She pressed a long, warm kiss to her brother’s forehead, as if trying to wipe away all his fears. Shifting her gaze to the damp stone floor beneath them, she whispered, almost to herself:

  "It's all over now, Torn. Just a little courage... We will finally be free."

  Those words felt less like a goodbye and more like a solitary candle flickering in the pitch black. Serevia squeezed her brother's hand one last time, anchoring him. Tomorrow, in the shadow of that glass factory, they would leave this wretched life behind and step into a brand-new world, clinging to one another.

  They lingered a moment longer in the blind alley, drawing warmth from each other's presence. By the time they parted, the bruised gray sky had surrendered entirely to the suffocating black of night. Torn was experiencing a rare stroke of luck; upon his return to the orphanage, no heavy boots chased him down, nor did any cruel hands strike him. His absence went entirely unnoticed in that crowded, soulless building. Then again, Torn was a ghost of a boy, so quiet he could only speak to the walls, his presence as hollow as his absence.

  Time slipped through the nightmare that swallowed Caduta, until morning slowly peeled back the dark to reveal a pale blue sky. While birdsong drowned out the city's rusting machinery, Torn snapped his eyes open, a suffocating dread tightening his chest. He glanced at the clock beside his bed and his blood ran cold; the hands mercilessly pointed to 06:12.

  "No..." Torn groaned, the word strangling in his throat. "I'm too late!"

  His sister had warned him to be in the shadow of the derelict glass factory at exactly five o'clock, before dawn even kissed the dirt. Yet the sun had already risen, and time bled away against him. His heart hammered against his ribs as a sickening realization poisoned his mind: if he didn't hurry, the Sarcos guards would start pounding on the orphanage doors, and that final gate to freedom would slam shut forever. Every passing second pulled his narrow window of escape tighter around his neck like a noose.

  Operating on lingering adrenaline from the night before, he had already shoved a few vital belongings into a frayed sack. He dragged himself toward one of the rusted windows at the back of the orphanage, his mind still clouded with sleep and shivering against the dawn chill. He locked his fingers around the freezing iron handles; every step felt like a forged signature on his ticket to freedom. But as he scrambled down, a violent thud of his heart threw off his balance, and his frail body smashed onto the hard concrete below.

  He clamped both hands over his mouth to choke back a brutal scream, but a ragged, gut-wrenching whimper tore its way out of his throat anyway. He had twisted his ankle violently; pure agony ripped through his tiny frame as he shuddered from the impact.

  With the pain crawling up his leg like fire, Torn scanned the courtyard through a veil of tears, silently begging for help.

  Then, he froze, his eyes locking onto the gloom of the window above. Behind the glass, a face as cold and motionless as a statue stared down at him. It was the directress of the orphanage—the very woman who ruthlessly punished him for every minor slip, every failed attempt to sneak out. The dead, menacing glare in her eyes drove a spike of terror so deep into his heart that it eclipsed the searing pain in his ankle. She peered down at him with a quiet, profound hatred, like a predator cornering her prey.

  He couldn't just lay there; every second he hesitated, freedom slipped further from his grasp. He knew that if he surrendered now, he would never escape these bleak walls; worse, he would break his promise to Serevia, his unshakable sanctuary. Yet the woman watching him with statuesque silence from the window above showed no trace of mercy, no hint that she would let this escape slide. The directress's gaze crushed Torn beneath its weight, pinning him in a waking nightmare.

  So, shoving the sheer terror in his soul aside, Torn forced himself to stand, no matter the agony. Even though the blazing throb in his ankle brought tears to his eyes, he couldn't stop; he wouldn't stop. He was going to escape this soul-sucking orphanage forever, alongside his sister. He planted one hand against the wall for support and put weight on his foot. The pain shot through him like a live wire, but he gritted his teeth and took his first stumbling step forward.

  The crippling damage in his foot jolted him sideways with every step, condemning him to an erratic, agonizing rhythm. Despite the sharp flare of pain piercing his brain every time his ankle bones ground together, he kept dragging his injured leg behind him out of pure survival instinct, draining the very last drops of his strength. He wept, the hot tears scalding his frostbitten face, and the freezing morning air he gasped in felt like inhaling thousands of shattered glass shards. He couldn't tell how long he had been running without a pause, or how many streets he had left behind in this torment. The creeping sensation that he hadn't actually made it far from the orphanage fueled his panic, yet the absence of heavy boots catching up to him offered a single, fragile branch to cling to amidst the unbearable agony.

