Before - Homeworld, Two thousand years ago, After the Burn #6
“All right.” She chewed her lower lip, then looked ahead. “If you don't object, we should keep moving. Up the road to the next town. Joshua will find us there. We just have to trust him.”
And one by one, their postures eased. Shoulders straightened. Worry thinned. And the flicker of hope returned, soft but stubborn behind their eyes.
“Rynna’s right,” Malachi added, giving Adam’s arm a companionable shake. “Joshua will find us.”
“Yes.” Adam exhaled, hands tightening on his reins. “He would never leave me for long.” Then, already guiding his horse past Rynna, he called to the others. “Let’s go!”
Malachi gave her a lopsided smile and lifted his fist, waiting. Rynna leaned in, the leather of her reins creaking under her hand as she met his knuckles with a solid knock.
“Yeah,” she said, quieter, but certain. “Let’s go.”
With a soft press of her heel, Empty Night stepped forward, hooves carrying her toward whatever waited ahead.
Yet beneath her skin, beneath the earth itself, something had changed. She felt it—subtle, deliberate—as if unseen threads now drew tight, threading bone to bone, tethering her to something watching. Waiting.
Her teeth met. She kept riding.
Two Years Later
They killed him.
The words burned like acid, churning in her mouth, ripping through the hollow left in her chest.
They killed him. How could they kill him?
Empty Night’s hooves thundered beneath her, each stride a hammer blow against the broken earth as they tore through the desert under a sky split wide with stars. Wind peeled tears from the corners of her eyes.
Her fingers fisted tighter in the reins until they snapped beneath her claws. She hadn’t even noticed when her nails turned to razors. Or when the Hunger began to gnaw again, skating hot and thick through her thoughts.
You don’t have to be the monster they’ll try to make you. His last words rang through her mind once more.
But he was wrong.
She could still see him—pinned to that fucking cross, stripped of dignity, stripped of everything but pain, his blood painting the sand in halos beneath his feet.
Heart stilled. Spirit gone. Gone. Gone.
Her scream broke loose. A ragged, inhuman thing that left the coppery taste of blood in her throat.
She’d nearly destroyed the entire peninsula the moment his soul slipped free. Hunger had surged, no longer chained by his quiet presence as agony exploded in her chest like a thousand knives turned inward.
He’d held it back while he lived, and now it sank its teeth into her heart and dragged her under.
“Lucky bastard.” The words came out on a sob.
He had escaped this cursed fucking world.
Empty Night cried beneath her, the stallion’s muscles bunching, lather slick against black hide. Blood streaked her flanks where Rynna had torn into her flesh.
“I’m sorry.” She wrenched her hands back as if burned, flinging herself sideways from the saddle.
The ground didn’t catch her, so much as slap her. She hit hard, shoulder first, then hip, ribs crumpling under her own weight as the earth rose like a hammer. The air snapped from her lungs in a wet, choking gasp.
Empty Night skidded to a halt, snorting, hooves carving lines in the dunes. She turned, watching Rynna, then stepped toward her.
“No!” Rynna’s voice broke. “Stay back!”
She shrank inward, hands clutching her head, fangs slicing through her lower lip as the fire rose again. Rage, shame, and desperation stitched together over countless centuries, it coiled around her heart, bright and blistering, waiting to erupt.
“Run.” The word was barely formed. “Run!”
Empty Night hesitated, blood streaking her side, gleaming in the moonlight.
Rynna squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the monster back in its cage, forcing herself to remember. Joshua’s hand in hers. His smile. His voice against her neck in those last fragile days before everything shattered.
She was not a monster. Yet. But the fire didn’t care. It burned. And soon, it would break free.
“Go.” She choked on it. “Please. Just go.”
Empty Night didn’t move, though. The mare’s dark eyes stayed steady on her rider, one hoof worrying the sand.
“Go to the Unseelie. You’ll always have a home there.” Rynna grit her teeth. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
The flames climbed higher, searing up from Rynna’s chest until they licked behind her eyes, painting the world in blood and ruin. Her vision splintered, red drowning out shape and shadow. Flames danced across her skin, curling between her fingers like silk threads unraveling.
“I can’t hold it back much longer.” Her mind frayed at the edges where flesh met hunger and hunger met grief.
Still, Empty Night stayed.
“Fuck!” The roar tore from her, monstrous and full of teeth. It shook the dunes beneath them.
She staggered forward, jaws aching to split wide and tear something—anything—apart. If the damn horse wouldn’t leave, then maybe she needed to give her a better reason. Her muscles tensed, ready to pounce on the stupid animal, when something yanked her to a halt.
