Chapter Text
Year 2163
He is practicing his letters while the forest glows softly outside.
The book is open on his knees, its pages bent soft with use. They have handwritten notes by someone named Dr. Grace Augustine he could repeat in his sleep by now. He traces his finger carefully over the ink.
Across from him, his mother hums while she cleans a filter by the door. The sound is low and steady, a small thing holding the quiet together.
He flips the page.
eywa.
He knows that one. He smiles.
Faint yipping echoes outside. Distant at first. Just one.
Then another.
His fingers curl tighter around the edge of the book.
His mother looks up.
She doesn't swear. She doesn't gasp.
She goes very still.
For a moment, he thinks it's over. That it was just an animal passing through.
Then the sound comes back.
Closer.
Another yip answers it from somewhere else. Then another. The sounds start to stack on top of each other, too many to follow, bouncing through the trees until he can't tell which one came first.
They aren't loud yet.
They're just... closer.
The yipping slides through the forest like something searching, slipping between trunks and leaves, popping up nearer every time he thinks it's far away again.
It's coming from all around them.
His stomach tightens.
His mother doesn't move.
And that's how he knows it's bad.
"They found us," she says, the words flat and certain as she drops what she's holding. "Quick. Lights off."
He freezes for half a heartbeat - then moves.
He reaches for the small night light beside his bed and twists the dial until the glow gutters out. The warm glow vanishes, replaced by the soft blue-green shimmer bleeding in through the gaps of the curtains.
Across the room, his mother kills the overhead lamp with one sharp motion. The artificial light dies instantly, leaving only the forest's bioluminescent glow.
The yipping drifts closer to the shack, then fades, cutting off all at once.
The quiet that follows feels heavy. Pressed down.
His breath comes and goes in trembles, afraid that whatever is outside could hear him.
He almost cries out when something lands on the roof - dull, solid thump overhead.
Dust sifts down from the seams in the metal ceiling. The shack creaks softly, like it doesn't want to move.
Another step follows.
Slow. Careful.
Something is walking across the roof.
His breath catches. He looks at his mother.
She's already moving.
"Miles," she says. Fast. Quiet. Like she knows she's running out of time. "Come here."
He scrambles toward her, bare feet slapping against the metal floor as the sound above them shifts again - closer to the edge, close enough that Miles can feel it through the walls.
She drops to her knees in front of him and grips his shoulders too tight.
"You listen very closely to me now," she says.
The footsteps stop directly overhead.
Her eyes flick upward once, then back to him.
"You hide," she says. "Under the bed. You stay hidden."
"What—?"
"No matter what you hear," she says, sharper now. "No matter what."
Another slow step crosses the roof. The metal groans faintly under the weight.
She cups his face, forces him to look at her.
"If I don't come back," she says, voice shaking a little now, "you wait until dawn. And you run."
His throat tightens. "Run where?"
"The secret path," she says quickly. "The one I marked. You remember?"
He nods.
"The place where we first met the friendly lady," she says. "With the purple hair."
Miles nods again. He remembers. The way she talked too fast. The way she smiled like the world wasn't falling apart.
"Good," his mother whispers.
She lifts the breathing mask from where it hangs at her side, the letters RDA imprinted on it like on the rest of her gear.
"Hold still," she says.
He doesn't argue. He just freezes as she fits it over his face, hands gentle but hurried, fingers trembling as she checks the seal the way she's taught him. The straps tug against his curls. The mask somehow smells like her - warm.
"There," she murmurs. "That's it."
The soft hiss of air fills his ears, loud and steady. Too loud. He hates that sound. He hates that it means outside and at the same time makes him feel trapped.
It makes this feel real and final.
Like a goodbye.
She cups his face for longer than she needs to, thumbs brushing where his cheeks would be under the mask.
"Wait—mom, I'm—" His voice breaks. "I'm scared."
She stills.
Then her grip softens.
"I know," she says quietly.
She leans closer.
"Listen to me," she says. "Fear is just noise."
