Signed In Blood

Chapter 1: The world was warmer then.

Dalton is fifteen years old.

The rain tapped softly on the windows of their flat like it was knocking almost taunting to be let in. A grey, sleepy drizzle that blurred the world outside and made everything feel smaller. Safer. Warmer.Inside, the warm yellow glow of the old kitchen light hummed gently overhead as Dalton sat cross-legged on the worn linoleum floor, a half-finished jigsaw

Elaine Blackshire was sitting in her favourite chair—the one with the floral pattern and the spring that poked her in the back if she sat too far left. Her bare feet were curled beneath her, a cup of tea going cold on the table beside her. Her curly brown hair, streaked already with early grey, was pulled back in a loose bun. She looked tired. But she always looked tired.

And she was smiling.

Dalton placed another puzzle piece, and it didn’t fit. He scowled and tossed it aside, muttering under his breath.

“Patience, sweetheart,” Elaine said, reaching down to ruffle his already messy dark hair. “You always try to force it. You don’t get far like that.”

“I don’t have time to be patient,” Dalton muttered, picking up another piece, this one with the curve of a tree branch. It fit perfectly. He smirked.

Elaine raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you now? At fifteen?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t know how to say, that he hated how tired she always looked. How her coughs were sharper lately. How her hands trembled sometimes when she thought he wasn’t looking. He didn’t know how to tell her that he wanted time to stop—not because he was happy, but because he was scared of what came next.

“Do you remember that poem I used to read you?” she asked suddenly. Her voice was soft, distant.

Dalton shrugged. “You read me a lot of stuff.”

‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. You always liked the bit about not looking too good, nor talking too wise.” She smiled. “You used to say, ‘That’s me, Mum. I’m not wise at all.’” She said with a tired humour in her voice.

He rolled his eyes. “I was nine, Mum”

“You’re still just a boy,” she said.

“I’m not,” Dalton replied sharply. He paused for a while to find the right counter.

“I’m the man of the house.”

Elaine looked at him for a long moment. There was something in her eyes—love, yes, but sorrow too. Deep and knowing. She reached for his hand, the one that always formed a fist when he got angry.

“You’re still allowed to be a boy, Dalton,” she whispered. “Even if the world is heavy.”

He didn’t respond, but he let her hold his hand.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The puzzle between them slowly took shape. A red bicycle leaned against a fence. Blue sky overhead. Dalton’s mind wandered to the job he’d picked up delivering groceries for the shop on the corner. It wasn’t much, but it helped.

“I won’t always be here,” she said suddenly.

Dalton froze. The piece in his hand slipped from his fingers.

“I’m not saying it to scare you. Just so you know. One day you’ll have to keep going without me. And I want you to promise me something.”

He stared at her. “Don’t.”

“Promise me,” she pressed gently, brushing his knuckles with her thumb. “That you won’t let this world turn you cold. Promise you’ll remember how to love. How to be kind, even when it hurts.”

His throat burned. “I can’t promise that.”

Elaine smiled again, not disappointed, just understanding. “That’s okay. I’ll love you enough to carry you for a while. But one day, you’ll have to carry yourself. And I hope by then, you’ll remember this.”

“This?” he echoed.

She gestured around them—to the puzzle, the tea, the rain, the tiny kitchen. “This. Us. How it felt to be safe, even for a moment.”

Dalton swallowed hard, staring down at the image slowly forming on the floor. He didn’t say anything else. Neither did she.

Outside, the rain kept falling, soft and steady, as if the sky itself was mourning something it hadn’t lost yet.

Later that night, the sound of the rain faded into the background hum of the world, and the silence of their small flat wrapped around Dalton like a blanket that didn’t quite warm him.

His mother had fallen asleep in her chair, a threadbare cardigan draped over her shoulders, the cold tea still untouched.

He didn’t wake her.

Instead, he cleared the puzzle pieces carefully—sliding them into the cardboard box as though they were fragile, sacred. He left the finished half on the table, hoping maybe it would make her smile when she saw it in the morning.

But as he moved about the kitchen, wiping down the counter and washing the mug she always used, he heard it again.

The cough.

Not the soft kind she used to mask behind her sleeve. No, this one was deep—like it was clawing up from her chest and dragging her breath with it, dragging her soul with it. It doubled her over before she even realized she’d woken.

“Mum?” He was at her side in an instant, crouching down.

She tried to smile, like it was nothing. “Must be the dust.”

“There’s no dust.” His voice cracked. “You said it was just a cold. That was two months ago.”

Elaine hesitated.

Then, for the first time, she didn’t lie.

