The Gifted Divide

"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood." - Seth Dickinson (The Monster Baru Cormorant)

* * * *

Sera must have spent hours in the shower—rivulets of scalding water cascading over her skin, reddening it until it nearly burned. She scrubbed until her knuckles were sore and her fingers trembled, as if sheer friction could erase the stains beneath her fingernails, the scent of blood in her nostrils, the phantom weight of steel wire carving through bone.

The mirror was fogged with steam, but she didn't need to see her reflection to know she looked hollow.

Even when she turned off the water, the silence pressed in like fog, dense and suffocating. Droplets clung to the ends of her hair, trailing down the curve of her jaw, and she stood motionless beneath the faint flickering of the ceiling light, the taste of metal still lingering on her tongue.

She didn't regret it. She kept telling herself that. Over and over.

She didn't regret it.

She had done what was necessary.

Zest had said as much, and in the Abyss, there was no higher court than survival. No greater law than retribution. But even now, long after the screams had stopped and Ebis Ivanor's lifeless body was dragged from the Pit, something sat heavy and unmoving in the hollows of her chest.

A slow, dull ache that no amount of water or violence could wash away.

So why…? Why did she feel like this?

The air was cold as Sera stepped out into the upper level of the bar, dressed in her usual black ensemble that still bore the scent of iron and smoke. Her boots were silent against the old metal flooring. The scarf tied loosely around her waist swayed with each step, partially concealing the weight of weapons she hadn't bothered to discard.

She spotted him immediately—Zest, seated on the battered old couch like he had been waiting all night.

"You waited," she said, her voice low, almost hoarse. It wasn't a question. It never was, not with him.

Zest looked up, those crimson eyes of his gleaming faintly in the dim overhead light, like embers caught in the dark. His black hoodie was zipped all the way up, flames licking along the hem like a quiet threat, and the dagger tattoo on his neck stood stark against pale skin. The choker around his throat was still there, like hers. A silent badge of the ones who survived.

He nodded. "Alisa said she's taking Aegis back to the boathouse," he murmured, his voice even but softer than usual, with a trace of something gentler beneath it. "She'll stay with them tonight. Told me to let you know… You can take as long as you need before going back."

"Tomorrow," Sera muttered as she tossed the damp towel onto the back of a chair. Her limbs moved automatically, as if weighed down by memory. Then she dropped into the couch beside him, the cushions barely shifting beneath her petite frame.

"I made a promise when I founded Aegis," she said, her eyes distant. "That I wouldn't make the same mistakes I made with Blade. That I wouldn't just do whatever I wanted without thinking about them. They didn't choose this life. I pulled them into it. That makes me responsible."

Zest didn't say anything, not yet. He merely studied her with quiet intensity, his body turned ever so slightly in her direction. His presence wasn't demanding, never had been. He had always been a constant—not a storm, but the silence before one. The kind that understood without pressing.

Sera reached forward and picked up the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table, her movements sharp, almost impatient. She lit one with a flick of her wrist, the flame from the lighter dancing in her eyes. She took a drag, inhaled deeply, and held it for a long moment before exhaling slowly. Her fingers were steady. Her mind was not.

"I thought you quit," Zest said quietly, his gaze flickering to the burning stick between her fingers.

"I did," she replied, not meeting his eyes. "But after this week, I need something that burns."

Zest leaned back slightly, the line of his jaw tense. "What's eating you?"

He knew that look—had seen it before, years ago in the aftermath of gang wars, in alleys filled with the smell of gunpowder and smoke, in blood-soaked basements when the only light came from flickering bulbs and the only sound was the shallow breathing of survivors.

Sera stared down at her hands. The cigarette continued to burn, inch by inch, a slow descent into ash. "That huntress…" she began, her voice low and distant. "Ebis. She couldn't fight back. I outclassed her, and I knew I would. I could've ended it fast. Clean, even. But I didn't." Her gaze lifted to him, shadowed and gleaming. "I chose to break her. Piece by piece. In front of everyone. And I made sure they watched every second of it."

Zest's eyes didn't waver. He remembered the wires—those thin, nearly invisible threads that had danced like death itself in Sera's hands, slicing through bone as if through paper. He remembered the silence of the crowd, the disbelief, the awe. And the fear.

