It starts with a scream, then two.

Indigo’s eyes shoot open. His heart hammers his ribcage with loud, rapid beats. As he jumps out of his bed and scans his surroundings for a sight of the impending menace, he pauses, then realizes the cries did not come from within the walls of his home, but rather outside.

“Indigo?” his mother calls. “Indigo!” she shouts. “Where are you?”

“I’m right here, Mom!” Indigo yanks his door open. He coughs as his senses are attacked by the fumes that slide up into the corridor from between the old wooden boards. “What’s going on?” He grabs his dark brown coat, quickly slips into it, and covers the bottom of his face with the first scarf he can get his hands on. As he runs down the stairs and bursts into the living room, he asks the darkness, “Did they mess up the heretic burnings? I…I don’t understand. Where’s all this smoke coming from—”

“It’s the army.” Indigo’s father dashes toward them. Lydia holds his hand with a firm grasp and refuses to let go. “The humans, they’ve found us,” he says.

A gasp escapes Indigo’s lips. He takes a step forward and yells, “What? That’s impossible! The Council specifically picked this location so that they wouldn’t be able to—”

“I know.” A grim frown washes over his father’s face. “I know, Indigo.” His eyes meet with the ground, their boots. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Outside, a pregnant woman runs past their window and cradles a baby in her arms as she runs for her life. Indigo’s lip twitches. “You mean to say we’re not going to fight?” he asks them. “We’re just going to stay here and wait until they do away with us?”

Indigo’s mother wraps her fingers around his wrist. “Indigo…” Her tone is soft, smothered by fatigue. “Sweetie, you know we can’t—”

The sounds of heavy armor clinking, of doors being knocked down, echo throughout the town. Indigo shakes off her touch. “Are we really that weak, Mom?” his question is dipped in distress, shaken by anger. “We burn users of the Craft…brilliant users of the Craft, and yet you mean to tell me we aren’t even capable of fending off an enemy’s raid?”

“Well we can’t help that, can we!” It’s Lydia. His sister is crying now. The heavy tears streaming down her cheeks leave fine lines against ashes that have built up against her pale skin. She grabs fistfuls of fabric, the bottom of her once virgin-white dress. She runs toward Indigo, and only stops once they are but a few feet apart. “What do you think shouting at us is going to do? Don’t you think Mom and Dad are worried enough? Don’t you think…” She sniffles. “Don’t you think they’ve thought about what you said already?”

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

“Lydia…” Indigo kneels to be at her level. He reaches out to brush his younger sister’s hair out of her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

Lydia slaps his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she mutters, her gaze averted from his.

Indigo tilts his head until he finds his father’s face amidst the darkness, lit by the color of orange flames. “Dad?” His stomach drops in turmoil from the options he currently considers. “Is there really no one left to defend the village?”

“I…” Indigo’s father crosses his arms. His lips purse into a thin line. The colors reflected against the walls turn to dark reds and yellows as the fires outside devour bigger parts of the village. “I’m afraid not,” he whispers. “Our best and only fighters have either taken their leave to attend the Academy, or were sent out to fight in the war. The only thing we can do is stay put and wait for an opportunity to escape. If we go out there now…we wouldn’t stand a chance, honey. I’m sorry.”

Indigo can see it, the guilt and shame in his father’s eyes from being born without the gift. “I can’t,” he blurts. As the corner of his own eyes fill with tears in turn, Indigo shakes his head, takes a step back. His family all turn their attention toward him. They look confused. Of course they are, Indigo thinks. “I can’t,” he echoes again. “I’m sorry, Mom, Dad, Lydia—but I can’t watch and say nothing as everyone is cut down to pieces in front of us.”

He turns around.

Another haunting scream pierces the air.

His father reaches out to grab his arm. His grip is tight, it causes Indigo to pause. “Have you lost your mind, Indigo?” His face is red—not because of the flames, but out of fear for the son he never knew. “You can barely hold your own. What makes you think you could possibly—”

Indigo pushes him off. His breaths are heavy. His eyes, covered by a curtain of dark strands, dart across the room—back and forth between worried faces he fears he might never see again after tonight. “Just watch me, then,” he says. And then Indigo runs; out the door and away from his past, toward a future shrouded in bleak shadows, devoid of the light he needs. The cries of his family begging him to reconsider echo in his mind. But it is too late, for he is already too far ahead now to return. As he avoids falling pillars, tiles that create avalanches of bricks from the rooftops above, Indigo dashes from alleyway to alleyway and slips past the view of soldiers dispatched from the capital’s army, until he reaches the forest where his hideout stands. Still intact, he notes with relief.

He grabs a large backpack he’d created in case there ever was an urgent need to move all his belongings at once. Into it, Indigo shoves every potion, anything within his ease of reach, down into the depths of the bag. Once he’s made sure his most prized possession is with him—a forbidden tome he’d stolen as a child when snooping around the Academy’s grounds—Indigo switches out his favorite coat for a cape resistant to the elements and throws his backpack over his shoulder.

Between two fingers, he pops open a single vial, and holds his breath while chugging down its contents: a crimson potion he hopes won’t backfire on him.

Indigo prays to gods he never believed in for his family to still be alive by the time he returns. He picks up his pace again, toward the village, toward the smoke-filled sky.