Pyhra stumbles outside, the music from the party behind him thumping in his chest. The gaudy, orange-and-purple shift he’s wearing is beginning to chafe, and the matching pumps are making his ankles ache. He has his witches hat in one hand, thrown over his shoulder. It smells like booze and vaguely like the candy they dumped all over the dancefloor at the Hallow’s Eve party. His pumps are digging into the soft dirt, and he glares at them as he puts one foot in front of the other.

“Pyhra!” Remy slurs at him, across the slim dirt road. Stella fusses over them, an arm around their waist, giving them a long-suffering glance.

It’s what Stella had said back at the party— how do you put up with them when they're like this?

Pyhra had been sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair, legs crossed, with about two hundred pounds of muscle draped over his lap. Said two hundred pounds of muscle had their arms wrapped around his middle and was pressing their wet nose into his stomach, mumbling incoherently. Or, like, if it was coherent, it was just slurred enough and Pyhra was just drunk enough that it all sounded like nonsense.

“Easily,” Pyhra had said, half-lying, because Remy's boneless flop onto his lap had been painful, and their constant weight was making his legs turn numb. He brushed a hand through Remy’s hair, though, who was the picture of contentment. “We used to drink after a job well done, so I’m used to it. He and Crow are hilarious when they're wasted together, by the way.”

And then he got an idea for a joke, and wasted no time putting it into action; hand still buried in Remy's hair, Pyhra closed his eyes, conjuring Remy's face in his mind. Pale skin, chiseled jaw, large, upturned brown eyes that smile even when they aren't actually smiling. He thought of their wild brown hair, long and yet capable of sticking up in the oddest of directions, high in the air. Pyhra thought of their face and decided that for a bit, their face would be his face.

He opened his eyes, wearing Remy's face, and grinned in the way that Remy does: wide, toothy, revealing the glittering of sharp fangs hidden behind their lips. He tilted his head in that distinctly dog-like way, and let a giggle fall from his lips that he knew was a perfect impersonation. And he said, "Crow gets all loopy and loose, and sometimes, I can even get her to pet me!" And then Pyhra tipped his head back and laughed, full-bodied, full-bellied. It's not at all how Pyhra laughs, but its how Remy laughs.

Stella merely raised her eyebrow, chuckling, used to his antics. "Really?"

Pyhra shifted back to the face he'd been wearing earlier that night, the one he shows in public most often. Soft, but masculine features of someone in their mid-twenties, straw blonde hair pulled into a half-ponytail, eyes a dull green. Red-undertoned light skin covered in freckles and beauty marks, body slim but visibly male. It's the face everyone knows him to have, none of them any wiser that it's not the face he was born with. "Yep."

Remy lifted their head to warble, “Where’s Crow?”

“Crow went home, wolfie.”

“I wanna see her,” Remy let out a long, pathetic whine.

“You can see her tomorrow.”

Dejected, Remy had flopped their face back against Pyhra’s stomach. Stella gave the back of Remy’s head a flat look. “The worst part about this is that you’re just as drunk as them, aren’t you.”

“Somewhere in that vicinity.” Pyhra flapped a hand. His tolerance isn’t actually that good, despite what people say. No, he’s just really good at acting sober when he is really not. But he wasn't about to tell Stella that, not when she was giving him that severe, unimpressed expression. No, better to let her think that his reputation of being able to stomach more alcohol than an ox and still be sober precede him, as untrue as it was.

“There’s something wrong with you, genuinely.”

Pyhra laughed. And then he scratched the spot behind Remy’s ear, their favorite, just to punctuate the moment. They went boneless. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure,”

“Can you get this guy home?” Pyhra affectionately patted their shoulder, half eyeing all the other drunk people in gaudy costumes figuring out how they were getting home and with who. One upside to not being in the city, they could all walk. One down to not being in the city, they all had to walk.

“Sure,” Stella repeated, eyes going soft as she looked upon Remy burrowing farther into Pyhra. “But why can’t you do it yourself?”

“Pretty girl,” Pyhra grinned. “I am drunk. And I have a little brother I have to make sure didn’t get himself killed, and if I go home with wolfie here, I am going to stay there all night.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t call me that.”