The words are gentle, but firm – like something she's said to herself many times before.
"It's loud," she goes on, thumb resting under his chin, grounding him. "It'll shout and tell you terrible things. But it's only noise. You hear it... and you listen to me instead. Do you understand?"
He nods. Once, uncertain.
She waits.
He nods again, harder this time. More sure.
Only then does she reach for her belt.
She fumbles, swears under her breath, then presses something small and solid into his hands.
"Here," she says. "You keep this on you."
It's a walkie-talkie. Scratched. Old. The kind she only ever uses when she has to leave him behind for longer than a few hours so he can hear her voice over the computer.
"You turn it on like this," she says, already showing him. "The lady will hear you when you speak into it. It's set to the right channel. Don't change it."
"What if—" His voice warps through the mask. "What if she doesn't answer?"
"She will," his mother says too fast.
She closes his fingers around the radio, presses her palm over his knuckles like she can anchor him there.
"You don't talk unless you have to," she adds. "You listen. You stay quiet. You tell her where you are. What you see."
The weight on the roof shifts.
Closer to the edge.
"Mom—"
"I love you," she says, cutting him off, urgency breaking through the calm at last. "I love you so much."
She presses her forehead to his against the face shield, holding there for one second. Two. Like she's trying to hold onto the moment.
Then – deliberately, carefully – she stands, grabs her own mask from the shelf and seals it over her face. The familiar hiss fills the room, loud in the quiet.
She reaches for the gun by the door, checks it with a movement so practiced it barely looks like one, then looks back at him one last time.
"Hide."
Then she's gone.
The airlock hisses. The door seals behind her with a dull clang. The red glow above it switches to green.
Miles scrambles.
He crawls under the bed, knees scraping against the metal floor, and pulls himself as far back as he can. Dust clings to his palms. Something cold presses into his ribs. He curls around it anyway, clutching the radio tight to his chest.
The mask hisses softly with every breath.
Outside, the forest makes noise again.
A sharp crack splits the air – the gun. His whole body jerks at the sound. Another crack follows, then another, too fast to count.
There's shouting. Not words Miles understands. Just voices, harsh and loud.
Something hits the side of the shack. The wall shudders, the vibration carrying over to the glass of water on the makeshift desk.
He squeezes his eyes shut.
Fear is just noise.
The fighting sounds get closer. Then farther. Then closer again.
There's a scream – high and sharp – and Miles bites down hard to keep from making a sound of his own.
The gun fires again.
Once.
Twice.
Then a sound like something heavy hitting the ground.
After that, there's only the forest.
No voices.
No gunfire.
No footsteps.
Just the steady hiss of his own breathing inside the mask.
Miles waits.
He counts breaths the way his mother taught him when he couldn't sleep.
One.
Two.
Three.
The silence stretches.
It presses on his ears until it hurts.
That's when he knows he can't wait until dawn.
Stuffing the radio into his pocket, he crawls out from under the bed.
His legs feel wrong, wobbly, like they don't remember how to work. He stumbles toward the door, waits for the airlock to release and let him through. The inner door shuts behind him and for a moment, he's stuck in the passage between his home and the outside world.
The door in front of him slides open.
Bioluminescent light spills in, washing the floor in soft blues and greens.
Miles runs.
He doesn't make it three steps.
Something crashes into him from the side – fast, hard, huge. The ground slams up to meet his face. Air knocks out of his lungs in a sharp, useless gasp, swallowed by the mask.
Pain explodes across his chest.
He tries to scream.
A foot comes down on his back and stays there.
He can't breathe.
The weight presses him into the dirt, into roots and wet moss and glowing spores that smear across his face shield. The world tilts, blurring at the edges.
He twists his head.
That's when he sees her.
His mother lies a few feet away, half on her side. Blood is soaking into the ground beneath her, dark and spreading, drinking up the light.
"Mom," he chokes.
She doesn't move.
A crack tears through her mask like lightning through the sky.
Her eyes are open. The deep brown eyes she gave to him.
They're unfocused. Glassy. Staring past him into nothing.
