The Gifted Divide

Vengeance ought to be spoken through gritted teeth, spittle flying, the cords of one's soul so entangled in it that you can't let it go, even if you try. If you feel it—if you really feel it—then you speak it like it's a still-beating heart clenched in your fist, and there's blood running down your arm, dripping off your elbow, and you can't let go. - Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer)

* * * *

Two Years Later

January 233

Sera had tuned out the sound of celebration long ago, letting it fade into the background like an old memory.

Even as laughter and music echoed behind her, spilling out from the boathouse rooftop like spilled wine, she remained still, her forearms resting against the cold metal railing as she stared out over the dark, open sea.

The waves shimmered beneath the moonlight, restless and unknowable, like the questions that still haunted her. The wind tugged at the loose ends of the black-and-white scarf tied around her waist, partially veiling the weapons hidden beneath her coat.

Her breath was even, but her eyes were distant. Cold. Watching something far away, or perhaps buried deep inside.

Behind her, the rest of Aegis was celebrating.

Lucie's eighteenth birthday had sparked a last-minute party, pulled together by Raul and even Laura, two people rarely aligned when it came to merrymaking. Yet tonight, they had made the effort.

Music blasted from the stereo Ness had unearthed from somewhere beneath their supplies, drinks passed freely, and even Kailey and Claudia had been coaxed into dancing.

It should've felt like a victory. A moment of peace. Instead, Sera felt like a ghost haunting the edge of it.

She didn't turn when Raul joined her. She didn't need to. She heard his footsteps before he spoke, measured and familiar, and felt the slight change in the air as he leaned against the railing beside her.

He didn't say anything at first. Neither did she.

"Not going to join them?" Sera finally broke the silence, her voice low and unreadable as she shifted her gaze from the horizon to him.

Raul gave a quiet snort, brushing a wind-tossed strand of black hair out of his eyes. His golden gaze was wry. "Ness and Neil are currently locked in a drinking contest. I'm not about to get roped into that disaster."

That earned the barest hint of a smirk from Sera.

A pause. Then, his voice lowered slightly.

"It's been four years."

Sera didn't respond, but Raul continued, eyes scanning the dark water that stretched endlessly around them. "Four years since you started Aegis. Since all this began. Honestly? I'm still shocked the ESA hasn't figured out who we are yet." He glanced at her sidelong, expecting no confirmation but understanding the unspoken truth anyway. "I figure you've got some contacts keeping our names off the radar. Even so, it's not like the hunters are blind."

"They're watching," Sera said quietly. "I know they are. They just haven't moved yet. They're waiting."

"They probably suspect you. But they've got no idea who the rest of us are. And until they do, they'll hesitate."

"They learned from Blade," Sera muttered, her voice clipped. "They won't make the same mistake twice."

Raul nodded. The wind picked up again, sending sea spray over the edge of the railing. He could feel Sera stiffen beside him, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"I told myself," she began abruptly, her voice like gravel, worn from the weight of all the years behind it, "that I wouldn't make the same mistakes I made back then. I swore I'd do something right, just once in my life. That I wouldn't look away again. That no matter how ugly the truth was, or how heavy the consequences became… I'd face it." She turned toward Raul, her eyes catching the moonlight. "That's why I started Aegis."

Raul didn't hesitate. "We know. You told us that from the start. You gave us the choice. You warned us what this path would mean. None of us are here by accident. We're all Gifted. All part of the underground. The hunters were going to come after us no matter what. Might as well give them a reason."

They stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder, as the weight of the last two years settled between them like silt on the ocean floor. Behind them, laughter still echoed, but thinner now, quieter, as if the mood had shifted just slightly.

The memory of Ebis Ivanor still lingered among them like a rot that couldn't be cut out completely.

After her betrayal, Hayder Beck and Larissa had initiated a merciless purge—an underground house cleaning that had rattled every gang and enclave in Eldario's underworld. Three more hunter spies had been discovered, dragged out of their dens before they could vanish.

No one ever saw them again.

Raul didn't need to ask what happened to them. Not with Hayder involved.

And still, in spite of the blood, in spite of the chaos, the hunters had remained quiet.

