Prologue
The weather in Ombá was flawless—the kind of day that made you forget the world had any darkness in it at all. Our small coastal community sat nestled between forest and shore, and on mornings like this, the sky stretched endlessly blue, unmarred by clouds. Sunlight poured over everything, warm and generous, while birdsong drifted through the air in layered harmonies. I loved days like this. There was a clearing in the woods where the trees pulled back just enough to reveal a small hill, and from its crest, you could see the entire town spread out below like a painting.
"Why is our town so small?" Mira's voice rang out, high and bright, cutting through the stillness. She stood at the top of the hill, spinning in lazy circles. "How could anyone *not* want to live by the coast? It's perfect here." At seven years old, she moved like a leaf caught in the wind—effortless, untethered, completely unaware of her own grace.
"Yeah, well, nothing's perfect," I said, my voice thick and nasal. The spring pollen had turned the air into a minefield for my sinuses, and I could barely breathe through my nose. I lay sprawled in the grass, staring up at the sky, remembering the rains that had drenched us just months before. Even paradise had its inconveniences.
"You only say that because you can't think of anything actually bad about home." She stopped spinning to look down at me, but her legs kept their momentum. A second later, she tumbled into the grass with a soft thud.
"Sure," I admitted, pushing myself up and climbing the hill to stand beside her. We stood there in silence for a while, watching the town below. People moved through their routines—working, playing, eating, talking, resting. It all seemed so ordinary. So safe.
Then the birds stopped singing.
The wind died. The waves, which had been crashing steadily against the rocks, seemed to retreat, as if the ocean itself was holding its breath. An eerie silence settled over everything, and the hair on my arms stood on end, prickling with some primal awareness I couldn't name. For a moment, the world felt suspended—waiting. Then the wind returned with a low whistle, and the waves resumed their rhythm. I glanced down at Mira to see if she'd noticed, but she was still frozen, her fluffy ears perked forward, her tail rigid and poised like a scorpion preparing to strike.
She'd always been more attuned to the world around us—a gift of her hybrid nature. Her senses were sharper than mine, more reliable. I'd inherited my father's human limitations, and there were times I envied what she had.
"Mira, what's wrong?" I crouched beside her, trying to balance on my toes the way she did, but I lost my footing and landed hard on the damp grass, soaking the seat of my pants.
"Shut up," she hissed. "I think I hear something." I strained to listen, but all I could detect was the absence—the unnatural silence where animal sounds should have been.
"Probably just a fox," I offered.
Her ears twitched, rotating like radar dishes, locking onto something in the distance. Her eyes narrowed to slits, pupils contracting as she focused. Then they went wide, and a bone-chilling shriek tore through the air from the direction of the tree line.
"That was an arrow!" Mira shouted. "I saw it!" She bolted to her feet and sprinted toward town. I lunged for her hand, but she jerked away. Without thinking, I grabbed her tail—I knew it would hurt, but I had no choice. She yelped and whipped around, her eyes blazing with fury.
"Let go of me!" she snarled, straining against my grip. "I have to help them!"
A chorus of screams erupted from the town below. A dark cloud rose from the tree line—not smoke, but something worse. Arrows. Hundreds of them, arcing through the air like a plague of locusts, blotting out the sun before raining down on everything they touched.
"Mira, listen to me!" I forced myself to meet her eyes, though I wanted to look anywhere else. "Run to the stream by the border. Hide in the fort. Don't come out unless Mom, Dad, or I come for you. Do you understand?"
"What about you?" Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over.
"I'll be fine. I'm going to find Mom and Dad. They were inside making pie, remember?" The lie came easily, though I had no idea if it was true. I needed her to believe it. I needed *myself* to believe it.
"No!" She shook her head violently, her small hands gripping my shirt. "I'm not leaving you! We have to stay together!"
"Mira, please—"
"I can help!" Her voice cracked, desperate. "I can fight, I can—"
"You can't." The words came out harsher than I intended, and I saw her flinch. I softened my tone, crouching down to her level. "Listen to me. You're faster than me. You're quieter. You can hide better than anyone I know. But I need you to be safe so I can focus on finding Mom and Dad. Remember our fort? No one else knows about it. You'll be safe there. Can you do that for me?"
She was sobbing now, her whole body shaking. "I don't want to be alone."
"I know. I know." I pulled her into a tight hug, feeling her tears soak into my shoulder. "But you won't be alone for long. I promise I'll come find you as soon as I can. Just stay hidden in the fort, okay? Don't come out for anyone but us."
She pulled back, her face streaked with tears and dirt. "You promise you'll come back?"
The lie burned in my throat, but I forced it out anyway. "I promise."
For a long moment, she just stared at me, searching my face for something—reassurance, maybe, or the truth I was trying to hide. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"Okay," she whispered, her voice so small I almost didn't hear it.
She turned and took a few hesitant steps toward the woods, then stopped. She looked back at me one more time, her ears drooping, her tail limp. She said something—I couldn't hear it, but I knew what it was—and then she ran, disappearing between the trees.
*God, I hope they're okay.* I moved carefully toward the town, using every bit of cover I could find. I crept between trees, slid down irrigation ditches, scrambled over the roofs of small houses. By the time I reached the edge of town, past the farms and into the residential streets, I was confronted with something I'd never prepared myself for.
Bodies.
I'd seen animal carcasses before—deer brought in by hunters, chickens butchered for dinner. I knew what death looked like in that context. But this was different. These were *people*. Neighbors. Friends. My eyes tried to process what I was seeing, but my stomach rebelled. I turned away and retched, bile burning my throat.
The main streets would have been the fastest route, but then I heard voices.
