds. No insects. Not even wind through the empty buildings. Settlements don’t go quiet like this unless everything living has fled or died.
This is the third settlement I’ve passed through in as many days. All of them look the same. All of them smell the same.
I’ve been heading east for two weeks—not for any reason I could have named precisely, only that the last survivor I spoke to said the settlements there were falling slower. Some advantage in distance or terrain that kept the worst of it at bay a little longer. Whatever that advantage was, it was running out.
The world is falling apart faster than I can outrun it.
I climb down carefully,testing each handhold before I commit my weight. The stone crumbles in places, weakened by whatever tore through here. Claw marks gouge the walls—deep, deliberate, as if testing the structure’s integrity before deciding it wasn’t worth finishing off.
Scouts.
I’ve seen the damage they leave often enough to recognize the pattern. Fast, lean monsters designed for pursuit rather than confrontation. They travel in small packs, hit without warning, drag prey away from groups. They don’t stay to feed. They catalog. Report.
To what, I don’t want to know.
The streets are worse than they looked from above. Bodies lie where they fell—in doorways, half-emerged from windows, sprawled across market squares with goods scattered around them like offerings to gods that never answered. The blood has dried to rust-brown stains. Ash coats everything in gray-white film, muffling the colors until the whole settlement looks bleached. Preserved.
A memorial no one will ever visit.
I move through the wreckage as quietly as I can, keeping to shadows where they exist. The Anchor hums low in my veins, awake but not reaching—not yet. Every use costs me. Years, months, days. My bloodline wasn’t built for longevity. We make endings stick, and death takes its payment in the same coin.
The trader’s body is in the market square.
I almost walk past it. He’s half-buried under a collapsed stall, another shape in the debris. But his hand is extended toward thestreet, fingers curled like he died reaching for escape, and the glint of metal catches my eye.
A bracelet. Bronze, worn thin from years of wear. The kind merchants use to mark themselves as neutral parties, protected by trade agreements that clearly mean nothing to monsters.
I crouch beside him and check for a pulse I know I won’t find. His skin is cold, papery under my fingers. Dead at least a day, maybe two. The ash storms have kept the worst of the decay at bay, but his eyes are filmed over, staring at the sky without seeing it.
There’s blood at his throat. Not a claw wound—too clean. Teeth. He was bitten, the flesh torn away in a single vicious motion. Quick death, probably. Quicker than most.
His other hand is pressed against his chest, and when I peel back his fingers, I find parchment. Crumpled, bloodstained, but legible.