Too quiet.

"I'm only mildly surprised they haven't retaliated," Sera murmured, echoing Raul's thoughts. "With how active we've been—"

A distinctive chime rang through the room, sharp and unmistakable.

Everything stopped.

The stereo was still playing, but the laughter had ceased. The others froze where they stood, turning as one toward the source: Raul's laptop, propped up beside the stereo.

The glowing screen pulsed once in the dark.

Raul pushed away from the railing at once, his boots silent against the floorboards as he crossed the rooftop. Sera remained behind, unmoving, her body rigid as the rest of Aegis followed Raul's movements with their eyes.

"Raul?" Lucie called cautiously from the edge of the group, her voice the only one willing to disturb the quiet.

He didn't answer at first. He crouched beside the laptop, fingers flying across the keys, his expression darkening with every passing second. Then, finally, he looked up.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"We've got a request."

The music stopped. The rooftop went still.

The flicker of joy that had animated the group just moments ago vanished like smoke in the wind, replaced by a grim, practiced silence.

Sera turned, the hem of her coat brushing against the railing as she stepped away from the edge.

The night air felt colder now. Heavier.

"Let's hear it," she said.

And just like that, the celebration ended. The war had returned.

* * * *

The sounds of whipping echoed endlessly through the suffocating dark of the basement—sharp, wet cracks that tore through the silence like jagged blades.

With every strike, there came a cry—some ragged and defiant, others thin and broken, trailing off into a haunting quiet. Time stretched into something shapeless, hours bleeding into each other beneath the dim flickering light of a single hanging bulb, until it finally died with a low hiss.

Then silence, save for the scrape of boots.

A limp body was flung into the corner like discarded meat, her form crumpling unnaturally, barely human in the way it landed. The steel door slammed shut with finality, the echo of its closure smothering the last fragments of light and sound from the world above.

A boy, bruised, bloodied, yet barely conscious, dragged himself across the cold concrete, his fingernails scratching uselessly against the floor as he reached the place where the girl had landed. His hand found her shoulder, and immediately recoiled.

She was cold. Alarmingly cold. His fingertips came away slick with something coppery and warm.

"Maria," he pleaded hoarsely, shaking her gently, then more violently when she didn't respond. "Stay awake. Please, you have to stay awake. Don't sleep, you hear me? Don't sleep!"

The rest of the sentence—if you do, you'll never wake up, died in his throat.

A soft sniffle echoed from somewhere deeper in the dark. He couldn't tell who it was. The voice that followed was trembling, barely above a whisper.

"We're going to die here, aren't we?"

"We won't," he said, the lie burning like bile in his throat. But even as he spoke, he knew there was no way out. No one was coming. The world didn't even know they were gone. "We're getting out of here. No matter what."

Silence.

"…Goddess… Please help us…"

* * * *

Upstairs, in the main room of a dingy mountain cabin, Walden gulped from a bottle of cheap alcohol, not even bothering with a glass. The drink scorched his throat, but he welcomed the burn.

The room around him was a vision of chaos and rot—papers strewn across every surface, liquor bottles both empty and half-drunk rolling on the warped floorboards, and the air stale with the reek of sweat and bitterness.

He grunted and leaned back, jaw clenched as his thoughts returned to the basement.

To them.

To those unnatural things he kept in chains beneath his feet.

A snarl twisted across his face, the alcohol amplifying the hatred boiling just beneath his skin. Rage welled up in him, and he threw the half-empty bottle at the wall with a growl. It shattered, sending a spray of glass and liquor down the peeling paint.

"Damn Gifted," he spat. "They should all do the world a favour and die screaming."

The words echoed briefly, bouncing off the cracked walls. Then silence.

Until laughter echoed.

Soft. Feminine. Unnervingly calm.

It didn't belong.

Walden stiffened. His hand darted instinctively to his side, reaching for the weapon he always kept holstered at his hip. But it wasn't there. He couldn't move.

His limbs seized up, like invisible hands had gripped him from within. Even his breath came in shallow, panicked gasps. His body collapsed back into the couch, helpless, while his eyes remained the only part of him still under his command.

