She wondered if she would live long enough to see another sunrise.
Or if this darkness was all that remained.
The bus rattled over the uneven road, its interior steeped in silence, thick, suffocating, and oppressive.
Liora kept her head lowered, her cuffed hands trembling against the cold metal wall. Every jolt of the wheels over broken ground sent a fresh wave of dread coursing through her body.
No one cried. No one screamed. It was as if fear had robbed them all of sound, leaving only the rattle of chains and the groan of the engine.
Then...
A sharp laugh cut through the stillness.
It was low, bitter, and unafraid. Liora was startled, she lifted her head and swung it around to find the direction from which the voice echoed.
Across from her sat a young man, no older than twenty. His wrists were cuffed like the rest, his clothes worn and dust-stained, a faint bruise blooming dark along his jaw.
Yet despite it all, his back remained straight, his chin lifted in open defiance, as though he refused to let this place break him. As though his fate was something he alone would decide.
Was it truly that easy to escape fate? Liora wondered bitterly.
Her two brothers had been chosen for the Hunt before. They had returned home unharmed, without so much as a scratch. She had asked them what had happened there, what they had done to survive, but they had never answered. Only one word ever left their lips.
They survived.
But how?
And if survival was possible… why hadn't her father chosen either of them, when they had already proven they could endure the Hunt?
"They really think this will stop us from running," he said mockingly, tugging once at the chain with deliberate carelessness. "Idiots."
One of the girls beside him flinched. "Be quiet," she whispered urgently, her voice barely audible. "They'll hear you."
"So what if they do?" he snapped back, eyes flashing with something wild and reckless. "What's the worst they can do.... kill us? We're already dead."
A heavy silence followed his words, pressing down on them all like a weight.
Liora swallowed hard.
He turned then, his sharp gaze landing on her with an unsettling pricking gaze. Unlike the others, his eyes weren't dull with surrender. They burned, fierce, alive, furious.
"You," he called out. "You're shaking."
She stiffened, heat rising to her face despite the cold. "I.... I can't help it."
He studied her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then scoffed softly. "They want that. Fear. It makes the hunt more entertaining for them."
Her breath hitched. "You talk like you've seen it before."
"I have," he replied flatly, his voice stripped of emotion.
The bus hit a pothole, and the chains clinking sharply against metal made several captives gasp in unison.
"My name's Kael," he added after a pause, his tone softer now, though no less hard-edged. "They took my sister five years ago." His jaw tightened. "She didn't come back."
Liora's heart clenched painfully in her chest.
"Then why are you here?" she whispered, unable to stop the question.
A slow, dangerous smile curved his lips, the kind of smile that held no warmth, only grim determination.
"Because this time," Kael said quietly, his voice dropping to something cold and resolute, "I'm not running."
He leaned back against the wall, his eyes never leaving hers.
"This time, I'm hunting them."
The bus roared onward into the dark forest road, swallowing them deeper into the unknown. It carried fear, fury, and something far more dangerous....
Defiance.
And for the first time since her door had been broken down, since her father's hand had struck her face, since she'd been dragged from everything she knew, Liora felt something stir beneath her terror.
Not hope.
Not yet.
But the fragile spark of resistance, so small, so easily extinguished, still flickered in the darkness, a candle that refused to die.
Fate had not loosened its grip. The young boy had dared to seek revenge for his sister, fearless and determined, while she… she remained trapped in hopelessness. Could love ever exist for someone like her? Someone invisible, unwanted, unloved?
Since her mother's death, not a single day has brought her warmth or protection. Her stepsiblings sneered and scorned her; her father barely looked at her; and her stepmother… words could not capture the hatred she carried.
Every encounter with them was a blade cutting deeper into Liora's heart. She had nowhere to turn, no voice to hear her, no hand to hold hers.
She raised her handcuffed hands and stared at them, trembling. Rough, cracked, scarred, not from adventure, but from ceaseless labor, abuse, and neglect.
They bore the weight of her suffering, the evidence of every harsh word, every hard task, every day spent bending under work she never chose.