Page 9 of Obliterated
The Pit is justice.Trial by blood. Survive, and walk free.
The Touched are marked.Once Turned, they burn.
The red rain is death.Seek cover. Do. Not. Get. Wet.
Obey the Watchers.Their word is warning.
The word of the Nine is final.Their judgment is law.
Iskimthepaperand the first one hits me in the chest like a fist:All must contribute. No work, no food.
My throat locks. I squeeze my eyes shut.Breathe, Kieran. Gods, fucking breathe. You have to live. You have to survive. You promised.
Her voice is there, even now, rasping through her last breath.Live, Kieran. Live. Be free.
And then the memory crashes in, the way her eyes glazed, how her hand slipped from mine, her body shuddering one last time before going still.
I’ll never scrub that moment from my skull. It’s carved there, burned deep where nothing can touch it.
The line shifts, dragging me forward again, and a murmur ripples through the passengers in front of me. A poor bastard gets pulled aside, directed back toward the boat. The sound thatleaves him is half a whimper, half a curse. Desperate voices rise in his wake.
A child clings to the woman ahead of me, knuckles white against the fabric of her ragged dress. “We’ll be fine,” she whispers, though her voice trembles. “They don’t decline minors. They never do. It’s the law.”
A small sliver of an idea punches through me, sharp and shallow, when I hear the words. It’s an opening, a chance, maybe… If I play it right.
Childhood is guarded, the third decree stated. Confirming what that woman said.
I might have nothing. No papers. Nothing to my name. I don’t have the funds to smuggle myself in, to pay the bribes everyone whispers about. Those off-the-book fees that grease the council’s hands for entrance. And I sure as hell don’t have one of the trades or skills that get you waved through the checkpoint with a shiny new tag.
But I’ve got a card left to play. Myface. The way I still look younger than I actually am. Boyish. Soft around the edges. I’m twenty years old, and fuck me, I usuallyhatethat I don’t look my age. But right now…
If I stick to my story, that my father was the one who got attacked down in the ship’s belly, that I barely made it out alive… They won’t turn me away.
They can’t. Not according to their own decrees.
I force a breath through my lungs, roll my shoulders, and make myself smaller. Slack my features, widen my eyes. Tilt my chin down. Insecure. Timid.Seventeen. Not twenty. A scared kid who needs saving, not a man they can discard. I chant my new birth year over and over, trying to make me believe I’m actually seventeen and hope to the Gods I come across genuine.
The line shuffles forward slowly. Hours go by. People vanish through the checkpoint doors and don’t come back out, unlessthey’re dragged onto the boat again, screaming and crying. The rest? They’re probably guided to new homes, new jobs, new lives. Lucky bastards with a dog tag hanging off their necks, a claim to a spot on Ibitha.
Ibitha… where the walls are high, and Watchers stand guard to keep the Walkers out. The safest place left in this part of the world—at least, that’s what the word on the street is.
I try not to look at one of those mythical Watchers. The black-haired, golden-skinned one that saved me from the Walker. He’s all darkness and sharp edges, carved from violence. But my eyes snag anyway.
He stands like a tall shadow stitched into the docks, right beside the checkpoint doors. Smoke curls lazy from his lips, his jawline set hard as stone, and those pitch-black eyes rake over the line like he’s measuring every soul in it.
The dockworkers and other Watchers circle near him but never too close. Not because they don’t notice him—because they do. His presence is a blade, and no one wants to be the fool who leans in and gets cut.
My mother would’ve muttered about his aura, called it a warning, a perimeter all its own.
All stay away from him, all except her. The tall, warrior-like woman at his side. She smacks him in the stomach with a casual hand when he mutters something under his breath. He winces hard and shoots her a glare sharp enough to set anyone else on fire, but she only rolls her eyes and smirks.
There are only a handful of people left before me when the air shifts. The door to the checkpoint swings open, and a woman steps out.
And shit, I don’t know her name, but she’s important. I can justseeit. The way what’s left of the crowd hushes, the way people look away too fast. The way the Watchers and workers seem to hold themselves higher.
All except for the broody one, who just squints and huffs, bulging arms scattered in scars crossed.
The woman is tall, blonde, draped in silk that doesn’t belong to this world anymore, with a red cloak around her shoulders. Her sharp smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which are calculated, cold, sweeping the line with the kind of ownership that makes my stomach drop.
