2. Chapter two
Chapter two
Kieran
I can’t move.
I can’t fucking breathe .
Terror is a fist around my throat, tight, unrelenting. My back’s pressed against the crate, my body trembling so hard it rattles the damn wood. His hand is on me. Iron fingers clamped around my neck, not choking me, but close enough that every frantic heartbeat thunders against his palm.
I can’t even swallow without him feeling it.
The blade in his other hand drips blood onto the boards between us.
Wet. Slow. A rhythm of death I can’t look away from.
The stench of rot still clings to it, thick in the air, crawling into my lungs until I swear I can fucking taste it.
I don’t even want to know what else that weapon has seen in this fucked up world.
And then there’s him .
Too close. Too fucking close. His scarred face inches from mine, his eyes black pits that see right through me. Heat radiates off him, suffocating, the kind that makes my head swim.
I want to scream. I want to beg. Instead, all I manage is a broken gasp when his lips curl and that low, dark, chuckle vibrates straight through me. His thumb strokes lazily over the side of my throat, like he’s testing the beat of my pulse. His grin sharpens, all teeth.
“Lost your voice?”
The words crawl under my skin, a taunt wrapped in amusement, and I know, deep down, my life just shifted. One wrong move, and it’s over. One wrong move… and maybe it already is.
I claw at the tatted wrist pinning me, nails scraping over scarred skin and filthy bandages, desperate for breath. He eases the pressure just enough for air to scrape back into my lungs.
“Why are you here alone, not with the others?” His voice is low, dangerous. A question dressed up like an order.
My head jerks side to the side before I can stop it. I don’t know what to answer. I don’t even know how. Because I can’t tell him the truth.
I can’t tell him I slipped onto the boat in the dead of night, hiding beneath torn nets and reeking tarps while the dock guards drank themselves stupid.
I can’t tell him I moved in silence every time boots thudded above me, praying no one would drag me out and throw me to the waves.
I can’t tell him I don’t belong here—that I’m no one, nothing.
Because if I do, he might just decide to prove them right. Wipe me from this place like I was never here. And no one would miss me.
My gaze flicks to the hallway door, to the smeared trail of blood where that poor bastard was ripped apart by the Walker. My brain scrambles, gears turning hard, desperate for something— anything —that might make sense.
“My dad,” I rasp, dragging air through my shredded throat. “My dad… he’s the one that got attacked. I managed to escape.”
He cocks his head, eyes narrowing, studying me like I’m some puzzle he already knows the answer to. The silence stretches, taut and sharp, before he gives the smallest, curt nod.
And in that moment, my stomach drops.
I lied.
I lied, I lied, I fucking lied.
I lied to a Watcher. To this Watcher. This monster of a man with Walker’s blood still dripping from his blade, with eyes that look like they’ve stared into the bottomless abyss and decided to make it home.
He lingers for a beat, the weight of his gaze making my knees want to buckle, before a rough huff escapes him. Then, suddenly, he lets me go.
I stumble, clawing at my throat, coughing against the burn. My taped-up flip-flops skid in the slick puddle of gore, the crimson smear marking me just as much as it marks the floor.
“Let’s go,” he growls, sheathing his cleaver like this is nothing, like I’m nothing. Which I am. “They can sort you out at the docks.”
And just like that, he turns his back, walking away with a hitch in his step as if he hadn’t just had my life in his hands.
I grab my backpack—everything I own stuffed in one ragged bag—and scramble after him, tripping over my own feet, my pulse a frantic drumbeat in my ears.
Shit. Shit. Shit . I made it. I made it this fucking far.
When I step out of the ship’s belly, the light slams into me. Too bright. Too raw. My eyes burn, lids squeezing shut, but when I finally force them open the world explodes in colors I can’t fucking process.
Ibitha .
It sprawls before me like something out of a dream and a nightmare all at once. Whitewashed walls, cracked and scarred by red rain, patched over with tarp and rope. Palm trees jutting between broken stone, green vines crawling across balconies. Too lush, too alive against all this ruin.
I haven’t seen this much green since Germany. Since before everything went to hell.
The air hits next. Salt and rot, sure, like every dock I’ve ever known… But beneath it? Something sharper. Sweeter. Almost ethereal. It makes my head spin.