“I went to the clinic last week,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear it. “They’re running more tests.”

“What kind of tests?”

She looked away. “The kind that come with too many questions and not enough answers.”

Dalton’s chest tightened. “You should’ve told me.”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” she whispered.

He stood up abruptly, pacing, fists clenched. “You should’ve worried me. I could’ve— I don’t know—done something.”

“There’s nothing for you to do right now but be my son,” she said gently.

“But I can’t just be your son, Mum!” The words burst out before he could stop them. “I have to do something. Work more. Get money. Get you better doctors.”

Elaine reached for him, but he stepped back.

“I’m tired of watching everything fall apart and pretending that it’s okay.”

She blinked slowly, like it physically hurt her to see him like this. “It’s not your job to fix the world, Dalton.”

“It is if no one else will.”

Silence fell between them, heavy and bitter.

Finally, she said, “Come here.”

He hesitated. Then he dropped to his knees beside her, his head in her lap. She stroked his hair with one hand, her other trembling just slightly.

“You are so full of fire,” she said. “But fire doesn’t have to burn everything down. Sometimes it can warm you. Keep you alive. Just… don’t let it make you hard.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” he mumbled.

“I know,” she whispered into the crown of his head. “But you will. And when that happens… I want to believe you’ll still be good. That you won’t shut the door to the world.”

Dalton didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The lump in his throat was too big. The fear too real.

He stayed there with her, curled on the kitchen floor, while the storm outside softened into nothing. And in that quiet, wrapped in the arms of the only person who ever saw him without his armour, he made himself a silent promise:

If the world ever tried to take something from him again, it would have to fight for it.

And he would never let himself feel this helpless again.

The clinic smelled like antiseptic and resignation.

Dalton sat in a plastic chair far too small for his growing frame, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and his fists clenched. The waiting room was a dull beige, the kind of colour that made everything feel like it was fading. A wall-mounted TV played a documentary no one was watching. Across from him, a toddler was crying softly while her mother rubbed her back with distant, mechanical strokes.

Elaine was in the examination room.

She’d insisted he wait outside. He hadn’t listened.

Through the half-open blinds of the window in the door, he could see her silhouette on the bed—too small, too still. The doctor stood beside her, holding a clipboard, speaking in low, careful tones. Dalton couldn’t hear the words. But he saw the look on her face.

Not surprise. Not panic.

Acceptance.

She already knew.

Something snapped inside him. A quiet, cold thing. Like a wire had been cut.

Elaine came out fifteen minutes later, her smile already in place. That soft, worn-out smile she used when she wanted him to believe everything was fine.

“All done,” she said gently. “We can go.”

“What did he say?” Dalton asked flatly.

She hesitated. Then: “I’ll tell you later.”

“No.” His voice came out harder than he meant it to. “Now.”

She looked at him. Really looked at him.

And then, for the first time, she didn’t try to protect him.

“It’s late-stage,” she said, barely above a whisper. “They said there’s not much they can do. A few treatments, maybe, but…” Her voice cracked. “It’s in my bones, sweetheart.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there while something inside him went very, very still.

Elaine reached out and took his hand. Her grip was light, but his fingers were rigid, unmoving.

“I need you to stay with me through this,” she said. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

Dalton swallowed. His jaw clenched so tight it ached.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said at last.

That night, he couldn’t sleep.

He sat in his room, staring at the ceiling, listening to the slow, steady wheeze of his mother’s breathing from the next room. He could hear the difference now—the spaces between the breaths, the hitch at the end.

And for the first time, he let himself cry.

Not loudly. Not like a child.

Silently. Like something inside him was dying too.

When the tears dried, he picked up a notebook from his school bag and began making a list.

Jobs. Money. Rent. Treatment. Options.

His handwriting was sharp and heavy, like each letter was carved into the paper. He circled money twice. Underlined treatment three times.

Love wasn’t going to save her.

Hope wasn’t going to save her.

The world didn’t care about kind women with tired eyes and floral cardigans.

It cared about power. Resources. Leverage.

He made a new list.

What the world respects:

Money

Fear

Control

By morning, the fire in him had changed. It no longer burned with warmth. It seethed with cold purpose.

He kissed his mother’s cheek before heading out for school that day.

But he didn’t go to school.

He went to the edge of town, to the alley behind the pub where he knew men did business that wasn’t written down. He asked questions he wasn’t old enough to ask. Took jobs he didn’t fully understand.

And when the first envelope of cash passed into his hands, something shifted in his soul.

He folded up the softness of the boy who liked puzzles and poetry and hid it away.

Because from now on, the world was war.

And Dalton Blackshire had no intention of losing ever again.