They were distant at first—just murmurs carried on the wind—but something about them made my skin crawl. Low, casual, like they were discussing the weather. I pressed myself against the side of a building, straining to hear.
The voices grew louder. Closer.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I looked around frantically—nowhere to hide, nowhere to run without being seen. The voices were maybe twenty feet away now, just around the corner. I dropped to the ground, pressing myself flat into the mud. It was cold, thick, and reeking of copper. Blood. I was lying in blood.
Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't think.
Two figures rounded the corner, their boots squelching through the gore-soaked street. I could see them through the gaps between my arms—both wearing dark leather armor, weapons strapped to their belts. One was tall and broad-shouldered. The other was leaner, with a nervous energy that made him fidget as he walked.
"I'm telling you, I sense someone nearby," the lean one said, his voice tight with suspicion. His head swiveled slowly, scanning the area. "A presence. Recent. Someone's alive."
The larger man grunted. "Are you sure you're even a real mage, Kael? Everyone here is obviously dead."
My lungs screamed for air, but I didn't dare breathe. My vision started to blur at the edges. The mud pressed against my face, cold and suffocating.
"You've been 'feeling presences' all day," the larger man continued with a snort. "Face it—you're jumpy. This is your first harvest, isn't it?"
The word slithered into my mind like something poisonous.
"It's not that," Kael said defensively. "I know what I felt. There's someone here. Close."
The larger man sighed. "Fine. Let's check the buildings one more time before we start collecting. But if we don't find anyone, you're carrying the extra souls yourself."
Souls.
The word detonated in my chest. My body went rigid, every muscle locking up in horror. They weren't just killing people. They were taking something *from* them. Harvesting them like crops. Like *things*.
Kael stopped walking.
"There," he said sharply. "Did you hear that?"
No. No, no, no—
The silence that followed was unbearable. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, so loud I was certain they could hear it too. The larger man's boots shifted in the mud, turning toward a partially open doorway to my left.
"I don't hear anything," he said slowly, moving toward it.
"Something moved," Kael insisted. "In that building."
The larger man approached the door, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He was three steps away. Two steps.
Then a small figure burst through the doorway.
A girl—no older than Mira, maybe six or seven—came flying out with a broken piece of wood raised above her head like a weapon. Her face was streaked with tears and dirt, twisted into a mask of desperate fury. She screamed—a raw, primal sound—and swung the wood at the larger man's legs.
"No!" The word died in my throat, barely a whisper.
The larger man didn't even flinch. He caught her wrist mid-swing with one hand, effortlessly, like she weighed nothing. The wood clattered to the ground.
"Well, well," he said, almost amused. "Looks like you were right, Kael. Found a live one."
The girl thrashed in his grip, kicking and clawing, screaming words I couldn't make out. She was so small. So *small*. Like Mira.
"Feisty little thing," Kael observed, stepping closer. "Can't be more than six. Probably doesn't even understand what's happening."
"Doesn't matter," the larger man said. He lifted her off the ground by her wrist, and she dangled there, still fighting. "She's pure. That's five souls' worth, at least."
"Please," the girl sobbed, her voice breaking. "Please, I want my mama—"
The larger man's free hand shot to her head. He twisted.
*Crack.*
The sound echoed through the street, sharp and final. Her body went limp instantly, the fight draining out of her like water from a broken cup. He dropped her to the ground without ceremony, and she crumpled into the mud like a discarded doll.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't move.
"Make it quick," the larger man said to Kael. "We're behind schedule."
Kael knelt beside her body, pulling a knife from his coat. With casual precision—like he'd done this a thousand times—he carved a deep gash across her back. The wound glowed with an unnatural blue light, bright enough to cast shadows on the surrounding buildings.
He reached inside and pulled out something that made my stomach turn. An orb, wispy and luminous, pulsing with a soft, ethereal glow. It looked almost beautiful, in a horrible way. Like a piece of the sky had been trapped inside her.
The moment Kael tucked it into his coat, the light vanished. The street returned to shadow.
"That's one-ninety-three," Kael said, standing and wiping his hands on his pants. "Seven more and we hit quota."
"Good," the larger man replied. "Let's keep moving. I want to be done before dark."
Their footsteps resumed, moving away from me, fading into the distance.
I stayed frozen, counting the seconds in my head. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. When I finally couldn't hear them anymore, I allowed myself to breathe—a shallow, shuddering gasp that sent a jolt of pain through my oxygen-starved lungs.
I didn't move right away. I couldn't. My entire body was shaking, trembling so violently I thought I might fall apart. The mud clung to my face, my clothes, seeping into every gap. I could taste it—metallic, bitter. Blood and earth mixed together.
The girl lay a few feet away from me, her small body half-submerged in the mud. Her eyes were still open, staring at nothing.
She'd tried to fight. She'd been brave—braver than me. And I'd done nothing. Just like I'd done nothing for anyone else.
*Harvesting souls. Two hundred souls.*
The words kept echoing in my mind, and with them came the images—the bodies I'd seen, the arrow-filled streets, the silence where laughter and conversation used to be. They hadn't just attacked Ombá. They'd *farmed* it.
I forced myself to move, dragging my body upright on shaking limbs. My hands were caked in mud and blood, and when I tried to wipe them on my pants, it only smeared the filth around. I choked back a cough, my throat raw from holding my breath, and pressed myself against the wall for support.
I couldn't stay here. If that mage—Kael—really could sense people, he might come back. I had to keep moving.
But my legs felt like they were made of water, and every step was a battle against the part of me that just wanted to collapse and never get up again.
I couldn't bury her. Not here, not now. If I stopped, if I made noise, they'd come back. And I'd end up just like her—another soul in someone's coat, another number toward their quota.
So I left her there.
Just like I'd left everyone else.
