Her fingers clawed at nothing but empty air. That small body—the one that had breathed life into her with its warmth and grip just moments ago—had dissolved like a mist, its existence entirely erased. Serevia’s sprint shattered as if she had slammed into an invisible wall. She froze where she stood, her feet stumbling as if the soft grass had suddenly warped into scorching sand, into a suffocating mire.

  When she stopped, the world continued to spin around her, but she remained trapped in that horrific second where time grinds to a halt and space warps. She scanned the endless green and that damned, beautiful sky with pure, feral panic. Her heart hammered with an unspeakable violence, a deafening rhythm as if it wanted to tear through her ribs and escape the agony. The paradise from before—the cheerful birdsong, the brilliant sun—vanished into a suffocating, sinister, and lethal silence. Peace evaporated like a lie, leaving behind only naked, ice-cold terror.

  Her throat tightened, the air in her lungs failed her, and she found she couldn't breathe—but the horror within her exploded into a piercing shriek.

  "TORN!"

  Her voice echoed through the infinite void and returned like a boomerang, but no one answered. Her own voice sounded foreign to her, cracked and torn by terror. She spun in circles, clawing at her hair, digging her nails into her scalp as she searched for a ghost that wasn't there.

  "TORN! Where are you!?"

  Her knees were on the verge of buckling; she struggled to even stay upright. As tears flooded her eyes, she cried out again in the heart of that vast loneliness—a prayer, a plea. Her voice was no longer a scream; it had become the pained, wounded groan of a dying animal.

  "Torn... Please! Please don't go! I’m begging you, don't go!"

  Serevia spun in place, her eyes wide with a horror that threatened to pop them from their sockets. Her gaze frantically parsed every inch of the endless green, every shifting shadow, searching for a tiny sign, a familiar fragment. Panic was an icy hand clutching her throat; she breathed, yet she felt herself drowning. Her mind had long since abandoned logic, shivering only with primal, raw fear.

  Just then, on the very edge of her vision, she caught that familiar silhouette at the base of a gnarled, massive apple tree. A dark, frail shadow... It slipped behind the trunk as if playing a lethal game of hide-and-seek. Was it Torn? Or a cruel, merciless trick of her mind? Was he hiding, or was he running from something? There were no answers, and Serevia didn't care. Only one truth remained, a single command flowing through her veins: she had to find him, take that small hand, and never—even in death—let go.

  Without a second thought, she lunged toward the tree like an arrow, using the final dregs of her strength. The wind lashed her face and the grass tangled around her legs to slow her down, but she was locked onto the target. Reaching the tree, she grabbed the rough bark for support and whipped around the back. She was about to scream "Torn!" when her foot struck empty air.

  The ground was yanked from beneath her like a rug. Serevia lost her balance and slammed hard into the earth. But the place she fell wasn't the soft, fragrant grass from before. Her knees and palms scraped against hard, abrasive, freezing concrete, shredding her skin.

  The moment she fell, as if the lights of a massive theater had been violently cut, the brilliant sun, the blue sky, and the vibrant nature vanished in a single second. The universe lost its color; everything turned gray. The golden light was replaced by the damned gray fog that burned the throat and blurred the vision. The taste of the air shifted instantly; it no longer tasted of apples and flowers, but of rust, mold, and that metallic reek of blood—the lethal, rotting breath of Caduta flooded her lungs. The dream ended. The darkest nightmare began.

  Through the darkness and the haze, a sharp, piercing shriek echoed like a knife wound.

  "SISTER!"

  This voice... forged from worry, pure terror, and helplessness, belonged to Torn. Yet not a trace of that cheerful, vibrant child remained; this voice carried the plea of someone in agony, cornered, feeling the very breath of death against his neck. At the sound of that tone, Serevia forgot her own fear, replaced by a far greater, far more savage horror. She struggled to rise from where she lay, ignoring her stinging knees, and scanned the dense fog and pitch-black void with a frantic desperation.

  When that voice echoed through the mists again, its direction impossible to pin down, Serevia's blood turned to ice in her veins.

  "Save me! ...Sister, please! Save me!"

