The sky was clear tonight — at least that was something nice to look at. Both moons were shining on opposite sides of the night sky, alongside the countless stars.
A fragile-looking man lay on a hill, watching the sky. His eyes followed the shooting stars that occasionally streaked overhead, tired and yet soft, a faint smile on his face. He did this almost every night. Staring at the stars was the only thing that made him feel something besides empty.
To Alex, nature was the only beautiful thing in this world. The thought of untouched land — beyond the mountains that almost completely encircled The Dominion, the open grass fields and forests that stretched past its edges — was one of the only things that could still bring him hope.
"I should go find something to eat."
He rose slowly to his feet, eyes still fixed on the night sky, as if breaking away from it required effort. When he finally looked down at The Dominion, he sighed. From this hill he could see nearly all of it.
It was beautiful, too. The countless houses scattered along the outer edges were almost all dark by now, while the inner part still glowed with light and hummed with life.
He ran a hand through his hair and turned back toward the city.
As nice as it was to look down at The Dominion from above, being inside it was a different story entirely. He needed to find someone to pickpocket — not because he wanted to, but because he hadn't eaten since yesterday and wanting didn't factor into survival. He had done it countless times without a problem. Tonight, wouldn't be any different.
He found his target quickly. A middle-aged man, somewhere between forty and fifty, walking alone down the sidewalk at a pace that suggested he had somewhere to be but wasn't in a hurry. No company. Not paying attention.
"Unfortunate,"
Alex muttered to no one.
He timed his approach, closed the gap, and bumped into the man just as his fingers found the wallet — the same motion he had repeated so many times it no longer required thought. Clean. Simple. He was already walking away before the man registered the contact.
Then the man's hand went to his pocket.
"Hey — get back here!"
Alex ran. There was no point looking back, but he did anyway — the man was faster than he looked, closing ground with the kind of urgency that meant he actually cared about what was in that wallet. Alex kept moving, cutting left down a narrow side street.
It wouldn't matter. Four years of living on these streets had taught him every alley, every shortcut, every gap between buildings too narrow for someone older to follow. The man had speed. Alex had the city.
He slipped around a corner, ducked low beside a stack of crates, and listened. Footsteps — heavy, slowing, losing the trail. A frustrated shout somewhere behind him, already distant.
Then silence.
Alex leaned against the wall and let out a slow breath, the wallet turning over in his fingers. He almost smiled.
"At least it never gets any less exciting."
He waited a few more minutes before leaving the hiding spot, then made his way to a small store a few streets over. The wallet was heavier than expected — enough for a few days, maybe more if he was careful. He bought a portion of cooked meat without thinking too hard about it, tucked it under his arm, and headed back to the crates.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd had meat.
He sat on top of the crates and ate slowly, deliberately, making sure each bite lasted. The taste was almost jarring after so long without it — rich and warm in a way that made the cold street feel slightly less miserable. He stared at nothing in particular as he chewed.
Somewhere between the second and third bite, the thought crept in uninvited. He didn't chase it, but he didn't stop it either.
Would any of this ever change?
He had been asking himself that question for four years and the answer had never once shifted. No father. A mother who decided thirteen was old enough to be someone else's problem. Nothing inherited, nothing given, nothing waiting for him on the other side of tomorrow. Just this.
He took another bite.
The anger came the way it always did, quietly at first, then all at once — a heat behind his eyes that he swallowed back down before it could become anything. Getting angry solved nothing. He had learned that early.
He finished the meat in silence.
He tossed the wrapper aside and dropped down from the crates. The street was quiet now — the kind of quiet that usually settled over Faction 7 late at night. Alex didn't mind it. If anything, the silence was one of the few things about this place he actually liked. He started walking, nowhere in particular, just moving.
He had just turned a corner when he stopped.
At first, he thought it was a person. Two arms, two legs, standing upright in the middle of the street about twenty feet ahead. But the proportions were wrong in a way he couldn't immediately name, and he stood there staring until his eyes adjusted to the dark and his stomach dropped.