So she’d taken Remy, and now they were stumbling off towards Remy’s place on the edge of the woods. Pyhra had helped build that place, with his own two hands and wood they cut down from those woods. He remembers that when it was finished, Remy dragged him and Crow up to the roof at the asscrack of dawn. "Just watch," they'd whispered. And the three of them had watched, awe-struck, as the sun blinked over the trees in rivers of orange and yellow and red. It was the first time Pyhra remembers looking at this life they were building and realizing, breathlessly, that it was worth it.

Pyhra takes a swig from the beer in his hand. He’s never liked the taste of beer, but being drunk is a convenient way to pretend his head isn't full of thoughts, all the time. But if he's honest, being drunk hasn't done that for him since he was a teenager; the thoughts persist, more uncontrolled then they are sober. But that momentary, chemical rush of dopamine you get as the alcohol hits is a drug he isn't willing to let go of.

Just as he’s turning off from the Center Hall, he’s slammed into by something hard and going very, very fast. Pyhra nearly eats shit, but drops the beer and the hat to throw his arms out in front of him for balance. Both fall to the dirt, the beer cracking, spilling the foamy drink all over the hat.

Sol stumbles back, before straightening abruptly. She’s got her hands clenched in front of her, eyes wide with unshed tears. She’s dressed in a shiny, glittery fairy costume, complete with metallic wings strapped to her back. He doesn't know what she's doing here, when the kids should be off doing whatever it is normal kids do on Hallow's Eve, trick-or-treating and trading candy and laughing, his foggy memories of childhood provide. Taking in her terrified stance, eyes wide and tears beginning to drip down her cheeks, his stomach drops to his feet. She gasps, “Pyhra!”

“Sol,” he manages, head rushing. He pulls himself back upright, trying to make his vision stop swimming. Everything is very bright, all of a sudden— but then it's grainy instead, dark along the edges.

“It’s Sky! And Lune! They’re— I told them I didn’t want to go but they wouldn’t listen, so we—“

“Back up,” Pyhra‘s gut is jumping, and he's breathing very carefully, until his vision is returning to it's normal state.

“We were trick-or-treating,” her voice is watery. “But they wanted to go into the woods to look for monsters. And then—“

“I get it,” Pyhra interrupts again, urgency overcoming him. “Take me to them.”

Of course, of course Lune decided to run off and do stupid shit the night he knew Pyhra would be off getting wasted at the party. Either Pyhra was too predictable or this kid was way too crafty, and Pyhra is gonna have to do something about it either way. Lune and Sky's Abilities aren't anywhere near battle ready, much to the boys' frustration. He guesses being the little brothers of Pyhra and Crow will have that effect on a kid.

“I can’t believe they keep doing this,” Sol says, panting from exertion. “They treat me like I’m childish! And then they turn around and do this?”

“They what?” Pyhra asks, running to match step with her.

“They keep telling me to get lost! Because they’re practicing fighting, and I’m not any good at fighting. And then they—“

He makes a mental note.

Pyhra follows Sol past the treeline, the two of them sprinting, into the woods and past their last outpost. As they go, the trees get more gnarled, the bushes thicker, thorns reaching across the path. There’s movement all around them, and Pyhra gets the distinct feeling of being watched. They’d chosen the spot they did because of these woods, and the danger they posed to anyone inside. But the idea was to keep other people away from them, not for them to go running inside!

And Lune had just walked in. On purpose.

They come to a clearing, where Lune and Sky are standing in loose, trembling battle stances. Sky has his club in his hands, and Lune has shadows dancing around his shaking fists.

A monster is hovering over them, dark and grinning. It’s got to be around ten feet tall, tendrils of shadow blowing out from underneath it, curling in the air.

Sol crouches behind a bush. Pyhra gets an idea.

He changes his face first, makes it small and feminine and round, turns his eyes into soft, doe-eyes. Then he shrinks his body, shortens his hair, turns it scarlet, just like Sol’s. The outfit is last: he closes his eyes and remembers her costume, the foil and the metallic wings. And, simply, he decides that anyone who looks at him will think he’s wearing that outfit, too.

She stares at him, wide-eyed. He grins, and presses a finger to his lips. This is what he's good at, and he'll get revenge for her too, in the process.

