Dawn in Avalon wasn't like dawn in the real world.
There was no sunrise, no golden light breaking over the horizon. Just a subtle shift from darker gray to lighter gray, a barely perceptible change that told survivors it was "morning"—the safest time to move, when most of the nocturnal creatures had retreated to their lairs.
Nana slipped out of her bunk silently, her movements practiced after weeks of learning to navigate the settlement without waking others. She'd barely slept anyway, her mind consumed with a single thought:
Chocolate. For Mina.
It was stupid. Reckless. Completely unnecessary for survival.
But Mina had saved her life more times than she could count. Had taught her everything she needed to survive this nightmare.
Had become the sister Nana never had.
And Mina missed chocolate.
So Nana was going to find some.
She'd studied Mr. Simon's maps the night before, memorizing a location three districts west—another supermarket, less picked over than most because it sat in contested territory between demon and hybrid clans.
Dangerous, yes. But potentially rewarding.
Nana checked her equipment with practiced efficiency: crossbow loaded and secured across her back, sword in its makeshift sheath at her hip, three throwing knives Sera had given her tucked into her belt, her aether core at maybe 60% capacity after yesterday's fight. Good enough.
She grabbed the settlement map, traced the route one more time with her finger, then slipped toward the door.
The guard on duty was dozing—not uncommon at dawn, the exhaustion of night watch finally catching up. Nana moved past him like a ghost, years of hunter training making her footsteps silent even on the creaky floorboards.
The settlement gate was trickier, but she'd learned the trick: lift slightly while pushing, and the hinges didn't squeak.
She was through and gone before anyone noticed.
The broken city stretched before her, bathed in that eternal gray light. Nana moved.
Rooftop to rooftop, her mind catalogued automatically. Use the fire escapes. Avoid the main streets. Watch for movement.climbed with confidence born from weeks of practice, her injured shoulder only protesting slightly.
The view from above was simultaneously beautiful and horrifying—a vast urban cemetery where buildings stood as tombstones for whatever civilization had existed here before.
Two districts over, she paused on a rooftop edge, watching a scene unfold below.
Demons and horse hybrids were fighting in the street—a territorial dispute, probably. Five demons against three hybrids, all of them moving with savage grace. Blood—black and red—painted the asphalt. The sounds were horrible: roars, shrieks, the wet impact of claws finding flesh.
Nana watched with eyes that had gone cold, calculating. Three demons would win. The hybrids are injured, outnumbered.
She was right. Thirty seconds later, the last hybrid fell. The demons didn't even pause to celebrate, just moved on, searching for new prey.
That's what we are here, Nana thought. Prey.
She moved on.
At the edge of the third district, she spotted another human—newly arrived, by the look of him. Still wearing relatively clean clothes, stumbling through the streets with wide, terrified eyes.
He hadn't learned yet that movement attracted attention, that fear was a beacon.
A hybrid appeared from a collapsed building. Saw him.
Charged.
The man screamed.
Nana's hand moved to her crossbow, then stopped.
'I can't save everyone', she reminded herself, Mina's harsh lessons echoing in her mind. 'Every bolt I use on a stranger is one less for my own survival. Every fight I take risks drawing more attention.'
She watched the man die.
Watched the hybrid drag his body into the shadows.
And felt nothing.
'When did I become this cold? ' A distant part of her mind wondered. But she already knew the answer: Avalon did this. Survival did this.
She slid down a drainage pipe into an alley, landing in a crouch.
The supermarket was ahead—its facade mostly intact, though the windows were shattered.
In through the roof, she decided. Safer than the main entrance.
She found a section where the roof had partially collapsed, creating an opening.
Nana squeezed through, dropping silently into what had once been the store's office area.
The interior was picked over but not empty.
She moved methodically, scanning shelves with the efficiency of someone who'd done this dozens of times. Canned beans—take two. Preserved fruit—one can. Bread that was probably stale but not moldy—yes.
And then, half-buried under rubble near what had been the candy aisle, she saw it.
A single chocolate bar. Dark chocolate, the expensive kind. Its wrapper was dusty but intact.
Nana's cold expression cracked into a genuine smile. Mina is going to lose her mind.She tucked the chocolate carefully into her pack, already imagining her friend's face when—
"Well, well. What do we have here?"
Nana spun, her hand moving to her sword hilt.
Five men emerged from the shadows—human, or what passed for human in Avalon.
But their eyes held a cruel gleam that had nothing to do with survival and everything to do with choice. They'd chosen to be predators.
"Pretty little thing, all alone," the leader said, his smile showing too many missing teeth.
"That's dangerous, sweetheart. Lucky for you, we can offer protection. For a price."
He gestured to her pack. "Everything you've got. Weapons too. And maybe we'll let you walk away."
Nana grip tightened on her sword. "Leave. Now. I'm warning you once."
They laughed.
Wrong answer.
"Oh, she's got spirit!" One of them drew a rusted knife.
"Even better. I like it when they fight—"
Nana moved.
Her crossbow came up, bolt released in the same fluid motion. The man with the knife took it through his throat, his laugh turning to a wet gurgle as he collapsed.
"Bitch!" The leader charged.
Nana's sword was already in her hand. She sidestepped his clumsy attack—these weren't trained fighters, just desperate men who'd lost their humanity—and her blade found his kidney.
He screamed, falling.
The other three hesitated, suddenly realizing their mistake.
Nana didn't give them time to reconsider.
She moved like lightning, like the machine Mina had called her. Kick to the knee—bone breaking with a satisfying crack. Spin, sword slash opening a throat.