"There's a reason I never use them," Sera whispered. "Not unless I want people to remember."

"You made sure they did," Zest replied. "They call you the Death Reaper for a reason, Sera."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"And they call you the Black Demon," she countered quietly.

Zest gave a faint smile, bitter at the edges. "Yeah. Titles that we earned, whether we wanted them or not."

There was a beat of silence, the kind that only existed between people who had bled together. Then he added, "You did what you had to. If it had been me in that Pit, I would've done the same. Maybe worse. You weren't just sending a message to the hunters. You were reminding the Abyss what kind of monsters they've created. You reminded them who we are."

Sera exhaled slowly and crushed the cigarette into the ashtray. "I don't regret it," she said again. But this time, there was venom in her voice. Not toward herself, but toward something much larger. "I'm going to destroy them. The hunters. I'll burn their whole fucking world down."

Zest's expression darkened. He leaned back further, an arm draped over the couch as his crimson eyes flickered with the embers of old rage. "Think your crew's ready for that?" he asked, his voice quieter now, edged with warning. "What we're planning isn't just revenge. It's war. And war doesn't spare the hesitant."

"I know," Sera murmured, tilting her head back against the worn cushions. "I'll tell them everything. No more secrets. No more veils. I'll give them the truth… And let them decide."

Zest was silent for a long moment. Then, finally, he shifted, letting one arm rest across the back of the couch behind her, not touching, but close enough to remind her he was there—that he always had been.

"You've changed," he said, not unkindly. "But so have I. We've all lost things we can't get back. But we're still here. That means something."

Sera looked at him then, eyes meeting his. Beneath the layers of steel and violence, there was something else, something quiet and wordless that had lived between them since their days in Blade.

A thread neither time nor blood could sever. Not a romance spoken aloud, not in kisses or confessions, but in every shared silence, every unspoken promise. In the way Zest always waited for her. In the way she never asked him to.

"I don't know what comes next," Sera said, her voice quieter now.

Zest gave her a rare, almost wistful smile. "Then let's find out together."

In the Abyss, surrounded by ruin and shadows and memories of the fallen, it was the closest thing to hope they had.

And for now, that was enough.

* * * *

It was almost unnaturally quiet for this time of night.

Not just quiet. Dead.

Mathis moved with slow, measured caution, each footstep deliberate as he crept through the shadowed corridor that wound its way deeper into the lower catacombs.

His beady eyes scanned the cracked stone beneath his boots, glinting with paranoia under the sparse flickers of overhead light. Even under the cover of darkness, he didn't trust the silence.

He knew where he was. This was Abyss territory.

And only fools tempted the wrath of the underground.

His orders from the hunter commander had been brief and merciless: retrieve Ebis Ivanor, dead or alive. Preferably alive, but dead was acceptable.

He hadn't asked questions. That wasn't the hunter way. But even as he moved forward now, Mathis wondered if they had sent him here to die.

The Abyss wasn't a place you entered. It was a place you fell into, and never came back out of.

The only reason Mathis had even found one of the entrances was sheer dumb luck—an abandoned shaft tucked behind the ruins of an old train station on the outskirts of Sector Six. Hidden behind rusted fencing and wild overgrowth.

Just where you'd expect a legend to lurk.

Still, no guards. No alarms. No sentries that he could see or hear. That alone made his stomach twist.

Swallowing the creeping dread rising in his throat, Mathis crouched near the thick steel door nestled into the rock wall. Its surface was worn but sealed tight. He pulled out a lockpick from his side pouch, fingertips brushing along the seams to search for any entry point, a keyhole, a latch. Anything.

He muttered quiet threats under his breath, cursing the subhumans that lived down here, the monsters who thrived in filth and shadow…

Then pain.

A sharp, blinding agony erupted in his hand as something silver and impossibly fast sliced through the air and slammed into the door, pinning his left hand to cold steel with a vicious thunk.

Mathis let out a guttural scream, staggered back, and yanked the blade free with a choked cry—his vision going white at the corners. Blood spilled freely, but he ignored it, twisting around with a snarl and reaching for the firearm at his hip.

"Show yourself!" he barked, his voice cracking with fury and fear. "Come out, coward!"

Silence answered him.

But it wasn't the kind of silence that came from emptiness. It was the kind that watched. Waited.