He bursts into the clearing. “Sky! Lune! Please stop this! We need to run!” He says with her voice.

Lune looks back at him, then towards the monster, then back at him. “Sol, you idiot! You need to get out of here!”

“Yeah, now!” Sky agrees, though his voice is trembling.

"No, you two really should run, instead." Pyhra mocks, pulling the gun from his belt. He knows that, in the illusion, they must have only seen his arm move, and his gun appear. Well. And it’s obviously not Sol’s gun. Given that Sol is a fourteen year old girl, and does not carry a gun. Because they aren't raising these kids to be battle-ready like they are, because being battle-ready at fourteen is not all Lune and Sky think it's cracked up to be.

Watch and learn, Pyhra thinks, stepping past the two boys. Their cries of protest are lost as he approaches the shadow. It hunches, gnarled white face tilting in curiosity. It sniffs surreptitiously at the air, clearly sensing an easy meal. That’s what he was counting on, that split-second of this monster being so cocky as to think he’d be an easy meal.

Pyhra does not give it one. It’s leaving itself wide open, just like he hoped. He jams the gun between its eyes and unloads the clip. It screams in pain, bucking. Pyhra jumps back, light on his feet. He slams another clip into the gun—hidden in his waistband—and shoots at the monster's joints, the places he knows it's weakest. It starts to go wild, and Pyhra jumps into the air, feeling the cool autumn wind nip past his skin. Finally, he lands on the monster's back, unloading another clip directly into it's neck. It gurgles in pain, but by the time it can think to move, it’s far too late. It’s curling up dead on the ground, the gun smoking.

The smell kind of makes him want to throw up, and his vision abruptly blurs, but he stays steadfast. He’s got a lot of practice, after all. He clumsily slides down the monster's back, nearly falling onto his ass when his feet meet the leaf-covered ground. He leans heavily, hands on his knees, breathing harshly. Everything is moving, moving, moving, whirling in ways he's pretty sure it's not supposed to. Is he drunker than he thought?

“Pyhra.” Lune surmises, accurately. Both boys lower their weapons and their stances.

Pyhra drops the costume illusion, and shifts back to his favorite face, the one he'd had on at the party. “I suppose you two dipshits think you’re real smart, huh?”

Lune immediately puffs up defensively. Sky wilts like a flower. Pyhra ignores them both, grips them by the shoulders, and begins tugging them back toward the village. “I am bringing you home.” He says to Sky, who hunches.

Sol trails behind them, hands clasped in front of her. Pyhra ignores all three teenagers, dragging them along behind him as he marches towards Crow’s house. It’s a small building, made of wood and stucco. Pyhra remembers building this one, too. The feeling of the mud against his hands as he spread it along the frame. When they'd finished building it, they'd spent their first night on the couch in the living room, drinking wine like they were rich or something, and laughing like nothing in the world could touch them.

He knocks twice, harshly, on the front door. Crow kicks it open from the other side. She leans one muscled arm against the doorframe and the other against the door. She’s looking down at the four of them from her considerable height, gray eyes narrowed, like she knows what’s happened. It's probably obvious, with a pissed-off Pyhra standing over three nervous teenagers like a wraith. He wonders if the effect of the image is ruined at all by the dress he's wearing.

“I found your kid brother trying his hand with a Beast,” Pyhra says without preamble. “Alone. Without telling anyone.”

Crow raises her eyebrows, and then narrows them at Sky. Truly, they look nearly exactly the same in physical appearance; they have the same bow-lips and pointy nose and dark brown hair. It’s just that Sky’s stuck up at odd, erratic angles, and Crow’s is pulled into a neat and tidy braid. And somehow, despite having the same features, Sky manages to look effortlessly naive, eyes wide and innocent and silly. Whereas Crow, with her dark-circles and frown lines and stern face paint a very different picture of a person.

“I assume this was another competition with Lune?” She says, deceptively lightly.

Sky shakes his head. “No, we were working together to—”

Crow holds up a hand. Sky goes silent. She gestures once, towards the kitchen. The three teenagers trail after her. Pyhra just watches them go, and then steps inside. It’s dark, save for the candles lit in the windows. The house is cozy, with a rug thrown over the floorboards and the furniture all slightly weathered with age. Pyhra makes his way to the back porch, flicking his cigarette case open and setting one into his mouth. He digs around in his pocket for a lighter, but abruptly remembers he slipped it into his shoes. Lighter acquired, he flicks it on the end of the cigarette, and takes a drag.

