We watched the light fade to nothing, then glanced at each other, mirroring one another’s looks of confusion.

“Did you do that?” Lucinia asked from behind me.

“I don’t think so?” I answered, unsure of myself, as I lowered my arm, swatting at the particles of light. Then, like a returning tide, the horrible sounds from beyond the walls came flooding back in, and the immediacy of our situation returned to me.

Avenholme was burning. A dusky, reddish orange smog blotted out the sky, and the contaminated air rushed in through the newly formed hole in the wall—already, I could feel the soot settling in my lungs, making each breath heavier.

Beyond the hole, disorganized mobs of villagers, some bloodied and dirt covered, crashed against each other like waves, bodies and limbs jostling. I recognized some of the faces of people being trampled under frenzied feet.

“Good heavens…” Mom said, looking out at the hellish scene. Then, looking back over her shoulder, and stepping toward what had been the front door, “stay close to me, you two.”

A steep hill towered over the back of our house, so moving away from the chaos wasn’t an option. Instead, we moved through the village, sticking to side paths wherever possible, Mom and Blaise in front, Lucinia in the middle, and me bringing up the rear. I’d withdrawn Dad’s knife from the side pocket of my bag, and was clutching it in my pocket so tightly I could feel my knuckles going white. Against a Veilborn, it wouldn’t be much use, but the blade brought me comfort.

I choked on a cloud of smoke as we moved through it. Looking around at the burning buildings, I knew this would be the end of Avenholme—even on their fastest mounts, Shardseekers from Teithus wouldn’t arrive for about forty minutes, and that was assuming they departed as soon as they noticed the disturbance.

Ahead of me, next to Lucinia’s crouched form, a piece of lumbar toppled over, its support burned away by the raging fires. I managed to catch it just before it hit her head. I cursed as I tossed it aside, shaking my hand from the intense heat. Lucinia tossed a concerned looked back at me, but I shook my head, smiling. Or at least, I gave what I thought was a smile.

“We’re almost out now, just a little farther,” Mom said. “Stay close, now.” Blaise’s wails, from where he was clutching to her chest, has mostly died down, becoming little more than intermittent snivels—he had tired himself out, I supposed.

From the alleyway where we were crouched, we looked ahead—only a water well and one row of houses separated us from the world outside the village. I lost myself to marveling for a moment at how the sky beyond that line of homes seemed to undisturbed. Indifferent to the disaster taking place here.

We waited for a break in the foot traffic of the scrambling villagers, mostly flowing out of the village now that we had come so close to the edge. Some, though, were calling out for their families or friends. I watched as an ember caught on Ms. Ohur’s dress. She was immolated on the spot.

Mom took both Lucinia and my hands.

“Three,” she said, counting down to our movement like she’d down dozens of times as we navigated the dirt paths of the village.

“Two.”

I wondered what life would like like after we got out of Avenholme. I felt a fleeting relief at no longer being scorned by everyone around me for something out of my control. Then a pang of shame at the fact that I could feel relief as the people I’d known my whole life were dying around me.

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“One.” I squeezed Lucinia’s hand, held in my life, and the concealed knife in my right. We didn’t have much money, so life would be hard, but Mom had her skills as a healer, and I could probably find decent work, even if it would be hard. We might even be able to send Lucinia to a proper school.

“Go!”

We took off from the alley, the three of us in a line, and the entire world seemed to collapse in on itself until it was just us and that seemingly vast expanse between the two rows of houses.

Then, there were only five steps between us and the edge of hell.

The faint shortness of breath in my chest, worsened by the smoke, seemed to grow a million fold with each passing step across what now looked like a wasteland—charred streaks crisscrossing and intersecting everywhere you looked down.

Four steps.

Inferno’s bellowed all around us, the roaring of the fire melding with the screams of the villagers, and the roars of a beast.

Three steps.

The rusty smell of blood seemed to shroud everything in the village, and I clutched the knife tighter, as if to ward off the crimson death and flame.

Two steps. A scream tore through my ears from close behind us.

“Mom! Blaise!” Lucinia shrieked. She skidded to a halt, swiveling around to look back, and stopped me alongside her.

I almost yanked her forward and told her to keep running, so focused was I on the freedom now to our backs, but I quickly came to my senses—Lucinia’s left hand was empty.

