The punch landed like fire in his gut. He heard something crack—maybe ribs—and blood streamed from his nose and mouth. Yuviel, trembling, crawled forward and latched onto the golden one's leg.
"Leave her," he rasped, his mouth slick with blood.
Thar's leg jerked back and struck him across the face. Darkness swept in like a tide, and with it, consciousness left him.
He woke with wires biting into his skin, cold and metallic. Blood still trickled from his nose. His eyes adjusted slowly. He was in the center of the town hall, where he had looked before; he found several captives around the room, bound the same way as him. Finally, across the room, his eyes found her, his mother.
Her robes were torn, streaked with dirt and blood, but unlike Tasha's, there were no blackened bruises—no sign of toxin burns. Her face had been spared, as though by order. Her eyes were puffy and red, leaking silent tears. She trembled as she sobbed, trying to stifle the sound.
"Mom… are… are you alright?"
She didn't answer.
"We'll be okay, right? Someone will come… he can't—he can't do anything else, right?"
Still, she didn't answer.
"Mom?"
Then Yuviel saw him. A man lay splayed on the floor, face down. Blood pooled beneath his head, his golden brown hair—the same as Yuviel's—matted with it.
"Pa—no. No, what did they do to him? Mom!"
He didn't want her to answer, because part of him already knew. His father's body was broken—crushed. The stone beneath him cracked as though he'd been slammed down again and again.
"They killed him… those monsters… she wept, barely able to form the words. " Oh, Great Mountains, oh, Great Plains…" She crumbled into the prayer.
Yuv tried to complete the prayer through clenched teeth.
"May his spirit rest… in your palms."
He could barely speak. Rage threatened to drown him. His eyes burned red, tears mixing with blood. His mother murmured prayers, over and over, her voice cracked, haunted.
Tasha.
"Mom! Where is Tasha? Where did they take her?!"
Her gaze met his—sharp, startled, terrified.
"You… had Tasha?" she whispered. "They never brought her here, Yuv."
His world shifted. Something twisted inside him. Heat and cold collided in his chest. His body tingled, convulsed, as if his veins had turned to fire.
He felt… everything.
Every vein, every artery, every tendon in his body came into his awareness. He felt a fluttering feeling in his abdomen. His heart thundered in his chest like war drums. He felt blood rushing, nerves crackling. Each breath was thunder. Every second stretched on and on like a lifetime. It was like a meditation, but worse, he was flowing away from his body.
He was unraveling.
He saw his emotions steering his mind while his conscience was trapped in the back of his mind. Several words roamed freely inside his mind, whose meaning was unknown to him.
He felt as if someone, something, was speaking to him.
"sshivorak"
"Shenloavf"
"ADhasb"
The words, gibberish to him, were making him dizzy; he felt his bile rising.
He gagged, choking on nothing. Blood speckled the floor.
"YUV!" his mother cried. "Are you okay?!"
"Ma… Ma…" He trembled, sweating, burning alive from the inside. "Help me… I-I—"
"It's going to be okay," she lied, trying to smile. "It's going to be—"But the lie broke. She crumbled again into sobs.
Yuviel's head floated, detached and weightless. Yet he felt himself sinking. Drowning.
"Ma…"
A voice, guttural and mocking, broke the moment.
"Well, well. The little human chimp's awake, huh?"
It was the gold-skinned brute again—the one the tall man had called Tharmenes.
He stomped forward and grabbed Janiel by the hair.
"That administrator's taken a shine to you," he sneered, then spat in her face.
Yuviel thrashed in his bindings.
"Don't. Touch. Her"
His voice trembled with rage. That strange energy inside him roared like a rising tide. It wasn't he who was speaking, but rather he felt he was watching from the side. He found it hard to believe he could have such rage.
"Tch," Thar muttered and kicked Yuviel hard in the gut, flinging him into the wall.
The stained-glass window behind them exploded outward in a shattering crescendo.
"What in fucking Grace's name…" Thar turned, eyes wide. "What did the boy do?!"
Yuviel sat up, barely registering the blow. The pain was already gone.
Tharmenes snarled and lifted him by the collar.
"The fuck you gonna do, huh?!"
Yuviel's eyes burned white. His breath came hot and slow. His veins pulsed with a pale glow—brilliant, unnatural. His vision blurred. Then sharpened. Then dimmed.
And finally, everything went white.
He heard Thar scream.
He was floating. First warm. Then hot. Then blistering. His eyes were closed, but he could hear—faint voices. Panic. Wind rushing.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was gone—blasted apart. Beyond it, the obsidian sky loomed, moonless and vast. Flames licked at the broken walls around him. The world burned orange and black.
Then it came back to him.
The memories.
The chamber.
His mother.
He struggled to stand. The air was thick with the scent of charred flesh and melted steel. Smoke curled into his throat like poison.
"Mom! Mom!"
No response.
He searched, frantic. All around were lumps—burnt silhouettes, bodies reduced to coal. One glinted. A pendant. Hers.
He knelt beside it, breath faltering. The burned figure that was wrapped around cracked and collapsed when he touched it. A blackened orb—the head—rolled away. Hollows for eyes. Blood.
He didn't cry. Not at first. He just stared at the place where she had been—like staring at a hole punched through the world. Like if he blinked, she'd be there again. Whole. Breathing. Scolding him gently.
But all that was left was ash and teeth.
He vomited. Cried. Screamed.
It took minutes, maybe hours, to fully understand.
That had been his mother.
He tried to speak the old prayers, the ones she taught him. But the words felt like pebbles in his mouth, no faith in them, a mere line to soothe the heart, meaningless.
What kind of god takes a mother and leaves her son alive just to watch?
He clenched his fists and looked up at the soot-dark sky."There is no God," he whispered.
He shoved the pendant into his pocket and ran, blind and wailing. When he burst outside, the full scale of the destruction hit him like another blow.
Caspuyl was aflame. The whole city. A pyre.