The last one tried to run.
Her throwing knife found his back.
Silence fell, broken only by her steady breathing and the wet sounds of the dying.
Nana wiped her blade clean on one of the corpses, her expression never changing.
Worse than monsters, she thought coldly.
Monsters kill because it's their nature.
These men chose to be predators.
She reloaded her crossbow, retrieved her throwing knife, and headed for the exit.
Behind her drawn by the sounds of violence, demons appeared at the supermarket entrance.
They found the bodies and began to feed, their roars of satisfaction echoing through the building.
Nana was already three blocks away.
The journey back was faster—she knew the route now, knew which buildings were safe to traverse, which shadows to avoid.
The chocolate sat safe in her pack, and despite everything she'd just done, Nana found herself smiling.
Hot chocolate, she thought. I'll find a way to heat water, make it like Mina remembers.
It'll be perfect.
The settlement walls appeared ahead, and Nana felt a surge of relief. Home. Or as close to home as Avalon allowed.
She was ten meters from the gate when the sky changed.
The gray darkened, took on a sickly green tinge. The air grew thick, harder to breathe.
And on the horizon, something massive was moving—a shape that was both animal and spirit, neither fully corporeal nor entirely ethereal.
It looked like a deer. A beautiful, graceful deer with crystalline antlers that caught the diseased light.
Except it was flying.
And from its mouth poured green mist that rolled across the city like a living thing.
"POISON GAS SPIRIT!" Mr. Simon's voice exploded from the settlement walls.
"NANA, GET INSIDE! NOW!"
Nana ran.
The gate was already opening, hands reaching out to pull her through.
She dove inside just as the first tendrils of green mist reached the settlement walls.
The gate slammed shut.
"SEAL EVERYTHING!" Simon was shouting orders. "Windows, cracks, any opening! Move, MOVE!"
People scrambled to obey, stuffing cloth into gaps, covering vents. The settlement had clearly practiced this drill before.
And then Nana saw Mina, and her friend's expression made her blood run cold.
Mina wasn't relieved. She was furious.
"My quarters. NOW." Mina's voice was ice, colder than Nana had ever heard it.
They walked in tense silence to the small room they shared.
The moment the door closed, Mina exploded.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!"
She grabbed Nana's shoulders, and for the first time, there were tears in her eyes—tears of pure terror. "You snuck out! ALONE! Without telling anyone! Without backup! Do you have ANY idea what could have happened?!"
"I was fine—"
"You were LUCKY!" Mina's hands trembled. "What if you'd run into a demon pack? What if the hybrids had caught you? What if you'd been killed and I never even knew you'd left?!"
Her voice cracked. "I woke up and you were just gone, Nana. Gone. And I thought—I thought maybe you'd—"
She couldn't finish, but Nana understood.
In Avalon, people disappeared all the time. One moment they were there, the next they were just... gone.
"I'm sorry " Nana said quietly. "I didn't think—"
"No, you didn't!" Mina wiped her eyes roughly. "You're getting stronger, I know. You can fight now, survive. But that doesn't make you invincible! You're not—"
She stopped, taking a shaky breath.
"You're all I have left, okay? Everyone else from my original group is dead. Chen, Marcus, little Yuki—all of them. You're my sister now. And I can't—I can't lose you too."
The anger drained from Nana, replaced by guilt. She'd been so focused on the surprise, on doing something nice, that she hadn't considered what her disappearance would mean to Mina.
"I really am sorry," she said. "I should have told you. Should have asked you to come with me."
"Why did you even leave?" Mina demanded. "What was so important—
Nana reached into her pack and pulled out the chocolate bar.
Mina stared at it. Then at Nana. Then back at the chocolate.
"You..." Her voice was barely a whisper.
"You went out there. Alone. Risked your life. For chocolate?"
"You said you missed it," Nana said quietly.
"You said you missed sitting in a cafe with hot chocolate, just existing without the monsters. And I thought... I thought maybe I could give you that. Just for a moment. Something that doesn't hurt to remember."
Mina's fury crumbled. She started laughing and crying at the same time, pulling Nana into a fierce hug.
"You absolute idiot," she sobbed into Nana's shoulder. "You beautiful, terrifying, completely insane idiot. I love you so much. And I'm still furious at you."
Both of them stood like that for a long moment, two survivors clinging to each other in a world that wanted them dead.
Finally, Mina pulled back, taking the chocolate bar with trembling hands.
"Okay. Okay. We're going to make hot chocolate. And you're going to tell me everything about your trip—every fight, every close call, every stupid risk you took. And then we're going to establish a new rule: no more solo supply runs. Ever. Got it?"
"Got it."
Outside, the poison gas spirit's mist rolled through the city, killing anything caught in its path. Inside the settlement, sealed behind their walls, survivors huddled together and waited for it to pass.
And in their small room, Nana and Mina sat together, heating water over a makeshift stove, watching chocolate melt into something that resembled normalcy.
"You know," Mina said, taking her first sip of the hot chocolate. Her eyes closed in bliss. "This is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Still mad at you though."
"Still sorry."
"Good." Mina smiled, that fierce survivor's smile. "Now tell me about this Zayne again. Because anyone who inspired you to become this recklessly loyal? I need to approve of him before you find him."
And despite everything—the danger, the death, the endless nightmare of Avalon—Nana found herself laughing.
Real laughter, for the first time in weeks.
Outside, the poison gas spirit continued its hunt.
But inside, for just one moment, there was chocolate and warmth and hope.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.