It was at least seven feet tall, its head nearly level with the lights strung above the street. Thin — not lean, but hollowed out, like something had taken everything unnecessary and removed it. Its body was almost entirely black, broken by deep red streaks along its limbs that ran like cracks through burnt wood. Its arms hung at its sides, far too long, fingers hovering just above the ground even while it stood fully upright.
He looked at its face last.
No eyes. Just two hollow sockets where they should have been — black and depthless, the kind of dark that didn't reflect anything back. It was facing his direction but gave no sign it had actually registered him.
What the hell is that doing here.
He knew what it was. Everyone in Faction 7 did. Walkers were one of the few monsters that made it inside the mountain ring, and the Seventh dealt with them regularly enough that faction members had stopped treating them as anything worth talking about. A nuisance. Routine.
Standing twenty feet from one with nothing in his hands, Alex understood that routine was a word that only applied if you had awakened.
He took a slow step back. His foot caught a loose stone and sent it skittering across the cobblestones — the sound was small, but the street was silent enough that it may as well have been a shout.
The Walker's head turned toward him.
Slowly. No urgency, no reaction — just a patient rotation, those hollow sockets settling in his direction like they had all the time in the world. Then it moved. No sound at all — no footsteps, no breath, nothing.
Alex ran.
He cut back around the corner, legs burning faster than they should have — his body hadn't been built for two chases in one night. He took the first alley he recognized, a narrow gap between two buildings he had used a dozen times before to lose people who were bigger and angrier than him. He pressed against the wall and looked back.
Nothing. No sound. No movement at the entrance.
The silence should have been a relief. It wasn't.
He watched the entrance for a long moment. Empty. Dark. Still.
He almost convinced himself he'd lost it.
Then the fingers appeared — long and slow, curling around the corner of the entrance without a sound — and the Walker stepped into the mouth of the alley like it had simply been waiting for him to stop running.
Alex backed up. His shoulders hit the wall behind him before he expected it to be there.
You know these streets. You idiot.
A dead end. He had backed himself into a dead end.
The Walker moved toward him without any change in pace, unhurried, those hollow eyes fixed on him in a way that felt less like being seen and more like being decided on. Alex stood with the wall at his back and nothing in his hands and no direction left to go, and the thought that arrived was not panic but something quieter and more final.
Of course this is how it ends.
The wall was at his back. The Walker was in front of him. The distance between them was closing in that patient, gliding way that made retreat feel pointless before it was even attempted.
Its arm came forward.
He moved — barely, not enough. The claws caught him across the ribs and folded him sideways into the wall. He hit it hard, one hand pressed to his side, teeth locked against the sound that wanted to come out.
Get up.
He got up.
The Walker raised its arm again. He pushed off the wall but his legs were too slow — underfed and outmatched and running on nothing — and the second blow caught his shoulder and sent him down onto one knee.
The cobblestones were cold beneath his hand.
He looked up. Through the narrow gap above the alley, the night sky was visible. Both moons. The stars — the same ones he had been watching from the hill an hour ago, the only thing that had ever made him feel something besides empty.
He reached for them. The way he always did. Out of habit, out of nothing else left to do.
Something reached back.
The cold arrived first — not the cold of the night air but something older, spreading from his chest outward through his arms and into his hands. Then the weight of it, vast and patient.
His hand on the cobblestones began to glow. Faint. Cold. Brief.
The Walker took a step toward him.
Then stopped.
A woman's voice spoke from somewhere inside the space between his thoughts.
"Congratulations, Alexander Starr."
A pause.
"Your Codex has answered."
His eyes snapped up.
The Walker stood completely still — those depthless sockets fixed on him as if perceiving something that hadn't been there a moment ago. Alex didn't move. Didn't breathe.
The air pressed lightly against his skin, charged with something that had no name yet. And at the edges of his vision, just barely, something faint and cold was beginning to gather.
Like light. But not quite.
Like starlight.