Even the sounds of the night—owls, insects, and the wind brushing through the trees, had ceased. As if nature itself was holding its breath.

Mathis remembered something his old mentor once told him when he was still a fresh recruit, green and wide-eyed: When the forest goes quiet, it means the predator is already there.

His breath hitched.

Muscles taut, Mathis inched forward, his gun raised. Every hair on his body stood on end. There was something wrong with the air. He stepped forward—

—and froze.

He couldn't move.

Panic surged through Mathis as his arms were jerked to his sides by an invisible force. His fingers spasmed. The gun slipped from his grasp and landed on the forest floor with a hollow thud.

Then the clouds shifted, and moonlight spilled through the treetops like a spotlight, illuminating what had ensnared him.

Wires.

Thin steel wires, glinting faintly like spider silk under moonlight, stretched across the trees and forest floor in a chaotic lattice. They coiled around the trunks like vines, crisscrossing through the undergrowth, looped tightly around his limbs, torso, and ankles. One wrapped gently, almost mockingly, around his throat.

And there was only one person he knew of who fought with this.

His stomach dropped.

"Sera Kroix… You're out there, aren't you?!" Mathis shouted, his voice cracking under the strain of rising horror. "Face me, damn it!"

No answer. For a heartbeat, he hoped.

Then a voice, a soft, lilting male voice, drifted from the darkness.

Calm. Patient. Amused.

"Unfortunately, no. She's not here."

Mathis stiffened, his eyes darting wildly.

The voice continued, unhurried, almost conversational. "And she's not the only one who knows how to use steel wires. She taught me everything I know. The difference is, I don't set them up mid-battle like she can. Mine are prepared in advance. You've been walking into my trap from the moment you stepped foot into this sector."

"…What?"

Then Mathis saw him.

He emerged from the shadowed tree line with all the suddenness of a phantom.

Clad in black from collar to boot, the figure moved with slow, measured ease—his raven-black hair dusted with streaks of silver falling just past his earlobes, a silver hoop glinting in his left ear. As he stepped forward into the full light of the moon, Mathis spotted the blade tattoo etched along the side of his neck like a brand.

His mouth went dry.

"…You're…a Blade survivor?"

The man smiled. Cold. Humourless. Terrifying in its serenity.

"Do you really think the Abyss would leave one of its entrances unguarded?" he asked softly. "Or that you just happened to find one by luck? When both the Premier and her second-in-command are thirsting for blood after what your kind did?"

Mathis paled.

No. It couldn't be.

The man's eyes narrowed with satisfaction. "Yes. I made sure the information got to you. I pulled strings, shut off patrols for a few hours. You were always the weakest of them, Mathis. Predictable."

"You… You're lying."

But the words rang hollow.

Mathis was part of the Elvryn assignment. He remembered. Forty hunters sent into the slums two years ago to wipe out Blade in a single night.

Only five came back.

And three of those were broken—crippled by the one they called the Death Reaper and her shadow, the Black Demon. One lay dying in a hospital, kept alive by machines. The other two had died since.

Now Mathis knew how.

"You monster…" he whispered.

But the figure only tilted his head. "You started this fight. We're just finishing it."

He stepped closer. The wires tightened in response, eliciting a strangled grunt from Mathis. He struggled, trying to move, trying to plead, but the coil around his throat drew tighter with each breath.

"Sera ended Ebis. I took care of the rest," The survivor said flatly. "And if Lleucu's still alive, he'll be hunting you down, too. None of us forget. None of us forgive."

Mathis trembled violently now, sweat pouring down his face. "W-We were just following orders…" he choked out, his voice a strangled whimper. "I-I didn't want…"

"Spare me." The man's eyes flared. "You wanted it. You enjoyed it. You didn't hesitate when you burned down homes. You didn't care that half our people were Normals." The wires twitched. "And now? You're going to die screaming."

"No! No, please—!"

The final whisper cut through the dark like a promise.

"I'm not Sera. I don't give you a clean death."

Then the wires pulled.

It would be hours before the screaming stopped.

By dawn, when Abyss patrols returned to their post, they would find what was left of Mathis nailed to the rock wall outside the hidden entrance—his body mangled beyond recognition, and twisted in ways that defied human anatomy.

A message was carved crudely into his flesh with a blade.

Peaceful days are over. Let's survive.