  As he wrestled with the ringing in his ears and the throbbing of his flesh, the old glass factory loomed at the end of the road like a dead titan, its colossal, fractured chimneys piercing the mist. When Torn stumbled into the factory's yard, the broken glass crunched sharply beneath his boots—sounding as though he was snapping his own bones with every step. Just then, a silhouette lunged at him from the factory's dark, hazy entrance. When Serevia saw her brother writhing in pain, her terror hardened into an unbreakable resolve. The moment Torn caught his sister's familiar, comforting scent, his knees buckled; but Serevia caught him by the shoulders, keeping him upright.

  "You came," Torn managed to whisper, his voice breaking into a sob. Serevia didn't answer. She simply took his face between her hands, wiped the sheer terror from his eyes, and crushed him against her chest. In the middle of the ruthless world closing in around them, this was the only second they could truly breathe.

  Serevia gripped Torn’s hand like a lifeline, tearing through the last remnants of the night at a punishing pace, practically wearing the path down. The road ahead of them was dusty, muddy, and endlessly long. While she dragged her brother with one hand, she hauled the makeshift sack he had hastily stuffed together with the other. She heard the clattering of the belongings inside, realizing her brother had tried to salvage something, but they had absolutely no time to spare for anything belonging to the past.

  They couldn't stop. Stopping meant annihilation while the toxic breath of Sarcos hissed down their necks. The distant tolling of a bell rising through the fog served as a grim reminder that the hell they had abandoned was still right behind them; every patch of damp earth they trampled slipped away beneath their feet, leaving them uncertain whether they were racing toward freedom or hurling into another disaster.

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  "Sister!"

  Serevia didn't hear him. Only the frantic urge to get away, to lose their trail, and to reach a safe haven throbbed in her mind. She quickened her pace, continuing to yank her brother along. They couldn't stop!

  "Sister!"

  Torn’s voice broke this time, sounding more like a plea, but Serevia's sheer terror deafened her. The little boy, however, couldn't take it anymore. With his injured ankle ripping at his flesh with every step, he collapsed where he stood. Serevia nearly lost her balance as Torn hit the dirt. No matter how hard she pulled, no matter how desperately she yanked his arm, Torn didn't move an inch. He anchored to the ground, crushed by the sheer weight of his agony.

  "Sister, it hurts! It hurts so much!"

  It took that third cry to snap Serevia back to reality; the pure torment in her brother’s voice shattered the wall of fear in her mind. She stopped. Her heart battered against her ribs, threatening to burst. She had become so blind because the nightmare of them ripping her brother from her hands and locking him in those dark rooms suffocated her every thought.

  "We can't stop! I'm begging you, Torn, get up! You have to get up!"

  Serevia's voice started as a command, but it crumbled into a desperate sob by the end. They both stood there with tears flooding their eyes; in the middle of that desolate road under the first light of dawn, they looked like nothing more than two wounded animals. They were both terrified to death, and both knew they had no sanctuary in this merciless world other than each other. The thought of being separated burned far worse than any physical pain they endured in that moment.

  "My foot..." Torn moaned, dropping his gaze to his swollen, bruising ankle. "Sister, I can't walk on it anymore..."

  When the young girl saw her brother in such a small, defenseless state, her hardened, protective shell shattered. She dropped to her knees and grabbed Torn's trembling shoulders. As her tears dripped down her cheeks onto the dusty dirt of Caduta, she frantically searched for a way out—both for him and for herself.

  Serevia stared in horror at her brother’s ankle; the tiny joint was violently bruised, the skin swollen until it pulled taut. Pure agony twisted Torn’s face with every shuddering breath. But Serevia knew stopping wasn't an option—it was a death sentence. She tasted the heavy, metallic tang in the air; she didn't just feel the low rumble and the faint tremor of the earth behind them anymore, she heard it. They were coming to drag Torn back into those pitch-black rooms.

  "You can't stop, Torn! Do you hear me? You can't stop!"

  Serevia's voice tore through her throat, morphing into a feral scream. Driven by the fury of absolute despair, she shook her brother by the shoulders, desperate to snap him out of his pain-induced shock. She grabbed his arm with a frantic burst of survival instinct and hauled him to his feet, trying to run while dragging the whimpering boy behind her. But her struggle was like rowing against a hurricane; they only managed a few steps before their legs tangled, their speed bleeding away with every passing second.