It warms him from the inside out, in stark contrast to the briskness of the air. It tastes familiar, like an old friend, and he blows the smoke out into the night as his muscles untense. He needs it, with the way his hands are trembling, the way he's trying not to close his eyes, lest he imagine a world in which that encounter went very different—one where Pyhra didn't make it in time, and instead of barging in on Lune and Sky in shaky battle stances, he stumbles in on them dead and bleeding out on the forest floor, eyes open and milkily unseeing, the monster gorging itself on their—

There’s the click of a door, and then Crow is at his shoulder. She lifts up the hem of his stupid, skimpy dress and pulls his cigarette box from its place tucked into the waistband of his tights. Her movements are easy, casual, and without hesitation. The coldness of her hands and the warmth of her body pull him from his reverie, leaning a little towards her to accommodate her theft. She pulls a cigarette out, returns the box, sets it in her mouth and waits patiently. Pyhra rolls his eyes, but leans forward, lighting her cigarette with the end of his.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

They face outward, shoulder to shoulder, forearms braced on the railing. They blow the smoke into the air near in sync, and they're touching from their shoulders all the way down their biceps, sapping each other's warmth. It's familiar. It's easy.

“Lune seemed pretty upset,” Crow remarks.

“Probably because he knows I’m gonna rip him to shreds.”

“Haven’t already?”

“Not yet.” Pyhra takes a drag, ignoring how his hands shake. “Trying to calm down first.”

Crow hums. “Remarkably thoughtful of you.”

Pyhra smiles, and it’s not really a kind one. “How’d Sky take it?”

“I sicced Cid on him.”

Pyhra nods. “And how’d Cid take it?”

“Not well.”

“Figures,”

Crow sighs. “They’re good kids, just…”

“Misguided.”

Pyhra means it as a joke, self-deprecating and bitter, but Crow just nods sadly. “Were we like that at their age?” She muses, tapping her cigarette on the railing.

“Girl, we were worse.”

And it’s the truth; at fourteen, Pyhra and Crow and Remy were living like rats in the sewers of the precious Crystal City, poisoning the waters and burning down whatever they could when they managed to get their hands on fire. At fourteen, Lune and Sky were disobeying their older siblings to rush off and play stupid games.

Pyhra reminds himself that that was always the point.

“Do you miss it? Before?” He asks abruptly. He’s unsure of where the question came from, but he can’t take the words back.

Crow looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Sometimes. Do you?”

What an answer. Exceedingly simple, and yet so complex he has no idea what she means, all the same. Sometimes. Does she think about it, too? Does she lay awake at night, doing nothing but remembering, turning the memories of their youth over and over in her mind until they're smooth? Or does she truly mean it when she says it, that it only occurs to her once in a blue-moon, sudden and sharp. It wasn't even that long ago that they lived that life in the fire. Is Pyhra really the only one who can't blink without seeing it?

He shifts into her face, her sharp eyes and olive skin and long, black braid. He does it as a joke, but she isn't laughing as she turns to watch him shift, face impassive. "Sometimes," he mimics her flat intonation, her thick, low voice, the way she tossed her head a little as she said it to shift her braid. He can mimic her and Remy like he can no one else, and he does it often. As a joke, except nobody's laughing right now, not even him.

"Do you?" She repeats.

Pyhra shifts back into his favorite face, frowning.

“Sometimes.” He lies.

“…Why?”

Pyhra remembers watching his childhood home go down in flames, covered in sticky blood and clutching his baby brother to his chest. He remembers looking up at their Crystal Palace, and wishing glass could burn.

“We couldn’t fight them,” Pyhra takes a long drag, contemplative. “No matter how strong we were. We lost a lot in a pointless fight, with enemies we couldn't possibly win against. But we cut our teeth on that pointless fight.” He flicks the cigarette for emphasis, some of the ash darting off of it in the process. The breeze takes it, floating it through the air until it falls harmlessly to the grass below. “Sometimes it feels like it’s all I know how to do.”

