17. Zyran
ZYRAN
The warehouse stretches out around me, endless rows of crates that are stacked too high while shadows pool in corners like they’re working on coming alive. The air is heavy, stale, and pressing down on my chest until breathing feels like work.
I know this place—it’s the same as it always is.
My boots scrape against the concrete as I move forward, the sound echoing too loud, bouncing off the walls. Each step feels like I’m making the wrong one, like the ground is shifting slightly under my weight; it’s going to swallow me whole if I stop paying attention.
There’s a noise somewhere ahead, a dull thud, and then another, each followed by a sharp inhale that doesn’t belong to me.
My stomach drops; I almost feel like I’m going to pass out.
“Raiden?” my voice comes out rough, throat closing.
Another thud, a grunt quickly followed, but it’s muffled, forced down like whoever made it learned that making noise only makes things worse.
I start moving faster, jogging until it turns into a run. The rows of crates are blurring together as I turn the corner, the sound getting louder with each step until it’s right there—impossible to ignore.
And that’s when I see him.
Raiden is on his knees in the middle of the open door, shoulder hunched forward, hands braced weakly against the concrete like they can’t quite hold him up anymore.
Blood stains the collar of his light gray shirt, dark and spreading, and his breathing is uneven, shallow in a way that makes something inside my chest seize.
“Raiden!” I scream.
But he doesn’t look at me when I call his name, not when I scream it over and over again. He only looks past me, and my body goes rigid before my brain can catch up—I already know who’s behind me.
I don’t turn around—I don’t want to; I can’t. And some stupid part of me hopes that if I just stand still long enough, the sound of his heavy footsteps on the concrete won’t get closer and won’t stop right behind my back.
But it does.
“You never did learn,” his voice is low and full of disappointment in that familiar way that always meant the worst was still coming.
My throat goes dry, but I still turn, and just like I thought, our father stands there like he always did—calm and composed.
Hands were always clean even when everything else around him was a mess.
While his kids bleed, bruised and broken under him.
It’s the same expression that he used when we were kids and he’d decided we needed to be taught another lesson about weakness.
About obedience.
About how love was something other people got and we got training instead.
He tilts his head slightly, eyes flickering past me to where Raiden is still struggling to stay upright on the floor.
“I told you what happens when you let people get too close,” he starts, his voice almost conversational, as if we were discussing the weather instead of the blood on the concrete. “You get distracted; you become careless, soft.”
Raiden coughs behind me, the sound wet and pained. My hands curl into fists at my side, begging for the relief of punching my father in the face.
“Stop,” I say, but it comes out weaker than I want—it’s younger. It’s like I’m not the man I am now, but more like the kid who used to stand between him and Cyran, yet I still wasn’t big enough to make it matter.
He smiles faintly at that, an evil smirk that has haunted me since I was three.
“Or what?” he taunts.
I do something I’ve never done before and step forward.
It doesn’t matter that my legs feel heavy or that I feel like I’m moving through water. Nor did it matter that I already know how this ends, that this memory has never once gone differently no matter how many times my brain drags me back there.
I keep moving forward, but somehow our father is faster, and one second he’s standing still, and then the next his hand is fisted in the front of Raiden’s shirt. He hauls him up off the ground like he weighs nothing. Raiden’s face twists in pain, but he bites his tongue, refusing to cry out.
The sound of the blow lands louder than it should, echoing off the metal walls and straight through my skull.
“Weak,” our father calls me calmly, holding Raiden there like he’s a demonstration instead of a person. “This is what happens when you let yourself feel things you can’t afford.”
Another blow, another hit.
Raiden’s head snaps to the side, blood splattering across the floor in patterns I recognize too well.
My chest tightens, breath coming in faster, vision tunneling as rage and helplessness crash into each other inside me.
“Stop!” I shout this time, lunging forward, trying to rip Raiden, my big brother, away from the monster.
But I never reach them; my feet won’t move, and the distance stretches and warps. Every step takes me nowhere as he continues to beat Raiden like I wasn’t there.
Raiden’s eyes finally lift, meeting mine across the space, and there’s something there that hurts more than the blood or the bruises or the sound of fists against bone.