Following my sister’s line of sight, I turned, and my heart lurched up into my throat. Mom was behind us. Lying face down on the ground. Just behind her, where her legs should have been, one of the grisly, vortex-like creatures was quivering, like it was in ecstasy. Blood, turned black in the morbid twilight, had misted above her prone form, creating a macabre veil for what lay beyond.

Only a few yards away, a twelve foot tall creature was hunched forward, its beady, violet eyes focused on us. its legs were the furry, hoofed ones of a goat, but pulsing with visbly striated lines of powerful, barely contained muscle. It had a similarly built human torso, but the the over sized head of a bull. A coiled, snakelike tail sprouted from its back, pointed at us like a stinger, and the onyx bullhorns growing from its head caught the flickers of flame, making them look like the gates to the otherworld.

“Tasty… meal…” it grunted, the words gravelly, bubbling up out of tar somewhere in its throat, and I was too stunned to even find the fact that it could speak curious. I couldn’t help but feel it looked directly at me as it said this, in a powerful voice that somehow reached my ears even over the din of the burning village.

The vortex dissipated, as if it were never there, leaving Mom, protecting Blaise with her arms, lying in the dirt, her legs gone from the mid-thigh down. I almost threw up. Beside me, Lucinia did keel over and throw up, regurgitating her dinner out onto the dirt.

A group of village men with makeshift weapons had appeared at some point near the beast and were now engaging it. They wouldn’t last long, I knew. No one in the village would, against a Veilborn—we had no mages.

I took the moment to run over to Mom, and started to pull her up and shifted my rucksack aside, intending to lift both her and Blaise over my shoulder. No time to dress her wounds—not with that Veilborn so close. I grunted with the effort, and almost buckled under all of the combined weight. Mom fell back to the dirt, and I reached to try again, but was stunned into stillness by the beast’s loud earth-shaking bellow. A third of the men fighting it had fallen since I last looked up, their corpses littering the ground, tripping up some of their comrades. I could hardly see them, the smoke stinging my eyes.

Mom groaned in pain, and looked to the source of the noise. Her eyes grew wide as they laid upon the beast for the first time, then narrowed in determination. She set to undoing the fabric that bound Blaise—who had fallen into a dazed silence—to her chest.

“Kaelion,” she said, and my heart sank. I heard the next words almost before she said them. “Take your brother, and run.” She rolled over onto her back as she finished undoing the cloth, and held Blaise’s swaddled form up for me to take.

“No,” I stammered, taking Blaise all the same. He looked so delicate in my arms, like he might burn up any second. “No, I can—“ More death wails interrupted me. More of the men had crumpled to the ground, and the fight, if it could even be called that, moved closer by the second—the monster was trying to reach us.

“I can…” I said, but stopped short, biting the inside of my cheek until it bled. I couldn’t think. Everything was a blurry mess. Freedom has been so close. I wouldn’t be able to carry them both—

“Luce!” I shouted, swiveling around. “Lucinia!” I closed the short distance between us. “Lucinia, take Blaise…” My face fell. She was unresponsive, eyes glazed over as she stared at the Veilborn closing in on us. “Luce!”

I clicked my teeth, turning back around. The monster was close now, just a few yards away. Its foul breath washed over us now with each roar, and bile rose up in my throat again. I knelt next to Mom, Blaise still in my arms.

“—ithus,” she was in the middle of saying. “Find Marcus.” She coughed, and blood sputtered up out of her mouth, mirroring the blood gushing from her mangled legs. “He works for the city guard…” She rolled over, weakly, and I reached for words. I found none. She slung her rucksack off, and held it out to me. Mindlessly, I took this too.

“I love you, Kaelion. Lucinia. Blaise,” she said, her voice airy. Distant. Then, refocusing on me, “go. I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Mom, I—“

“Go!” she screamed, with what I could tell was very nearly the last of her strength.

Trying not to think of anything, I spun around. I hefted Lucinia onto my back the best I could. Then, hauling everything and nothing at all, I ran, cries of people and the roars of the Veilborn at my back spurring me on. As I crossed the village’s threshold, the cleaner air did nothing to quell the storm raging inside me as I ran further and further from everything I knew.