Crow is silent for a long, long moment. Then, she says, “I can’t say I relate, but I can see where you’re coming from. But, I think… we always have a choice. And we can choose to be more than that fight.”

“Well said,” Pyhra says, pressing the butt of his cigarette to the railing until all that’s left is hot ash and embers. “It's a good thing the simple life is so much better. Because any pushing, and I'd go back to that fight." It's the truth, maybe his first one of the night.

She doesn't admonish him, though. Doesn't scold him for finding this hard. She simply smiles, her first of the night, withered and sad, and he knows she understands. “Well said.”

He brushes her shoulders as he goes, skin against skin, sturdy and muscles against callused palms. She doesn’t watch as he leaves, still watching the moon rise.She doesn't call for him to stay, either. She let's him go, touch feather-light in both goodbye and apology for his admission, steps silent as a ghost.

He steps back into the house and calls for Lune, who walks up to him like he’s on a funeral procession. They walk to their own house in silence. Vincent isn’t there when they step into the living room, which means he’s probably off having his own Hallow’s Eve fun, which means they won't have their usual buffer. Pyhra whirls on Lune. “What were you thinking?”

“I— I just wanted to use my Ability,” Lune says, and from the reddening of his face Pyhra can tell it’s the truth.

“You wanted to use your Ability,” Pyhra echoes. “Are the training dummies we have for that exact purpose not enough?”

“No.” Lune is visibly frustrated, face turning red. “No, they’re not. They’re nothing like the real thing!”

“That’s the point.”

“What’s the point of training if it won’t prepare me for the real thing?”

“Because. You’ll get good at hitting the dummies, and then someone will catch a beast for you to fight while the whole fucking village watches, ready to jump in if you’re over your head.”

“And how long will that take?!”

“However long it takes!”

“Oh, and you get to decide that? Because you’re so goddamn wise?”

Lune is breathing heavily, face red with anger. Something in Pyhra is twirling itself into knots, twisting and twisting around until it’s squeezing his insides.

But if he won’t listen to him, maybe he’ll listen to, “Vinny thinks so too.”

“Because you guys are so responsible,” Lune spits. “Yeah fucking right.”

All goes quiet, in Pyhra’s mind. “Yeah fucking right, what?”

“When you were my age, you were doing crazy shit! I’m not stupid, Pyhra, I know what you did when you went off with Crow and Remus!”

“That’s different,” spills from Pyhra’s mouth.

“How is it different! Why is it okay for you to do dumb, crazy shit as a teenager but it’s not okay for me to want to be able to fight beasts?! You can-- hurt people, but when I want to protect the village, I'm irresponsible? That’s just not fair!”

“Not fair,” Pyhra echoes. “Not fair?”

“It’s not fair,” Lune seethes. “And I’m tired of pretending it is. Because we’re all just here, pretending to be normal. Faking like we’re normal rural villagers instead of— of— what we are! Like it’s all goddamn fine, like our childhoods spent… struggling, just,” he smacks his palms on his thighs for emphasis, giving Pyhra a winning, mocking smile. “Didn’t happen!”

Pyhra inhales, and exhales, trying to get his growing anger under control. “Nobody’s pretending anything.”

“Oh, shut up.” Lune points at him. “You’re lying most of all! Putting us up in this house like our old one didn’t get burned down! Pretending to be my dad—“

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!” Pyhra explodes, rage dancing hot along his skin. “No fucking idea! We built this place for you! We stopped fighting for you! So that you could have an easier life!"

Lune’s eyes are wide, but then they narrow. “I never asked for that—“

“So that you—“ Pyhra darts forward, gripping his shoulders in a vice grip. “—don’t have to spill blood just to make enough cash to make sure your little brother eats—!” The last word comes out gnarled, gravelly and harsh. Pyhra’s throat hurts. He shakes Lune once, hard, so hard his hair shudders.

There are tears in his brother’s eyes. He seems dumbstruck, staring up at Pyhra through wide, glassy eyes. He looks so young. Face still round with baby fat, eyes too big for his face. Abruptly, Pyhra releases him, stepping back. Guilt lodges itself into his stomach, cold and hot all at the same time. It digs its sharp edges into his organs.

