Page 8 of Fated in A Time of War
He slaps the corpse. Shakes it.
His shoulders heave. There’s no sound, but I see it—he’showling.
It’s raw. It’sreal.
I’ve seen killers. Watched them gloat over the dying. This isn’t that.
This is a brother breaking open.
My stomach flips.
I should move on. I should leave. But my legs won’t cooperate. There’s something magnetic about his grief—like it drags the air around it into orbit. I take a step forward without realizing.
Glass crunches.
His head whips toward me.
Our eyes meet through the haze.
Golden eyes. Slitted pupils. Blood-red scales.
And rage.
He moves so fast.
I barely get a word out. “Wait?—!”
His weapon is already drawn. The barrel locked on my chest.
I don’t move. Can’t.
His gun’s still trained on me, barrel steady. Not shaking. Not unsure. This isn’t a warning—it’s a sentence. One twitch, and he’ll pull that trigger. I see it in the taut cords of his arms, in the way his jaw locks under scaled flesh.
But what really freezes me is his eyes.
They aren’t blank, the way killers’ eyes sometimes are. They’re burning. Golden and molten, full of wildfire rage. And locked—deadlocked—on one thing.
My necklace.
My Ataxian acolyte’s pendant dangles just below my chin, glinting in the ruined light. A simple sigil, small and old, wornsmooth by years of thumb-press prayer. It’s not much. But it’s everything. My past. My promise. My identity.
He sees it, and that’s when it hits him.
Recognition—but not the kind that brings understanding.
Just fury.
He lets out a sound. It isn’t a word, not exactly—it’s half-snarl, half-sob. Then he’s on me.
I barely register the movement.
The world tilts. My back hits rubble. The wind blasts out of me. He’s a wall of muscle and heat, all iron grip and wild grief. My arms are wrenched behind me before I can think to stop it. My wrists are pulled together and bound tight with something thick and metallic. His hands work fast—he’s done this before. It’s instinctual. Efficient. Not cruel. Not yet.
I don’t scream. What would be the point?
I let him do it.
Ilet himbecause flailing would earn me nothing but a snapped neck or a smoking hole in my chest. And more than that—he’s not hollow. I saw it. A second ago. In that crater.