And the people. Gods, the people. Not just the filthy crowd packed onto the pier, but further in…
Streets are already stirring in this early morning, voices rising beneath tents and tarps.
I catch flashes of life: Men hauling crates and setting up shop, a woman filling a rusty bucket with water, a child tugging at a… is that a goat?
They were right. My mother was right.
This is a safe haven. A city. A place that breathes when the rest of the world is choking.
A place that feels too alive for someone like me.
My heart hammers as I step off the boat, stumbling when my flip-flop catches on the warped deck. I curse under my breath, clutching my bag tighter like that’ll anchor me, like that’ll keep me from falling apart right here.
The Watcher that found me doesn’t slow. Doesn’t glance back. Just cuts through the pier like he owns it, people parting on instinct, like prey scattering from a predator.
A rough hand shoves me forward, wedging me into line with the others. The unlucky bastards who actually made it to shore. They’re gaunt, sunburned, filthy… and all of them glance my way. Brows furrow. Mouths move. Whispering.
They know each other. Shared the boat, shared the fear, probably huddled shoulder to shoulder through those nights of storm and rot.
Me? I don’t belong. And they can see it, written all over my skin.
I ignore them and snap my gaze forward, fix it on the squat concrete building up ahead. A checkpoint. Of course, that’s where the line’s crawling.
My chest seizes. Heartbeat stuttering, then hammering twice as hard.
I don’t have any of the fucking papers you get when boarded. Not like the rest of them. You can’t just climb on a boat, sail to Ibitha, and expect to stay. Everyone knows that.
But desperate times and all…
We pass a crooked pole with a lantern lashed to it, and nailed right below, a weather-beaten pamphlet. The ink is faded, but the words still scream.
THE NINE DECREES OF IBITHA
When the red rain fell and the world rotted, Ibitha rose from ruin.
The wall was built stone by stone, the city carved out of bones and blood.
We endured because we stood together, and together we remain.
But strength demands order, and survival demands obedience.
To keep Ibitha strong, all who live within must uphold the Nine decrees.
Break them, and you break us all.
All must contribute. No work, no food.
All must wear tags. Concealment of your status is a crime.
Childhood is guarded. Adults must serve.
No one leaves the walls. Permission is survival.
The Pit is justice. Trial by blood. Survive, and walk free.
The Touched are marked. Once Turned, they burn.
The red rain is death. Seek cover. Do. Not. Get. Wet.
Obey the Watchers. Their word is warning.
The word of the Nine is final. Their judgment is law.
I skim the paper and the first one hits me in the chest like a fist: All must contribute. No work, no food.
My throat locks. I squeeze my eyes shut. Breathe, Kieran. Gods, fucking breathe. You have to live. You have to survive. You promised.
Her voice is there, even now, rasping through her last breath. Live, Kieran. Live. Be free.
And then the memory crashes in, the way her eyes glazed, how her hand slipped from mine, her body shuddering one last time before going still.
I’ll never scrub that moment from my skull. It’s carved there, burned deep where nothing can touch it.
The line shifts, dragging me forward again, and a murmur ripples through the passengers in front of me. A poor bastard gets pulled aside, directed back toward the boat. The sound that leaves him is half a whimper, half a curse. Desperate voices rise in his wake.
A child clings to the woman ahead of me, knuckles white against the fabric of her ragged dress. “We’ll be fine,” she whispers, though her voice trembles. “They don’t decline minors. They never do. It’s the law.”
A small sliver of an idea punches through me, sharp and shallow, when I hear the words. It’s an opening, a chance, maybe… If I play it right.
Childhood is guarded , the third decree stated. Confirming what that woman said.
I might have nothing. No papers. Nothing to my name.
I don’t have the funds to smuggle myself in, to pay the bribes everyone whispers about.
Those off-the-book fees that grease the council’s hands for entrance.
And I sure as hell don’t have one of the trades or skills that get you waved through the checkpoint with a shiny new tag.
But I’ve got a card left to play. My face . The way I still look younger than I actually am. Boyish. Soft around the edges. I’m twenty years old, and fuck me, I usually hate that I don’t look my age. But right now…
If I stick to my story, that my father was the one who got attacked down in the ship’s belly, that I barely made it out alive… They won’t turn me away.
They can’t. Not according to their own decrees.