The room had not shifted in ten years.
Same cracked ceiling. Same rusty bed frame on Ellie's bed. Same squeak in the floor panel near the footlocker. Kian draped his jacket over a chair back, wiping dirt from his gloves with a rag.
Ellie was already seated cross-legged on her bed, fastening her hair with practiced ease.
"Did you hear it again?" she asked, not looking up.
Kian grunted. "The nickname?"
"Yeah. Strays."
He scoffed, tossing the rag aside. "As if any of them weren't strays once."
"It's better than what they called us in the first year," Ellie said dryly.
"Barely." He sank into the other bed, resting his arms on his knees. "Ten years, and we're still someone's punchline."
"No," Ellie corrected, looking at him now. "We're someone's warning."
Kian let that hang in the air for a moment before smiling softly. "You've been hanging out with Ava too much."
Ellie smiled. "You think she'd keep me alive this long if I weren't doing something right?"
Their laughter faded slowly. In time. This room — cramped, cold, and half-holed out — was home in a way more places they'd ever been. That fact hurt and was strange.
Ellie leaned back against the wall, taking a deep breath. "You hear the other rumor?"
"Which one?"
"About the Commander. Top Ten Mercenaries are going to meet with him. Couple of days from now."
Kian raised an eyebrow. "Others face-to-face for the first time?"
"Yeah. Vance and Ava say he never comes down off the top decks."
"I thought he was a voice on a radio," Kian growled. "Didn't know he existed."
Ellie tapped her boot on the bedframe. "He's real. And dangerous.
"That's comforting."
"Vance says he's the only one who knows what's coming next. The third Shattering, or something worse."
Kian rubbed the scar on his neck — a nervous habit. "If we're meeting him, something's changed."
"Maybe we're being called up."
To do what?
Be examples?" He shifted his eyes away. "Or cannon fodder?"
Ellie didn't reply immediately. "Maybe both."
Kian said, pacing over to the little window. Outside, the sky at twilight glowed pale orange under a shattered skyline. "You think we're ready?"
Ellie stood up with him. "We stopped being ready the day we made it through. The rest is just endurance.".
They stood shoulder to shoulder in silence. Silent brother and sister bond forged not in blood, but in fire and war.
Then Ellie elbowed him in the elbow. "Still upset about the nickname?"
"Stray sounds like the kind of thing a dog shelter adopts."
Ellie smiled. "Well… You do growl at strangers."
"And you bite."
"Exactly."
They smiled worn but genuine.
Outside, the Black Banner billowed in the increasing wind.
Kian looked over at Ellie, who was still tying her boots.
"Hey… any training today?"
She didn't look up. "Not for us. Vance said we're free until tomorrow."
Kian let out a relieved breath and collapsed onto his back. "Finally. A day without getting tossed around like a ragdolls."
Ellie stood up, pulling her jacket onto her shoulders. "Speak for yourself. I'm heading down to the south wing. Gonna train with Ava."
Kian groaned. "You're a maniac."
"She's the best. I want to get better."
"You say that like getting your ribs dislocated by her is a compliment."
Ellie smirked, walking toward the door. "I'll be sure to tell her you're scared of her."
"I'm not scared. I just like being alive."
Ellie raised an eyebrow and opened the door. "Sleep all you want, princess."
"Don't train too hard, Ellie the Masochist."
"Don't snore too loud, Kian the Lazy."
The door closed behind her.
Kian slowly exhaled, the room feeling much too quiet all of a sudden. He lay there, his eyes tracing the cracks in the ceiling that he had known forever.
His fingers curled slightly into the bedspread.
He whispered, very quietly--
".Mom."
And the past rushed back.
TENYEARSAGO
Smoke crept across the sky like a wounded snake.
The air was dry of metallic taste, like copper burning.
Kian was nine. Ellie was eleven.
They ran.
Their mother, Alina Falean, sprinted ahead of them through the perishing forest-wild tangles of hair lashing in the wind, her coat rent and bloody. She never looked back. Not because she didn't want to. But because she couldn't afford to.
"Kian, stay with me!" Ellie shouted, seizing his hand.