  Torn's desperate, lung-shattering, soul-crushing shrieks echoed through the skeletal, rusted ruins of Caduta, each resonance striking her mind like a sledgehammer. The voice bled from everywhere—the wind, the earth, from behind the crumbling walls—yet his body was nowhere to be found. It felt as though the city, those cursed ruins, had swallowed her brother whole and now refused to surrender him.

  Serevia’s world shed its gray, hazy skin and donned a hellish, eye-scorching crimson. Flames erupted from the windows of the buildings as a thick, suffocating layer of black smoke smothered the sky. Midst the chaos, the scenes she caught in her peripheral vision churned her stomach and made her head spin; the Enforcers, in their black armor and soulless masks, had flooded the streets like angels of death. They savagely hunted innocent people in the middle of the street, crushing them with rifle butts simply because their genetics differed—simply because they were "mutants." Blood flowed in torrents, carving a river through the filthy sidewalks. Serevia tossed and turned through this carnage like an invisible ghost, a shadow no one noticed, searching for her brother.

  "Is there... is there no one! Help me!" she shrieked until it felt as though her vocal cords would snap, her voice drowning in the smoky, soot-choked air.

  "Torn! Where are you! TORN! Give me a sign! Please, talk to me!"

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  Serevia wept uncontrollably, the tears carving paths through the soot and grime on her cheeks before falling as muddy drops from her chin. She prayed for a hand—a merciful hand—to reach out and pull that small boy from this hell. Yet she witnessed only death; she heard only the crack of gunfire and the splintering of bone. Then, suddenly, the chaos vanished as if severed by a blade. Her brother’s shrieks cut out. The gunfire fell silent. Even the crackle of the flames evaporated. No one remained around her—not the fleeing victims, nor the murdering executioners. Only Serevia and that lethal, heavy silence remained.

  Serevia cast one final, exhausted glance around her with trembling shoulders and blurred eyes. She had to find him. She couldn't lose him. If Torn was gone, there was no meaning to this breath, no reason for this heart to beat. Right then, her gaze locked onto a ruin ahead, that familiar and terrifying structure: the Old Glass Factory.

  Beneath the cold, dead, gray light bleeding through the shattered walls, she saw Torn.

  The small child knelt on his knees atop millions of razor-sharp glass shards carpeting the factory floor. Those jagged, merciless slivers had surely pierced his delicate knees, carving into his flesh; perhaps blood leaked through his trousers, yet Torn seemed utterly oblivious to the pain, his body gone numb. He didn't move. His innocent face bore no trace of agony, no fear, and no shadow of his previous screams. Only a stagnant, hollow, and terrifying mask of expressionlessness sat upon his features. As Serevia froze at the sight, her eyes drifted with a terrifying weight toward the shadow looming directly behind Torn—the dark, imposing silhouette of the Leader.

  That merciless man, that cold machine of death, towered over the boy like an executioner. He pressed the barrel of his heavy black pistol ruthlessly against Torn’s tiny, defenseless temple. Even from where she stood, Serevia could feel the metal bite into the boy's skin, the freezing chill of the barrel, the lethal hardness of the steel.

  The young girl’s breath hitched in her throat; she began to suffocate as if an invisible hand were crushing her windpipe. Her heart ached so violently it felt as though a grenade packed with glass shards had detonated inside her chest, the shrapnel tearing through her organs. She couldn't move, couldn't scream; her tongue was tied. Torn’s voice—ice-cold, calm, and accusatory beyond his years—shattered the lethal silence. He spoke without turning his head, his eyes fixed on the void.

  "Sister? ...Why are you crying?"

  Only muffled, wheezing, meaningless moans spilled from Serevia’s mouth instead of words.

  "H-h... T-torn... Ugh..."

  She possessed no strength left to speak through the weeping, the terror, and the despair; her throat was locked like a rusted bolt. Her knees were on the verge of giving way. Just as she parted her lips to whisper a single word, a plea, with the last drop of strength in her lungs, Torn’s expressionless face shifted. The young boy slightly furrowed his brows, as if unable to make sense of his sister’s wretched state.

  Torn’s stagnant, glacial features suddenly buckled, warping into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. When his lips parted, not a single trace of his childish innocence remained; his voice rang out with the bone-chilling weight of a judge speaking from the grave—accusatory and real enough to shatter her sanity.

  "You left me! Why did you let go of my hand? Why didn't you come for me?"