"No," Miles sobs. "Mom—"
A shadow falls over them.
The bad woman hovers dangerously low over his mother's body, like a predator closing in on its prey after tracking it for days.
Four fingers reach for the metal necklace around his mother's neck. They pluck it off her with force, and Miles could swear he sees a faint glow in the bad woman's eyes – the way dragons look in the stories his mother used to read to him, when they find a treasure worth keeping.
This doesn't belong to you.
She puts it between her teeth, fangs flashing, and bites down on it. Her face shifts into something wicked, like she enjoys the metallic taste.
Then, with a swift motion, she fastens it to the leathery cloth around her waist like a trinket.
Up close, he can see the marks on her skin more clearly. Small, raised dots pressed into her flesh in careful patterns, catching the bioluminescent light as she moves, like the bumpy scales along the back of a lizard.
Something adorns her head: a crown made of deep black and bloodred feathers, making her stand even taller than she already is – less like a person and more like something out of a story meant to warn children what not to touch.
A dragon, standing over its hoard.
His mother makes a sound – barely more than a breath.
Miles' gaze snaps back to her.
Her eyes flicker. Just once. Like she's trying to find him.
"Mom," he sobs. "Mom, wake up—"
She exhales—
And doesn't inhale again.
The world falls silent until—
"I'll kill you!" he screams, words slurring together with tears. "I swear it—I'll kill you!"
The language feels alien in his mouth. It doesn't come out perfect.
But the way the bad woman tilts her head tells him she understands.
The foot on his back eases a little – not out of mercy, but attention.
She looks down at him properly for the first time.
Small. Must be the mother's young. Breathing hard through a clear covering on his face that hisses with every breath, pink skin streaked with dirt and tears. Rage burning bright enough to strike a spark.
He glares up at her and keeps screaming, voice cracking but defiant, spitting the words like a vow he fully intends to keep.
She stills.
Not surprised.
Interested.
This one does not beg.
This one does not surrender.
This one names his hatred.
Yes, she thinks.
This one will endure.
Miles screams until his throat burns, until his voice warps into something ugly and animal. He pounds his fists against the ground, against the foot, against anything.
The weight finally lifts.
Hands seize him – rough, unyielding – hauling him upright like he weighs nothing at all. His feet leave the ground.
He kicks. He thrashes. He claws at her arms.
She doesn't even grunt, just makes a yipping sound that isn't aimed at him, like she's calling for someone – or something.
Her gaze lingers on him.
Her thumb brushes the edge of his mask, testing the seal.
A decision settles behind her eyes.
She doesn't put him down.
She turns instead – and Miles hears it.
A sound like the forest screaming.
It comes from above.
He twists in her grip, panic surging anew, and sees it through the trees as it drops from the canopy.
Not one shadow.
Too many.
Four wings unfold at once, tearing the air apart. The sound is unbearable, a shriek and a roar layered together until Miles clamps his hands over his ears.
It lands hard enough to shake the ground.
Miles sobs.
It has a face.
Too many teeth. Too many eyes. Its mouth opens wider than it should, strings of saliva stretching between jagged edges. Its eyes gleam red and bright, fixed on him.
He smells it – hot, sharp, like blood and smoke and something rotten underneath.
The bad woman moves without hesitation.
She steps up onto the creature's back and hauls Miles with her, gripping him tight against her chest.
He screams as the creature launches upward.
The force rips the breath from his lungs. The ground drops away too fast, the trees become a smear of color beneath them.
The shack disappears. The clearing disappears.
His mother.
For one last heartbeat, he sees her body below – small now, still, already being devoured by the forest.
“Mom!” he screams.
The wind tears the sound away.
The nightwraith shrieks again, louder this time, its four wings beating in a rhythm that makes the world spin. Miles clings desperately, fingers digging into whatever he can grab, face pressed against blue skin and ash and paint.
Pandora opens her jaws and swallows the past.
And Miles goes up.
Higher.
Away from the body, from the blood, from the place where his world ended.