The world around him began to blur, like smeared paint dripping down the edges of reality. The room itself seemed to melt and warp, colours dulling, space folding in on itself. A spatial distortion—Gifted work, unmistakably.

Then, they appeared.

They didn't walk through a door or crash through a window. They emerged. As if the very air conspired to grant them passage, coalescing into their forms like ghosts taking shape from fog.

Three figures stood before him.

Young. Too young to command such an overwhelming presence. Their eyes gleamed with quiet judgment, not rage. That made it worse.

Two were unfamiliar, but the third stopped his heart.

He knew her. He remembered those eyes.

One amber, one a twisted mockery of green with blood-red irises.

Even as a child, she had been an eerie thing—too sharp, and too knowing. But now… Now she was a force. Composed, deliberate, and with death woven into her very posture.

"Sera… Kroix…" Walden managed, his tongue thick in his mouth, throat dry as bone. "The…Death Reaper…"

"She did say you'd recognise her," The second girl murmured with a cold sort of amusement.

Sera didn't speak. She simply hummed a low, tuneless melody, something that sounded older than memory. Then, "Neil?"

"We're sealed in," The male confirmed. His tone was clipped and efficient. Even deadly. "No one outside will hear a thing. Nothing gets in or out unless I allow it."

Sera turned her gaze to Walden, and he felt as if his soul were being dissected. "It's been a long time," she said softly. "Though I can't say it's a pleasure." Her eyes narrowed slightly, her voice like frost. "How the mighty have fallen. I dealt with Ebis myself two years ago. The others fell shortly after. I never thought you would be the last of them. The almighty Butcher, falling to such dire straits."

His breath hitched.

The others, those other hunters he had worked with, dead. All reduced to ashes and corpses. And now… Now he was cornered, caged like an animal by the very thing he'd once hunted.

The girl beside Sera glanced at her sharply. "Then he's the one?" she asked. "From the Blade raid?"

Sera nodded. "He was there."

Neil raised a brow, his expression unreadable. "Goddess has a sense of irony, apparently."

"Or karma," The other girl said brightly, her smile far too cruel for her youthful face.

Walden's mask cracked. "I heard the rumours!" he spat. "You should've stayed dead!"

Sera took a step forward, and the room seemed to dim. "I don't die that easily," she said flatly. "You should know that by now."

Then, without warning, she was there. A blur of movement, swift and brutal. A scream tore from Walden's throat as the dagger punched into his thigh, the steel hilt gleaming between her fingers like a signature.

Blood pooled fast. The pain was incandescent.

He gasped, trembling. "W-What are you even doing here?!"

"We received a request," Sera said, her voice turning to ice. "From someone who knew what you had in your basement." Her mismatched eyes bore into his. And Walden—hunter, torturer, butcher—felt real fear for the first time in years. "You never should have touched those children."

He couldn't breathe. Because now, he saw what they were—not rebels, not vigilantes.

They were revenants. Survivors of the dead past he thought buried, resurrected to deliver judgment. The very air around them shimmered with restrained power, with wrath honed into something colder, sharper than hatred. These weren't the kinds of Gifted he knew how to fight.

These were the ones who survived men like him.

The blonde girl cracked her knuckles and stretched with casual menace. "All right then," she sighed, her voice feather-light but brimming with promise. A wicked smile curved her lips. "Let's begin."

* * * *

Raul and the team accompanying him—Kailey, Lucie, and Laura, had been briefed thoroughly before being deployed.

Sera hadn't held back.

They all knew they were walking into hell, that they'd be entering the domain of the infamous "Butcher"—a name whispered with loathing even in the darkest corners of the underground. One of the most depraved hunters, Walden's targets had always been children.

The vulnerable. The weak. The disposable, as he'd once called them.

But all the warnings in the world hadn't prepared them for what they found.

The basement door creaked open with a slow groan, the cold air that rushed up from below thick with the stench of mildew, iron, and something far worse—blood left to rot.

The silence within was unnerving, broken only by the faint, broken sounds of shallow breathing and something dripping steadily in the dark.