“Isn’t this nostalgic,” lilts a familiar voice, and the brothers whirl around. Vincent is standing in the doorway, leaned against the frame, arms crossed. His black hair is obscuring his expression, but Pyhra can imagine the raised eyebrow, the scowl. “Would either of you care to explain?”

Pyhra does the explaining. Lune is wiping his eyes, trying to contain his tears. It doesn’t work, because everytime he wipes them away his lips tremble again and more fill his eyes. Vincent approaches Pyhra once it’s all in the air, black eyes peering down at him. “You’re drunk,”

“Yeah,”

Lune shoots him a betrayed expression. Vincent kneels in front of the kid, taking one of his hands in his own. He isn’t wearing his gloves, and the hand beneath is visibly soft from disuse.

“Your brother has been through a lot,” Vincent whispers, and Pyhra miserably slams down onto the couch, back first. It makes his head rush, but he just closes his eyes. “A lot of things he doesn’t like to talk about. Because he loves you. When we built this place, we wanted to create a safe haven. For you, and for him, and me. But it means that Pyhra gets scared when you fight recklessly. Because he fought recklessly, and it… didn’t lead to good things. He’s just scared, Lune.”

There’s a silence, and then Lune says, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Pyhra says. “It should never be your burden to know what happened when we were young.”

“I’m… sorry. That you had to support m—“

Pyhra sits up, grabbing Lune by the shoulders again. He flinches, but after a moment, stills. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever feel bad for what I had to do. Okay? It’s not your fault. It never will be.” Pyhra forces out, his easy lies tasting bitter. But Lune’s staring up at him as if for the first time, and Pyhra remembers. Remembers holding him as an infant and watching his little eyes blink open, slowly, as if it took all the effort in the world.

“But—“

“I would do it all again,” Pyhra whispers, squeezing his shoulders. “And it would still be worth it.”

It's a lie. Pyhra hates telling the truth. Hates looking his own existence in the eye, hates letting the rotten, molten core of his existence be spoken out loud. But It's not, which is why he can say it, why it falls from his lips, so pretty, so easy, so simple. The contradiction is making his hands tremble again, and he just hopes Lune can't feel his fallibility. Pyhra has already failed him enough. He doesn't want to fail him this way, too.

Lune nods, miserably. Pyhra feels like there’s more he should say, more he should try to tell him; but it all dies on his tongue as Vinny ushers him upstairs to his room, leaving Pyhra all alone. It smells like cigarettes and booze, and, not for the first time, Pyhra sees that he’s a godawful influence.

Lune is lucky he has Vinny; he would’ve been more lucky if it wasn’t Pyhra that carried him out of that house, but—

“He’s dead,” Pyhra mutters to himself, trying to make the words stick, trying to make them mean something. “He’s dead, he’s dead, stop thinking about it, he’s dead.” He can see him, in his mind’s eye, frozen at fourteen and smiling in the soft sunlight of their home, backlit so bad that his features are bathed in shadows.

Mostly, Pyhra thinks, Lune is lucky because he doesn’t remember much of him.

Pyhra stumbles up the stairs, ankle nearly rolling from a poorly placed step. He braces himself on the wall. Muttering under his breath, he leans down to yank his pumps off. When he shoves the half-jammed door to his bedroom open, he tosses the shoes on the nearest available surface— his desk chair— and collapses, face first, on the bed. He falls asleep worrying about the scolding he's gonna get from Vinny later, for going off on Lune like that. Pyhra will deserve it. But that doesn't mean he wants their surrogate father's ire. Sleep is fitful, and restless, but welcomed.

He dreams of a great tear in the night sky, like someone had taken a seam ripper to the surface of fabric. Gnarled and raggedy and filled with baring threads desperately trying to hang on to the fraying edges. It's framed by stars, though there's no moon in sight.

Behind the tear, something pulses. Like the veins of a heartbeat, red and heavy. A starburst of color, pumping again and again, as if organic. As if it breathes.

Something is reaching through the tear. He can feel it, in his stomach and in the rapid beating of his heart. Something is reaching, fingers reaching, reaching, reaching.

Whatever it is, it brushes it's fingertips against his chest, just over his heart. It's electrifying, like he's been jabbed with a livewire, and suddenly--

Something is staring at him, through the tear. Two identical eyes of a bright, neon, alien blue.

