Chapter 21: When the Dark Learns Your Name
The night did not pass.
It folded itself into the seams of their breath and stayed there, like something claimed.
Aria had drifted in and out of something close to sleep—
but never all the way.
Not with Selene so still beside her.
Not with the silence,
too unnatural to be trusted,
stretching tight over the bones of the world.
When morning finally bled into the cracks of the crawlspace,
the light was grey.
Lifeless.
Like even the sun had grown cautious.
Selene moved first.
She always did.
Her hand brushed Aria's wrist before she shifted the crate.
Quiet, careful,
as if the whole world would collapse if they breathed wrong.
And maybe it would.
The bakery above was untouched,
but it felt different now.
Not safer.
Just…emptier.
Selene checked the door again, listened long at the window.
She said nothing.
Not even when Aria stood, trembling, her muscles aching from too many hours pressed against the wall.
They left without speaking.
The streets outside were changed.
Not destroyed.
Not yet.
But the way shadows pooled felt wrong.
The way silence hovered felt alive.
They walked fast, ducking between alleyways and abandoned storefronts.
Selene's hand hovered near her blade the entire time.
Aria tried to mirror her pace, her resolve.
But the images from the day before—
those missing eyes,
the soundless rage—
they clung to her like fog.
It wasn't until they reached an overpass, half-sunk from a long-ago collapse,
that Selene finally stopped.
They crouched beneath the broken concrete,
and only then did Selene speak.
"You're shaking."
Aria blinked.
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
A beat.
Then another.
"You should be," Selene added, her voice colder now. "You should be scared. That's the right reaction."
Aria frowned. "I didn't say I wasn't scared."
"No," Selene said, looking out at the street, "you didn't."
They were quiet again,
but it wasn't empty this time.
There was something coiled in the silence between them now.
Something waiting.
Aria sat on the broken concrete and pulled her knees to her chest.
"I used to think people changed after trauma," she said softly, her voice barely carrying. "That it made you stronger. Or colder. Or harder."
Selene didn't respond. Not yet.
"But I think…" Aria's voice trailed off, then came back even softer. "I think maybe trauma doesn't change you. It just reveals the parts you didn't want to see."
Selene finally turned to look at her.
"And what do you see now?"
Aria met her gaze.
"I'm still soft."
Something flickered in Selene's expression.
Not pity.
Not amusement.
Recognition.
"Good," Selene said. "Don't lose that."
"You haven't," Aria said.
Selene's mouth tilted.
A not-smile.
"I've just hidden it better."
Aria didn't press.
Didn't ask what Selene had been like before all this.
Somehow, the mystery felt heavier than the answer ever could.
They moved again after that,
weaving through side streets and fire-scarred buildings.
The city had grown quieter.
Not safer.
Just… waiting.
They stopped near a church that had long since collapsed.
Its bell tower lay cracked across the road like a severed limb.
Selene checked inside the remaining structure.
Aria stayed close, wary of shadows.
When Selene waved her in,
the place smelled like ashes and mildew.
But it would do for now.
She pulled a heavy wooden door into place and leaned her weight against it.
Aria sat on what used to be a pew, now half-charred and soft with rot.
Selene crouched in front of her,
pulling something from her pack—a cloth, a tin of water, a half-clean rag.
Without asking, she took Aria's hand.
Wiped a cut on her knuckle she hadn't noticed before.
"You need to tell me next time," Selene said, gently, but with steel beneath it.
"I didn't know," Aria whispered.
"You need to start knowing."
Her hands were rough, but precise.
The cloth smelled like metal and lavender—
an old remnant of something before.
Aria watched her face.
Selene was close enough now that she could see the tiny scar along her cheekbone.
The way her jaw tensed when she focused.
The way she didn't blink often.
Didn't breathe deep.
"Who taught you to survive like this?" Aria asked.
Selene didn't look up.
"No one," she said.
Then, softer—
"I had someone. Once. But I waited too long."
Aria's heart squeezed.
"What happened?"
Selene's hands stilled.
"She didn't make it."
There was no tremble in her voice.
No visible wound.
Just silence.
And in it, Aria felt something shift.
She reached forward, touched Selene's wrist.
"I'm not her," Aria whispered. "But I'm still here."
Selene looked up,
and for the first time,
the mask slipped.
Just a little.
And Aria saw the fear there.
Not fear of dying.
Fear of failing.
Selene reached up then, fingers brushing a strand of hair behind Aria's ear.
"I know."
For a heartbeat,
they simply sat there.
Two bodies in a burned-out ruin.
Two hearts still pretending they weren't breaking.
Outside, the wind howled through the hollow bell tower.
It sounded like a warning.
Or maybe a promise.