Lucie moved first, her fire igniting in small glowing spheres that hovered above her palms. The flames cast long, quivering shadows on the cracked stone walls, and what those flickering lights revealed stole the breath from every single one of them.

"Goddess…" Kailey choked out, her voice catching in her throat.

Raul's golden eyes widened in disbelief, his hands curling into fists by his sides. "Fuck."

Chained to the mould-covered walls were three children. Barely clothed. Starved. Their skin marred by angry welts, lacerations, and deep bruises that painted their small frames in a canvas of cruelty.

One girl lay crumpled in a corner, unconscious and frighteningly pale, her breathing so shallow it was barely perceptible. The boy nearest her held onto her with desperation, as if his own grip was the only thing anchoring her to the realm of the living. The third child, a younger boy, had passed out entirely—his arm twisted unnaturally, bone possibly broken.

Infection clung to some of the wounds like mould, festering in the open gashes as flies buzzed lazily through the stagnant air. It wasn't just abuse. It was prolonged torment. There were marks across the stone—scratches, blood-stains, and crude carvings. Desperation layered in time.

Kailey was the first to snap into action, her boots thudding dully as she rushed to the unconscious girl's side, already summoning water to begin a slow, delicate healing. Her hands trembled slightly as she worked, her jaw tight with restrained fury.

Laura moved next, her usually impassive face pale, kneeling beside the smaller boy. "Lucie, more light," she said quietly.

Lucie obliged, her face a mask of horror, though her voice remained level. "They… They're just children…"

The conscious boy, the only one whose eyes still held some glint of awareness, albeit dulled by fear and exhaustion, flinched as Laura approached. He tightened his hold on the injured child beside him, shoulders trembling.

"W-Who are you?" he rasped, his voice hoarse from dehydration, possibly even from screaming. His wide, bloodshot eyes flitted between them with panic.

Laura knelt slowly, hands raised in peace. "Keep your voice down," she whispered. Her dark eyes scanned the ceiling, then returned to the boy. "You're safe now. We're here to get you out."

But the boy shook his head, his breath hitching. "No… No, we'll never leave. That man… He said no one would find us… That if we tried, he'd…" He couldn't finish. The words died in his throat, choked by memory.

Lucie's expression twisted into something cold and venomous. "He's busy right now," she said tightly. "Preoccupied."

Raul met her gaze, a silent confirmation passing between them. "Zero's handling him," he added, his voice low and dangerous.

At that, something shifted in the boy's eyes. Recognition. Hope. Or something like it. He whispered it like a prayer. "Zero…?"

Raul gave a grim nod. "She's real. And she's here."

"Who are you?" The boy asked again, blinking away tears that hadn't fallen. Not yet.

Laura looked him in the eyes, steady and unwavering. "We're Aegis."

For a moment, silence hung in the basement again, save for Kailey's steady murmuring as she healed and Laura's gentle touch checking pulses. But in the back of all their minds, something screamed. The horror of what they were witnessing wasn't just physical. It was spiritual. A desecration.

Even Raul, hardened by years of warfare and betrayals, found his stomach twisting.

This wasn't just torture. It was methodical. Intimate. Done with the cold-blooded satisfaction of a man who enjoyed hearing his victims beg for mercy he never intended to grant.

Kailey's hands trembled harder as she worked, her water trembling in sync with her rage. "This wasn't punishment," she muttered under her breath. "It was sport."

Laura didn't respond, but her face was tight with silent fury, her eyes burning with a quiet, storm-born resolve.

And Lucie, who had once set fire to a hunter compound without blinking, now looked ready to reduce the entire basement to ash.

Raul's voice was low, a growl pulled from deep in his chest. "We need to finish here. Then we burn this whole fucking place to the ground."

No one argued.

They were Aegis. And they were no strangers to the horrors the world had inflicted on the Gifted.

But even so, none of them, not even Raul, would forget the smell of that basement, or the way those children flinched at the sound of footsteps, or the glint of a shattered soul in the eyes of a boy who had survived something worse than death.

And somewhere above them, in that crumbling cabin, Walden, the Butcher, was finally beginning to understand just what kind of monsters he had provoked.

Not beasts.

Not demons.

Not prey.

But the ones who had come to end him.