  When Serevia whipped her head back in terror, she crashed into a horrific sight: Sarcos's ruthless "bloodhounds" were tearing into the dirt with their claws, closing in on them with a feral hunger. The distance had collapsed so entirely that the beasts' guttural snarls pierced the wind and lashed at her ears. Logic screamed that it was all over, that they were cornered. Yet the stubborn, protective instinct rooted deep in the girl's soul refused to accept reality. Her mind rejected the defeat, her eyes frantically searching for an impossible way out through a blur of tears.

  "No," Serevia whispered, her voice balancing on the knife-edge between a plea and defiance. "I won't let them take you. I won't let it end like this!"

  When Torn’s body—weighed down far more by agony than exhaustion—collapsed uncontrollably, Serevia, locked tightly to him, lost her balance and crashed hard onto the freezing dirt. Now they were both thrashing amidst mud, rust, and shattered hopes. As Caduta's freezing dawn wind sliced their skin like a blade, the heavy thud of the guards' boots and those metallic snarls breathed down their necks. Their chance of escape slipped through their fingers like dry sand; that narrow door to freedom slammed shut in their faces with a deafening crash.

  In that terrifying moment of realization that they could not run, Serevia threw herself over her brother and wrapped him in a desperate embrace. This wasn't merely a protective instinct; it was a silent vow to never let go, to be annihilated alongside him if necessary. She squeezed him so tightly, so profoundly; packed into that embrace was the warmth of a mother she never had the chance to know, the reassuring shadow of a father, and all the orphaned love she had hoarded inside her life, unable to offer it to anyone. She shielded her brother beneath her own body, trying to tear him away from all the evils of the world.

  The tears spilling from both their eyes tracked down frostbitten cheeks and dripped into the soil, burning the earth like liquid embers. Time bled of all meaning; it was as if the merciless gears of Caduta had finally stopped turning. Serevia heard Torn’s ragged sobs right against her ear, accompanied by the feral drumming of her own heart. As the towering shadows of the surrounding guards descended upon them, Serevia squeezed her eyes shut and pressed one last, desperate kiss into her brother's hair, locking the entire world out.

  "I'm right here," she whispered into the wind, her voice completely breaking into a sob. "I will never let you go, Torn. No matter what..."

  The conscience of their captors was harder than Caduta’s rusted iron. One guard seized Serevia by the waist and hauled her backward like a sack of dead weight; another violently ripped Torn—still writhing from the agony in his foot—straight out of his sister's arms. This separation wasn't quiet; it was as brutal, bloody, and agonizing as flesh being torn from bone. As Serevia's fingers desperately snagged on the loose threads of her brother's sweater, she felt the severing of that bond exactly like the shattering of her own soul.

  "No! Let him go! Take me, not him! I'm begging you, let him go!"

  The raw agony tearing out of Serevia's throat echoed through Caduta's rusted air, clawing its way up to the sky. The young girl thrashed like a trapped feral animal inside the armored arms restraining her, sinking her nails into the guard’s gloves and beating the air with frantic kicks. Even as tears blinded her, she didn't tear her eyes away from her brother for a fraction of a second as the guards rapidly dragged him out of sight.

  Trapped against the chest of the guard hauling him away, Torn reached his hands out over the man's armored shoulder toward his sister; his fingers clawed at empty space, his small, innocent face twisted in sheer agony. The boy's wails tangled with his sister's, utterly shattering the last remaining silence of the dawn.

  "Sister! Don't leave me! Sister, don't go!"

  Torn's voice strangled in his throat, choked by his own sobs, every single word impaling Serevia's heart like white-hot iron spikes. "You promised, sister! Don't go, please don't go!"

  Every time Serevia heard her name, she lunged forward with even greater ferocity. "Torn! I won't let them take you! Let my brother go, he's just a little boy! He's hurt, can't you see? Let him go! I said let him go!"

  The girl's screaming shredded into a ragged shriek, then dissolved into a defeated, hollow whimper. As the guards dragged them in opposite directions toward the cold metal of the black armored vehicles, they left nothing behind on Caduta's muddy ground but that dropped, makeshift sack and their parting screams left hanging in the open air.

  When Serevia heard her brother's final cry of "Sister!", she felt every color in the world bleed out and die, leaving behind nothing but the dark, endless shadow of Sarcos.

  In that moment, not only her hope, but her entire world ended. The sky crushed down upon her; the earth she stood on evaporated from beneath her feet. There was no path left to run, no harbor left to seek, no brother left to protect. All that remained was darkness, deafening silence, and a bottomless, boundless despair echoing in the very depths of her soul. It was all over; for her, the world had been reduced to a pitch-black void.