Resignation.
Like he already knows I can’t stop this, like he’s accepted that a long time ago.
The warehouse lights start to flicker, and everything shifts—the crates are gone, and it’s like the walls are beginning to close in around us.
“You can’t protect people,” he laughs. “And every time you try, they become another weakness someone else can use against you.”
His gaze slides to me, sharp and knowing. “Tell me, Zyran, how long do you think she’ll last before someone realizes she matters to you?”
The words slam into me harder than any punch ever could—Esperr.
The image of her bruised cheek flashed across my mind, followed by her laugh in the alley and the small smile in the diner booth.
My heart constricts, panic spiking so fast my body shakes.
“No,” I choke out, finally forcing my body to move, to do anything. “You don’t touch her; you don’t ever get to fucking look at her!” I scream.
Only his smile widens, cold and satisfied. But I don’t care; I’m going to bash his head in if he thinks he can lay a single finger on her.
“Then you should have stayed away from her,” he says.
The words echo, warping as the warehouse shifts around me, shadows stretching too long across the concrete floor.
I don’t think or hesitate, I just move, every instinct in me screaming to put myself between him and Raiden—between him and anyone that he tries to touch.
My boots slam against the ground, the sound frantic, the distance finally striking as rage drowns out the part of my brain that knows this will never end, not well.
My father doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch. He just watches me come racing towards him, the same calm expression on his face like I’m not a threat at all. Like I’ve never been one.
“Zyran—”
The voice isn’t his this time—it’s hers. Soft and breathless, wrong in a place like this, she doesn’t deserve to be wrapped up in a world like this.
My head snaps to the side so fast my vision blurs.
I hope it’s just my head messing with me, but it’s not.
Esperr stands there at the edge of the warehouse, just beyond the rows of crates that weren’t there a second ago.
Her blonde hair is pulled back messily, that bruise is still blooming under her eye, hands shoved into the pockets of the same jacket she wore this morning, almost like she wandered into this nightmare by accident.
She doesn’t belong here, doesn’t belong near that monster.
Fear rips through me so violently that I’m left gasping for air. “No,” I choke, changing direction instantly, abandoning Raiden without even meaning to. “You can’t be here…you need to leave. Now!”
But my girl doesn’t move; she just looks at me, confusion flickering across her face like she doesn’t understand why I sound so desperate, questioning why I’m suddenly running toward her instead of him.
And then behind me, I hear the faint click, the sound awfully familiar. My body goes cold, and I spin around just as my father lifts the gun. The barrel is steady and aimed, only it’s not at Raiden this time; it’s past him, at Esperr, at her.
“No!” I shout, launching myself forward, arms out like I can somehow cover the distance fast enough to shield her, to somehow make myself the only target in the room.
The gunshot cracks through the warehouse, deafening in the enclosed space.
And for a split second I think I made it, that I got in front of her in time, but then the world tilts.
Heat explodes along the side of my neck, sharp and searing, followed immediately by the wet, choking pressure of blood spilling faster that I can breathe it back in.
My steps falter, boots slipping against the ground as my hand flies up instinctively, pressing hard against the wound even though it does nothing to slow the flow.
And the air won’t come; every inhale catches halfway, strangled and useless. The metallic taste floods my mouth as I try to force my lungs to work.
Esperr screams my name, the sound cutting through everything else—high and panicked. I tilt my head just enough to see her running toward me now, eyes wide and hands outstretched like she thinks she can reach me in seconds before I hit the ground.
No. No. No. No. No.
It’s too late; my legs give out, dropping to one knee and then the other, the concrete biting into my skin as my vision starts to tunnel at the edges. No matter how much I try, I can’t push myself back up. I can’t move toward her, to meet her halfway—my body won’t listen.
It never listens when it matters.
“S–stay, stay back,” I rasp, though it comes out as little more than a wet, broken sound. My fingers press against my neck, warm and slick blood seeps between them as my pulse hammers weakly under my palm.
Esperr doesn’t listen.
She keeps running, closing the distance one step at a time, her face twisting in horror as she takes in the blood the way I can’t seem to get enough air, the way my body is already starting to betray me.
My vision darkens with each passing second.