Their house had burned behind them. Their little cottage on the edge of the safe zone had erupted into flames in seconds. No warning. No time. One minute they were dining. The next, the walls erupted.
Wraiths.
Alina had fought back, seizing the secret dagger under the floorboards. She'd stabbed one of the Wraiths through the throat, long enough to get her children out.
Then she'd told them to run.
And they did.
They ran until their feet were raw and the screams were distant behind them. But the fire pursued them, crawling through the trees, attracted to them like a curse.
They hid in a crumbling drainage pipe beneath the highway remains. It reeked of mold and rust, but it was dark. Quiet.
Safe. For now.
Alina knelt between them, checking their injuries brushing soot from Kian's cheeks, wiping the blood off Ellie's knee. Her hands were trembling. Her voice was calm.
Too calm.
"You're okay," she kept saying. "We're okay."
Ellie clutched their mother's sleeve. "Why did they attack us? Why did they find us?"
Alina's eyes flicked to Kian. Then quickly away.
"They were after something else."
She was lying.
Even at nine, Ellie could tell.
Kian didn't speak. He only leaned onto his mother's side and attempted not to cry. He was too old to cry. That's what his mom always said.
But she still embraced him firmly.
That night, they heard commotion upstairs voices, feet crunching gravel.
Alina moved quickly.
She kissed both of them on the forehead.
Then she uttered the words that never left Kian's head:
If I don't make it back.run. And don't stop running. No matter what you hear.
.
"Wait—"
Ellie caught her hand.
"Where are you going?! "
.
"To make sure they don't find you."
.
She smiled once more shuddering, but fearless. The kind of smile only mothers could make.
Then she climbed up out of the tunnel.
Kian never saw her again.
Hours passed. Perhaps more. They heard shouting. Then silence.
Then the forest burned again.
Kian kept whispering, "She'll come back. She has to."
Ellie sat with her knees to her chest, eyes red and silent.
When the flames finally forced them to move, they ran.
For days they survived on stolen food and rainwater. Ellie protected him, lied for him, fought for him. Every night, Kian would whisper his mother's name like a prayer.
Sometimes it felt like she answered in his dreams.
Sometimes it didn't.
Eventually, they found the city ruins a wrecked zone patrolled by desperate survivors and dead things with glowing eyes. They dodged the gangs. Avoided the shadows. Learned to fight with whatever they could grab.
The first time Kian had to kill something it wasn't human. Not exactly. Ellie had stabbed it in the back. Kian had grabbed a broken pipe and killed it.
He couldn't sleep for two nights.
He didn't cry.
Ellie did quietly, when she thought he wasn't looking.
A month passed and they almost ran into scavenger crew— traffickers who would take the kids from the street. A sharp-coated guy who saved them from an evil village with sharper eyes stopped them .
Vance Mancier.
She spoke little, though she watched them fight each other for the other's protection.
And then she made a call.
That is when they first heard them use the term "Mercenary."
That night Vance came to visit and asked them if they wanted to live.
To live, not merely to survive.
But live.
Kian was going to say no. He didn't trust anyone. But Ellie nodded first. Said yes. Said anything was better than watching her little brother starve to death in an alley filled with bodies.
So they went.
And they never looked back.
PresentDay
Kian stirred on the bed, the memory dispersing like smoke through cracks in the wall.
His eyes opened, cracking against the light from the ceiling.
Ten years.
It felt like yesterday.
He sat up and rubbed his face, suddenly wide awake.
The call sign Strays hadn't come from a mission.
It had come from that night.
From being the only survivors of a Wraith attack that wiped out an entire town. From clawing out of bone and ash and becoming something else.
Not by choice.
But because they'd had no other choice.
He stood, crossed the room, and got his knife from the nightstand. Not to drill. Not to fight. Just to hold it in his hands the weight of something real.
Then he looked at the barred window.
Out there, the fire still burned. Out there, his mother's last fight still echoed.
And out there, somebody knew why the Wraiths had visited that night.
Kian wasn't just going to find out.
He was going to make them pay.
The existence of the Wraiths will just be a mere memory