Pyhra wakes to the sound of the windows rattling.

He sits up gasping, mouth dry as a desert. Outside, wind is raging, rattling the windows and doors and making the house sway gently. It's so loud he can hear it whistling, can hear it slamming things open and wrenching them apart. He can hear the way the house is creaking under the strain. It's leaking in through where his window is cracked, so strong his hair is blowing around his shoulders.

He doesn’t have time to dig for his boots, he decides, and shoves on last night’s pumps. And then he’s outside, adrenaline spurring his hungover body past its normal limits. Wind whips against his skin, bitingly cold. His hair is yanked behind him with the force of it, unkindly pulled from the ponytail it was already falling out of. He turns, and sees Remy running towards him. Their own hair is blowing violently, framing them in a raging black frame. They stop short in front of him, one large hand closing around his bicep, as if to steady him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Do you know what’s going on?”

“No idea,” they say. “I woke up and it was like this.”

No more words are required, and they take off towards where the wind is blowing from. This clearly isn’t a normal wind, and whatever’s causing it, it’s blowing at their village dead-on. Which is suspicious as fuck, given their collective pasts. He doesn't know of anyone with a wind Ability, but he wouldn't put it past the King and his stupid brute squad to send one to confuse them, and then ambush.

It’s as he thinks this that an arm shoots out to grab him by the forearm. He nearly eats shit, but Remy catches him with a hand on the small of his back and the other on his shoulder. Remy manhandles him with ease, picking him back up and setting him down again on his feet. It's casual, instinctual; they'd probably done something similar a million times before.

Sol is gripping his forearm, scowling something intense. Her face is red with anger, eyebrows turned in with a sharpness unmatched. He’s never seen her so mad; she’s normally a sweet kid, always smiling.

“It’s Lune and Sky,” she says, and Pyhra is falling, falling, falling. “They ran towards it.”

Pyhra is running before he knows what’s happening. Remy is calling his name, running after him, but he’s faster than Remy is. Pyhra always was faster; perks of being friends with two beefcakes is that you have to learn to get fast to pick up the slack. It was something he learned the hard way, how to move his feet like a bat outta hell, and he puts it to good use now.

He runs past the other houses, the village square, the hall. The others are gathered there, arms held up against the wind, squinting. He runs past Crow, who exclaims in surprise and calls out after him. But he’s going, going, gone. He’s bursting into the treeline, cutting through the wind like butter. Flying through the wind that stopped everyone else at the edge of the village. He doesn't have time to examine the strangeness of that, not when the world is tilting on it's metaphorical axis.

He can smell the beast before he gets there, the stench putrid. It’s bigger than the last one the two kids had fought before. Pyhra’s in full crisis mode now; body slipping back into old instincts. He raises a hand and says, “I’m a wraith,”

He comes bursting into another clearing. All movements halt to stare at him— or rather, to stare just over his head. They’re staring at nothing, but they don’t know it: from their perspective, great black wings are springing from his back, clawed arms hanging in the air beside them, a shadowy face full of teeth above it all.

The beast is a furry thing, staring up at the wraith’s face. Behind him, Lune and Sky stare, dumbstruck, again in those half formed battle stances. Lune is bleeding.

Pyhra sees red.

Pyhra pulls the gun from the waistband of his tights and shoots at the monster's head. The bullet doesn’t bounce, exactly. But it does sort of fizzle out. And then the monster is whirling around to stare at him, and he lets the illusion fall. The beast swipes at him, and he ducks to avoid it. Then he’s dodging left, right, jumping back. The monster is missing with every swipe of its bloodied claws.

Something is wrong here, he knows; this beast isn’t causing the wind. It was probably agitated because of the wind, and found Lune and Sky, assumed they were its cause. Pyhra shoots at it again, and the bullets connect. The beast wails in pain but hardly stops, instead redoubling its efforts. If there's an Ability User around here, he needs to kill this thing and fast, before they get the jump on all three of them.

Pyhra gets off another shot into its shoulder, and it cries out, momentarily halted. Pyhra sets his foot on its injured shoulder, digging into the wound with the heel of the pump. It cries out again. I’m a shadow, Pyhra thinks. And then the monster is staring up, it’s eyes glazing over with something like terror. Lune and Sky are staring at the open air, too.