Her head jerked sideways, eyes straining. Yet she found nothing there. No hand. No rope. Just emptiness. Just the tightening snare of unseen threads digging deeper beneath her skin.
Invisible, but she felt them all the same—barbed and cruel, sinking deep into muscle, wrapping tight around bone. Her arms wrenched wide, spine arched, and limbs pulled taut like a marionette forced upright.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even flinch.
“What now?” She bared her teeth at the swollen, indifferent moon. “Come on, then. Fucking finish it.”
The flames licked up her arms, wrapping her body in heat and hunger. She strained against the unseen bonds, every muscle tearing.
“Bring it on!” she snarled.
And then—
Listen.
The whisper slid along her cheek.
Her lungs sputtered. Tears burned anew. “Josh?”
Did you think I would leave you untethered?
“You did leave!” Her cry cracked the sky. “You let them kill you! And I nearly erased the entire fucking city!”
Grief crashed over her, swallowing rage whole.
But you didn’t.
“The night’s still young.” A broken laugh tore loose.
And you won’t.
She could almost see him. His smile. The touch of his lips against her brow, the ghost of fingertips tracing the curve of her neck.
Just listen, he said again. You are so much more than you know.
Then—gone. His presence ripped away like air stolen from her lungs.
“Josh!” She fought against the invisible chains, tearing free with a snarl, spinning wildly to search empty shadows. “Please!”
YOUR PENANCE BEGINS TODAY, EARTH WARDER.
The voice wasn’t Joshua’s. It boomed through her skull, rattling her bones as it drove her to her knees in the sand.
“What—?” Her nails scraped against her scalp as if she could dig the truth out with her bare fingers. “Josh! What’s happening!?”
YOU ARE READY TO TAKE THE MANTLE. READY TO FULFILL YOUR DUTIES.
“Duties?” The word tasted foul on her tongue, and she whirled again, searching for the source of the voice.
Wind gathered around her, soft at first, then sharper, pulling at hair and flesh.
YOU WILL ONLY REMEMBER YOUR MISSION. EVERYTHING ELSE WILL FADE.
The wind hardened, slicing through the desert in ragged, violent spirals. Sand lifted in sheets, biting at her skin, filling her mouth with grit as the ground beneath her shuddered.
“Ohhhh fuuuuck.” She made the mistake of looking up.
Night stretched wide, splitting open above her in a jagged wound through the clear sky.
And at its center, darkness churned, pulling, ripping, tearing at the edges of reality with talons she couldn’t see.
A cyclone thickened around her, funneling black and red in screeching wind, spiraling faster, tighter, crushing the air from her lungs.
She was trying to find Empty Night through the storm when her body lifted an inch from the ground.
“No—” Her squawk shredded to nothing as the wind stole the word before it could even form.
The sky tore itself inside out. Stars bled beneath her feet, spinning faster, faster, until space itself gnawed at her skin.
Yawning wide, the portal swallowed light and shadow with raw, soundless power.
It sucked at her soul, at the marrow of her being, peeling pieces of her away one atom at a time.
She felt herself unraveling. Skin. Muscle. Thought. Her cries went nowhere as her body came apart, pulled into the howling dark.
Gone.
The world crashed back into her.
She hit the ground hard as something cracked deep in her thighs, and air punched out of her lungs.
“What in the ever living…” she groaned before noticing the noise roaring over her, through her.
Metal against metal, shouts torn from the lungs of the dying, fire splitting sky from ground. The stink of blood and smoke and burning flesh clogged her throat until she gagged on it.
Sprawled in dirt slick with something wet, her fingers twitched uselessly through bone and ash, searching for a world that wasn’t there anymore.
Who… Her mind staggered. Who am I?
Names danced at the boundaries of thought. Wrong names.
But beneath them, burning steady and furious—hers.
Rynna.
The truth of it thrummed in her marrow.
Rynna.
She rolled to her side, coughing dirt, eyes dragging open to the battle around her. Warriors clashed in flashes of steel and magic. Creatures too twisted to name bounded through the smoke. Somewhere, someone begged for mercy. Somewhere, someone else laughed.
The sky above bled red into black.
Then it came. A vibration through her bones, deep and final as a death knell.
Save this world…
Her teeth clenched against the weight of it filling her lungs like water.
For all the other ones you destroyed. For all the life you have taken.
Her breath broke on a sob, and she lowered her palm to the torn earth beneath her, pushing herself to rise.
One heartbeat. One step.
Rynna.
She was still standing, still fighting. And she would save this fucking world.