  The words didn't merely hang in the stagnant air; they cracked like grease-slicked whips against Serevia’s face, her soul, and her very conscience. The boy pressed on, his voice fracturing, shifting from a scream into a raspy, venomous condemnation.

  "You did this... I’m here because of you! Look! Look at what he’s going to do to me now!"

  Serevia’s knees threatened to give way. She shook her head violently, fighting to clamp her hands over her ears to strangle the sound, but she failed. Torn’s voice echoed through the very folds of her brain, every syllable branding itself into her mind.

  "You killed me, Serevia! You!"

  The young girl crumbled, shrinking into herself in a wretched heap. Through her heaving sobs, gasping for air that wouldn't come, she fought to answer. Her voice sounded less like a human's and more like the final, desperate thrashing of someone drowning, sinking into a dark abyss.

  "No... No, Torn, I didn't leave you! I swear I didn't! I couldn't hold on! I wasn't strong enough!"

  Her throat burned as if she had swallowed acid. The words she choked back felt like jagged glass shards, shredding her windpipe from the inside. With every breath, it felt as though her lungs were filling with blood rather than air.

  "I didn't do it... Little brother, I swear I didn't! We were running... remember! We were running!"

  The agony in her voice was so dense that the words caused physical pain as they tore from her mouth. That crushing guilt, that absolute helplessness, felt as if her own flesh were being ripped from her bones.

  Driven to madness, she broke into a sprint toward her brother. She lunged forward to snatch him from the end of that barrel, to shield his body with her own. But as she ran, the ground stretched like rotting rubber, and the distance refused to close. The twisted logic of her nightmare had taken hold; no matter how fast she ran, Torn remained at that impossible, unreachable distance. Her lungs felt ready to burst and her legs had gone numb, but she didn't stop—she couldn't stop.

  Just as she thought she might reach him, her foot caught on a jagged, protruding piece of rusted iron or a stray stone. Before she could regain her balance, her body catapulted forward, and she slammed face-first into the concrete, into the filth.

  Her knees and palms throbbed from the impact, but she didn't even feel the pain. She violently jerked her head up, staring through her blurred, tear-soaked lashes at the man who held the power of life and death. She locked her gaze onto the figure looming over Torn—the freezing, merciless Leader.

  No pride remained in her eyes, no defiance. Only a raw, naked plea—an absolute void. She anchored her eyes to the invisible ones behind his mask, not just begging silently, but screaming for mercy at the top of her lungs. In that second, she was ready to surrender everything—her pride, her life, her soul—as long as he didn't pull the trigger, as long as that finger didn't move.

  Desperate, her voice trembling and her face a mess of spit and tears, she shrieked, stripped of all humanity.

  "Don't do it! For the love of God... don't! He’s just a child! He’s only a child!"

  Her breath failed her. She swallowed hard, reaching her hands toward them even though she knew they were out of reach.

  "Shoot me! I swear I won’t make a sound—just shoot me! Let him go! I’m begging you, let him go!"

  But the Leader seemed not to hear her, or perhaps he simply didn't care for her bargain. He was a machine, a soulless executioner.

  As his black-gloved finger settled slowly, agonizingly onto the curved metal of the trigger, a soul-shattering shriek tore from Serevia’s chest, piercing the sky.

  "NO!"

  And then, the sound came.

  Crack!

  A dry, deafening, and razor-sharp explosion.

  Time froze. Serevia’s scream caught in her throat, decaying into a wheeze. Before her eyes, her brother’s tiny body buckled, jerking once before collapsing to the side like a puppet with its strings severed. Beneath him, resting on those glass shards, a dark, hot fluid began to bleed out and spread rapidly. Blood... her brother’s blood. It flowed in such volume that it carved a crimson river through the cracks in the floor, surging toward Serevia as if desperate to touch her.

  As the metallic, throat-burning reek of fresh blood flooded her nostrils, Serevia’s mind shattered completely. In pure horror and disbelief, she shrieked again until her voice broke.

  "No! TORN!"

  That agonizing cry of defiance, tearing through Serevia’s lungs, slammed against the bare walls of the room where she lay trapped, growing louder as it echoed back and exploded in her ears like a sledgehammer.

  "No!"