The taste of iron was still thick and present in my mouth. And the blood had begun to dry on my cheek. In crusted layers.
Though my hands never stopped shaking.
I took a step forward, away from the beast's corpse, the forest was alive again. The sounds of the birds chirping, and the wind rustling and moving the leaves, all mocked the quiet agony in my chest. I should've felt victorious. But I didn't. All I felt. was hollow.
A twig snapping.
It wasn't the random snap of a wandering animal.
No, this step was measured. It was slow and it was stalking me.
My breath hitched, I gripped my half-shattered spear tighter.
"Who's there?" I called out.
But all that answered me was silence, the kind of silence that followed after betrayal.
Then a figure stepped through the trees--thin, limping slightly, arms raised in fake surrender.
"...Lucian?"
I froze.
The voice belonged to a ghost I thought was buried long ago.
Julius.
His once pristine academy armor was stained and cracked, barely held together by frayed leather straps. His right arm hung oddly, as if it was broken and never healed correctly. His once smug and cocky demeaner was weaker. He was thinner, paler. His left eye was covered in a clothed bandage.
But it was him.
He smiled at me, and it wasn't friendly. It was that same kind of smile a man wears when he's been through hell and back. and learned to dance alongside the tormented.
"I see you're still breathing," he said, his voice was low. "That makes another one of us."
I didn't answer him. But my own pulse thundered in my own ears.
Images flooded back to me, the memories--the moment he grabbed Evelyn and ran, the way he didn't bother to look back at me. The way he left me to die.
And now he had the audacity to stand before me, half alive and still trying to speak like we were ever equals.
"You left me," I said coldly.
"You left me to die."
Julius tilted his head, "And yet here you are." He stepped closer.
I raised my spear, without thinking, "Don't come any closer!"
"You don't have the balls to hurt me," he said, but I saw the way his right foot subtly shifted sideways, Like a snake in the dirt.
"But I do," I spat, "I should bury this spear in your chest and leave you to rot under the roots."
Julius's smile cracked, just slightly.
"You think I didn't already pay enough for what happened back there?" he said, "You think this was easy. Huh?" He ripped the cloth off his face. Underneath, his skin was burned and a jagged claw-mark crossed where his eye once was.
"Do you know what it's like to hear your own screams echo for hours in a pit? To wake up alone, blood crusting and pus pouring out of your scabs every single day, and to know no one's coming back to save me?"
I didn't move. I just observed him.
Julius took a short slow breath, " You're stronger now," he said, " I can see it in you... on you. The others talk about you in the shadows... the ones who made it out alive. The instructors. The scouts. They say you disappeared into the forest. They say you're something else now, they've been watching us, Lucian."
"I'm alive," I said, "That's all."
He nodded, Looking past me. "And that beast? its dead right?"
"Dead."
He chuckled. 'Then maybe the rumors are true."
my eyes narrowed, "what rumors?"
He looked over his shoulder, the way soldiers do when they think they're being followed. 'The kind that attracts attention. And not the good kind. Mercenaries. War priests. People looking for someone, anyone to blame."
"Why would they look here?"
"Because you're not the only one that survived."
He said it with a bitterness that soaked into the bark of trees and down to the dirt.
"Others?" I asked him.
"Not too many, but enough people talk. Enough to say that some of us turned. And hat one of us came back with fire in their eyes."
He pointed at me, "You."
I felt the cold spine-chilling sensation once more. But not in my skin, but in my gut, and in my blood.
"What do they want?"
"Some want to find you, Others want to erase you. And then there are those who just want to watch what happens next, but it's not only you who came back with that spark."
I stepped forward, " And what do you want, Julius?"
He didn't answer me. He just looked at the trees,
"I was a brother once," he said suddenly, "You never knew him, no one here did, he died on our first training session, we were sent to clear a tunnel. No one told us it was a trap. No one cared."
I didn't say anything. His voice wasn't trembling. But it felt empty.
"I didn't leave you because I hated you. I left you because I thought no one makes it out alive anyways. That the best thing I could do was run and pretend It never happened, I need to survive not just for me but for my brother."
"And how's that working for you?"
He smiled again, but now it was sad, " I see sometimes, in my dreams, my own brother, telling me I should've died instead.
we stood in silence.
Finally, he spoke, "I'm not your enemy. Not yet at least,"
He turned to walk away, but then he stopped. " Thye'll send someone, maybe not now, maybe not for weeks, but they'll come. Because no one leaves the academy and lives to talk about it,"
And then he disappeared into the trees.
I stared after him until the forest swallowed him whole.
I didn't sleep at all that night. I stood by the dying campfire with my broken spear, and watched the stars glide amongst the sky.
The world had changed again. And this time, it wouldn't wait for me to catch up.