Chapter 22: Some Gifts Come with Fire
The sun never fully rose that morning.
It hung behind the clouds, swollen and sullen, like an eye bruised shut by some unseen force. The sky itself felt swollen, as if it had absorbed the screams and static from the night before.
And somehow, it was still holding its breath.
They were halfway to the apartment when it happened.
—
Selene walked ahead, blade sheathed but within reach, her senses sharp.
Aria followed in silence, bags in both hands, her movements jittery. She hadn't slept—not really. Her muscles ached with a nervous electricity she couldn't name. Her eyes scanned every shadow like it might bloom teeth.
They hadn't spoken since the bakery.
Selene had barely looked at her.
And Aria was starting to understand why.
—
The sound came sharp and sudden.
A scrape. A metal drag.
A scream—not human, not clean. A sound torn in half by whatever made it.
Selene stopped cold.
So did Aria.
From the broken entrance of a building, they emerged—three of them, all wrong. Their limbs moved too quickly. Their eyes were gone or worse, misaligned. Their mouths open, snarling.
There was no time to run.
One rushed them before Aria could even drop the bags.
She raised her hand on instinct—
And it opened.
But not gently.
—
The world bent sideways.
A white-gold rupture tore the air apart, blooming from Aria's palm. The storage space—normally silent, folded, obedient—screamed into existence like a dying star. It pulled the world inward: broken glass, asphalt, the rusted bench to her left—
And the creature leaping toward her—
Gone.
So was part of the street.
—
She collapsed.
Blood spilled from her nose like it had been waiting. Her body hit the pavement in slow motion, her limbs too limp, too long. Eyes wide. Blank.
Still breathing. But not awake.
Selene caught her just before her head cracked the sidewalk.
She barely registered the burn in her own arms—Aria's skin was too hot. Not feverish. Alive. Power-thick.
This wasn't storage anymore.
This was the beginning of something else.
—
"She's evolving too fast," Selene muttered.
But deep down, she'd known it would happen.
The Aria she remembered—before the fracture, before memory slipped through the cracks—had been like this. Wild. Beautiful. Too much.
The kind of girl who could shift the world just by blinking.
Selene adjusted her grip, tightening her arms beneath Aria's knees and shoulders.
She didn't stumble. Not this time.
—
She carried her past overturned cars, broken fences, walls scorched with ash.
Smoke licked the sky from three directions. Somewhere, people screamed. Somewhere else, no one did.
Selene didn't look back. She just walked.
Because she wasn't carrying a girl.
She was carrying gravity.
—
The apartment door gave in on the first kick.
Inside, Selene lowered Aria onto the mattress they'd dragged into the center of the room, away from windows. Her forehead was damp with blood and sweat, her breath sharp, fluttering.
The storage space flared again from her hand—white-gold light, fractal edges. It twisted like a heartbeat.
Uncontrolled. Expanding.
Selene sat beside her, ignoring the heat pulsing against her own chest. She watched the shape flicker and snap.
"You did that," she whispered, brushing a damp strand of hair off Aria's forehead. "You did that all by yourself."
Then softer—like the words had waited days to leave her:
"Please don't leave me again."
—
The walls trembled.
Not with movement, but with pressure—heat thick enough to fold time.
Selene tried to breathe through it, her lungs full of metal. This room, this girl, this moment—it was all too much, too soon. But she didn't move.
Aria twitched, light curling from her fingertips again.
Then again.
Each flicker sharper, louder, harder to hold.
Selene grabbed her hand and held it.
"You're scared," she whispered. "I know. But listen to me. You're still here. And so am I."
A beat. A shift.
Aria's hand relaxed—just slightly.
Selene felt it. That tiny surrender. That permission.
"You're not alone."
—
It wasn't a promise.
Not the way people meant it.
It was a warning. A vow. A tether.
If Aria burned, Selene would burn with her.
If she broke, Selene would be the one catching the pieces.
Outside, the world howled. Distant sirens blurred into something unrecognizable. The city was unraveling faster than anyone could fix it.
But inside the room, they were still breathing.
Together.
—
Aria stirred, her eyes fluttering open just long enough to meet Selene's.
And something passed between them—not words, not memory, not yet—but weight.
Recognition. Trust.
A flicker of something ancient.
Selene squeezed her hand once, grounding her.
"I've got you," she said.
Aria didn't speak.
But her hand closed tighter around Selene's.
And the light didn't flare again.
Not for now.
—
The first blood is always the slowest.
But fire comes next.
And some gifts are meant to burn.