It started with rain and ended with brain matter.

  Water seeped into the soil of the public park behind my high school.

  A single streetlamp flickered like a dying eye at the edge of my vision, its weak glow doing little to push back the creeping night. Wet earth clogged my lungs.

  Fuck this.

  We were circled by silent shadows—classmates reduced to pale smudges in the gloom. They didn’t cheer. Didn’t care. Just hungry ghosts feeding on the spectacle, desperate to feel something in their dead-end lives.

  I jerked my forearm up just in time. The high kick meant for my jaw slammed into it instead—bone rattling against bone. Pain flared, but I bit back a grunt. Countered with a wild punch.

  Air whistled where his face should’ve been.

  Missed.

  Didn’t matter.

  My fingers splayed open. The handful of dirt I’d scooped earlier—a backstreet trick burned into my muscle memory—flew straight into his eyes.

  Matt cursed, clawing at his face. Tall, lanky, always wearing that look like he’d bitten into something rotten.

  There.

  A gap in his guard.

  I tackled him low. We hit the mud hard, a tangle of limbs and rage. His fists flailed—wild hooks aimed at my temples. Mine found softer targets: ribs, gut, the meat under his arm. Cold sludge filled my mouth, my ears, my soul.

  A lucky uppercut knocked the wind out of him.

  I stood, breath heaving. Empty.

  Matt writhed at my feet, spitting mud and curses. The school’s golden bully. My ex-best friend.

  When did it sour? No clue. Just this rot between us now.

  “Ezra!”

  Clara’s voice sliced through the rain. She pushed through the crowd, hair plastered to her face, eyes wide. “You okay?”

  I wanted to kiss her. To laugh. To say something clever. But my tongue was lead.

  She reached me, her hands wrapping around mine—warm, steady.

  For a fleeting moment, I started to believe we might be okay.

  She smiled—

  Something cracked the sky.

  Then her head just—

  Exploded.

  Blood. Bone shrapnel. Gray matter. Hot splatter turned icy as rain washed it down my cheeks. The stench—metallic sweetness—clogged my throat.

  Her smile. Her eyes.

  Gone.

  Pieces of her splattered into the mud.

  But then, her corpse was no longer hers.

  It was—

  A fucking nightmare.

  And then the scream tore out of me. Not his. Mine—

  I woke choking on it, heart pounding like a riot.

  I felt sick, my ribs aching as though my heart was trying to break free. My body was drenched in cold sweat.

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  Total darkness.

  I smelled saltpeter, stagnant humidity, and Erik's stale sweat.?

  The gentle rocking of the floor beneath my feet reminded me where I was: a tiny, oppressive cabin, the metal walls too close.

  A ship.

  We were on a rustbucket of a ship.

  A guttural, constant snore broke the tense silence. I shifted uncomfortably on the narrow cot, the cold metal pressing against my bare back.

  Erik slept face down on the lower berth, oblivious to my nightmares.

  Then, the headache returned with force—a dull pressure behind my eyes, accompanied by a wave of nausea that churned my stomach.?

  It started with that guy’s death...

  Or maybe it was before—when he stole that damn kiss in the wrecked car?

  That kiss was... something.

  An unexpected electric jolt, an unnatural and fleeting connection, as if a dirty, invisible thread had hooked onto my soul for an instant.?

  But the worst, the undeniable, was when I shot him.?

  It wasn't an immediate reaction, but a few seconds later, a sharp burning sensation coursed through my stomach—a phantom, stabbing pain, as if the bullet had pierced my own flesh.?

  Then came the headshot.

  I hadn’t planned it. Let him bleed out? Sure. But one of Williams’ trigger-happy grunts finished him.

  That’s when the pain exploded. Blinding. White. I collapsed, the world spinning into black.

  Now, here I was—trapped on this rustbucket freighter, reeking of rancid fish, bound for Ignisterra.

  Ignisterra.

  The name tasted like burnt matches. Our “safe haven.”

  The only place where the relentless claws of the Arakawa—our former family—couldn't reach us.

  A lawless city-state, wedged like a festering scab on some forgotten Southeast Asian coast.?

  Ignisterra was a hotbed of criminals, mercenaries, renegades, and mafia syndicates competing to control every alley, every dock, every shadow—with iron fists and cheap bullets.?

  And they were the city's so-called 'upstanding citizens.'

  The true puppeteers behind the chaos were demons—beings from the underworld who had built the city around a dark portal.?

  There, four infernal clans ruled: Rustfall, Duskthorn, Burncraft, and our employers—the Ashborne.

  Bile rose in my throat, acidic and burning. I needed air, space. I grabbed a dirty T-shirt as I stumbled out, desperate to escape.

  I slipped through a narrow, moldy corridor and shoved open the metal door to the side deck.

  Saltwind slapped my face. I gripped the rusted railing, knuckles white, and retched into the black waves.

  The bile clung to my tongue like rust.

  What the fuck was happening to me?? this dream… every single night…

  I took a minute, then two, to catch my breath.?

  Metallic footsteps echoed behind me on the wet deck.?

  "You okay?"

  Erik's voice was soft, but not warm. It was measured, probing, searching for cracks.

  I didn’t answer.

  The simple question echoed in my skull, painfully overlapping with the voice of that woman—Clara—in my head:

  Who the hell was Ezra?

  That smug loser I shot—not once, but three times in less than a day.

  Wait—did he ever tell us his name? I don’t think so. And yet, somehow, Ezra. A word I never knew, but always felt was mine.

  Why was I seeing his memories?

  Shit, my head was a swirling mess.

  Erik’s hand brushed my shoulder. I flinched, the discomfort lingering like an unwelcome shadow.

  "Rough night?" he said, attempting a smirk that fell flat.

  I flipped him off.

  Ever since that day—when I felt Ezra's life unspool beneath my hands—something of him nested inside me. Twisted. Clinging like rot beneath the skin.

  Now, Erik’s touch—his caresses, his kisses, even the hurried, tense sex we sometimes shared—had all turned… flavorless. Unpleasant.

  Sometimes, honestly, repulsive.

  I pulled away from him, putting space between us.

  We had too many real problems to add my… inexplicable weirdness into the mix.

  "How long?" I asked, changing the subject abruptly, my eyes fixed on the gray horizon where the sky and sea blurred into one.

  "About fifteen more days, if the weather holds and we don’t run into pirates," he said with a shrug, his tone shifting to something more practical.

  I looked him over, head to toe. His wounds were nearly healed, his scars fading while mine festered. Typical.

  With every passing day, He seemed to grow stronger, while whatever was consuming me—this echo of someone else’s life—was only making me weaker.

  More fragmented.

  More adrift in a sea that wasn’t just saltwater...

  …but a riptide of death—Ezra’s pain bleeding into mine, one scream swallowed by another beneath the endless black.