What they’re seeing is this: a shadow, in perfect silhouette of Pyhra, ten feet tall. Bathed in black shadows, eyes and teeth a harsh, pearly white against the blackness. It grins down at the monster, digging it’s boot into the beast the same way the real Pyhra is. When Pyhra laughs a little, flicking his hair over his shoulder, the shadow mimics him.

But when Pyhra sets the gun between the monster’s eyes, the shadow mimics this too, pointing a shadow gun at the monster’s forehead. And when Pyhra pulls the trigger, the shadow says, “Bam,” in a many layered, booming voice.

The monster falls dead. Pyhra lets the illusion melt away. Lune faints.

Sky is on his knees in a second flat, sitting beside Lune. The wind has gotten worse, swirling around them. It whips against his face and hair and clothes, making them snap against his skin painfully. He sways in place, trying to keep his balance in the heels.

Pyhra sees the tear form.

The one from his dream; he hears the air rip, watches as it ripples and yanks itself apart, leaving nothing from a fraying tear in the air and a void behind it. The air around it warps, swirling with colors and shapes and nonsense. The tear itself is threaded, just like the one from his dream, as if parts of it are just barely clutching to itself, trying to both stay open and pull itself back together.

It pulses. The ground shakes. The pulsing is red starbursting of light, spilling forth. It pulses, the ground shaking to punctuate it, like a heart beating.

Pyhra knows he can’t fight this; knows it in his bones, in his breath and his own heartbeat. Pyhra can fight almost anything. Almost anyone on the planet can't even begin to stand a chance against his Ability. But, this. There's nothing he can do in the face of power that is so far beyond him. It's inhuman; it's like it barely exists, sitting there, pulsing. He stumbles around, back to the tear, as if to run, and feels the air begin to suck.

All the wind is now flying towards the tear, being yanked into it and pulling leaves and tree branches with it. He digs his feet into the dirt, but the wind becomes harsher, pulling him towards the tear. It's almost like a giant vacuum, he thinks hysterically, falling to his knees and digging his hands into the dirt as he's inched ever further away. He pulls himself to a stop a few feet from the tear, making terrified eye-contact with Sky.

Lune stirs. Blinking his eyes open, slowly, as if its taking all the effort in the world.

“Listen to me!” He screams, over the wind. “You’re right to want to be able to fight! But you can’t fight right now! Not without someone at your shoulder!” He’s yanked another foot back, fingers aching from the strain, digging little trenches into the dirt. Lune and Sky are watching him in horror, clutching each other. “We’ve worked to give you a simple life! Please,” tears fill his voice. “Please be grateful for that! It’s a gift!” It's harder than it looks, he doesn't say. I'm sorry for lying, for pretending, he doesn't say. I don't know how to do anything else.

He breathes out. The tear is pulling him into it. It’s at his back, ice cold and thick, like molasses. “Take him to Stella!” He says to Sky. And to Lune, he shouts, “And next time, remember to set your stance, idiot—!”

And then, with finality, he’s yanked through.

It’s darkness, and freezing. It’s emptiness. Except, a pulsing blue thinness, like tiny little threads, hang in the air. They go in all directions, like a chaotic spiderweb of connection. They pulse once, nearly blinding him with their brightness, and then everything is dark. He’s falling.

He’s falling, and it’s dark. Perfect emptiness, perfect nothingness. There’s nothing like it, he realizes. Nothing like this absolute pitchness, and the feeling of knowing there is nothing. Floating in an endless sea of the absence of existence.

“Pyhra,” a voice says, achingly familiar. Older and so more weary than he remembers, but still familiar. “Pyhra,” he says again. “It’s not a gift.”

There’s a flash of blue, a light, a long line of sparkling through the darkness. Thin and tenuous and yet he's drawn to it, reaching towards that one tangible thing in this nothingness. "Take it," the voice says, and it's been so long since Pyhra has heard that voice that he obeys without thought.

He's tumbling, body twisting around itself as he falls through the nothingness like a stone out of a plane. He let's off a sudden, cut-off scream, and watches as the blue thread pulses, again.

He wakes to the feeling of being poked.