The punch snapped my head sideways and sent me sprawling back against the ruined floorboards. Pain exploded across my cheekbone and through my jaw in a hot white flash. For a second I tasted blood that wasn't theirs, my own mouth filling with copper and spit and shock.
I stared at him.
Nate was breathing hard, his fist still clenched, his whole body shaking now—not with fear, but with anger.
I pushed myself up immediately, half-blind with outrage.
"What the hell—"
I lunged to my feet, ready to hit him back, to shove him, to do something violent with the storm tearing through me.
"ENOUGH!" Nate shouted.
His voice cracked so hard it silenced me mid-step.
We stood there, both breathing hard, surrounded by blood and wreckage and the ruin of everything.
Nate pointed toward me, hand trembling. "You think I don't know this is unbearable?"
I said nothing.
He took one step forward. "You think I don't know what this looks like? What this is?"
His eyes flashed toward my parents and then back to me, tears finally spilling now, unchecked.
"But we have to go."
I shook my head, rage and grief tangling together so badly I could barely speak.
"No."
"Yes."
His voice was raw now, desperate in a way I had never heard before.
"Would they want this?" he demanded. "Would they want you sitting here until something comes in and tears you apart too?"
I flinched.
He pressed harder.
"Would they want you to stay here and become monster food?"
The words slammed into me.
I hated them.
I hated him for saying them.
I hated that part of me heard the truth buried inside them.
He stepped closer. "Or would they want you to live?"
I opened my mouth, but no answer came.
Nate's chest rose and fell sharply. He shouted now, tears tracking down his face.
"They would want you to live, Mark!"
The room rang with it.
He pointed toward the ruined doorway, toward the city, toward anywhere but here.
"They would want you to go. To survive. To make something of your life instead of standing here waiting to die!"
I stared at him, unable to move.
He dragged in a breath. Let it out slowly. Tried, visibly, to steady himself.
When he spoke again, his voice had dropped lower, but the force was still there.
"You don't get to decide for them that your life ends here."
Silence followed.
Only our breathing. The distant sounds of the ruined city. The creak of damaged beams overhead.
Nate wiped at his face roughly with the heel of his hand, smearing dust and tears together. Then he turned toward the doorway.
At the threshold, he stopped.
For one second I thought he would say more.
Instead, he half-turned back and looked at me, not hard now, not angry exactly, just exhausted and scared and still somehow trying.
"I'm heading back," he said. "I hope you follow."
Then he left.
His footsteps moved through the broken hall, quieter and quieter until I couldn't hear them anymore.
I stayed where I was.
The room felt larger after he was gone. Emptier. Colder.
My cheek throbbed where he'd hit me. I could feel the swelling there already, the ache in my jaw when I swallowed, the faint wetness at the corner of my mouth.
I sank back down to my knees without meaning to.
The rage didn't leave.
Neither did the grief.
They just shifted, turned inward and outward at the same time, gnawing at everything. I looked at my parents and tried to imagine walking away from them. The thought made me sick.
But staying…
What did staying mean?
Waiting for the next monster to come through the house and finish what the others had started?
Dying on the floor beside them?
The answer should have been obvious.
It wasn't.
My chest hurt. My face hurt. My whole body felt scraped hollow from the inside.
I bowed my head.
And without warning, a memory surfaced.
I was nine years old.
We were at the same table that now lay broken in the front room, though in the memory it was whole and scratched and cluttered with bowls and bread and the remains of supper. The kitchen smelled warm… meat, potatoes, herbs, butter, all of it mixing with the evening air drifting in through the cracked window. My feet didn't quite reach the floor from the chair, and I remember swinging them anyway while I talked.
I had been going on and on about spirit users, about stories I'd heard, about powerful bonders and famous names and cities far away.
"One day," I had declared with absolute certainty, "I'm going to be a really powerful spirit user."
My father had smiled over the rim of his mug. "Really?"
"The strongest," I said.
Mom laughed softly. "The strongest in the city?"
"In the country."
Dad raised an eyebrow. "That's ambitious."
"In the world," I corrected.
They had laughed then… not mocking, never mocking, just warm with it, surprised and amused and fond in the way only parents can be.
"I'm serious," I'd said, offended that they weren't taking me seriously enough.
My mother had reached across the table and touched my hair. "I know you are."
"I'll be known everywhere," I had insisted. "People will hear my name and know I'm strong."
Dad had leaned back in his chair, studying me like he actually could see it. "You really believe that?"
"Yes."
He nodded once.
Then my mother had smiled, and Dad had smiled too, and she said, "Then maybe you will."
I blinked. "You think so?"
"We do," Dad said.
"Absolutely," Mom added.
The memory held there for one perfect second, light on the table, warmth in the room, their faces alive and certain and proud of me before I had done anything to deserve it.
Then it broke apart.
I was back in the ruined bedroom.
Blood on the floor. Bodies before me. Smoke in the air.
I looked at them for a long time.
At their faces first, because I still could.
Then at the ruin of them, because I couldn't avoid it anymore.
They might have been wrong, I thought.
The idea came slowly, bitterly.
About me becoming someone great. About me becoming strong. About me becoming anything worth remembering.
Maybe they had just loved me too much to see the truth.
Maybe they had believed in someone who was never going to exist.
My throat tightened.
But even if they were wrong, I couldn't stay.
Not here.
Not like this.
Nate had been right, no matter how much I hated him for it.
If I died in this room, then this… this blood, this horror, this ending, would be the last thing left of us. Of them. Of everything they had tried to build.
I wiped at my face with a trembling hand and only smeared more blood across my skin.
"I'll go," I whispered, though whether I was speaking to them or myself, I didn't know.
My voice barely held.
"I'll live."
The words sounded fragile.
Not like a vow. Not yet.
More like the shape of one.
I stared at them one last time, trying to fix their faces in my mind before the room's violence swallowed those too. My mother's lashes. My father's brow. The pieces of them I could still carry.
Then I planted one hand on the floor and pushed myself up.
My legs shook.
I nearly fell.
But I stayed standing.
I looked toward the doorway where Nate had disappeared.
Then back at my parents.
"They might've been wrong about believing in me," I said softly, the words scraping my throat raw. "But I'll live on for your memory."
The room gave me nothing back.
No answer.
Only silence.
I took one step toward the exit.
Then another.
And kept walking.