Liam tore his hand from mine and stepped in front of me, his eyes wild.
"Why am I all soaked up? What happened back there?" His voice cracked like thunder. His gaze locked onto mine, but mine sank to the ground, heavy with shame.
"Where are our friends?" His fists clenched, trembling.
"I'll bring them back—every one of them, I swear. But you have to listen to me now, Liam. We need to leave. Now!" The earth groaned beneath us, a deep tremor rolling through the wasteland.
"But where?" he asked, staring into the horizon as if it could give him an answer.
We ran, blind and breathless, into the endless barrens. The wind howled and tore at our skin, dragging sand into the air until it spun into violent, twisting pillars. The storm swallowed the sky, tightening, tightening, until the heavens themselves seemed to collapse downward. Then, impossibly, the chaos did not scatter—it burrowed. It drove itself into the earth, and from the shifting sands, bricks rose one by one, grinding into place with unnatural precision until a towering wall sealed itself before us.
We skidded to a halt, trapped. The storm raged outside the barrier, its roar like voices screaming at the edge of sanity. Clutching each other's hands, we turned—and the air itself betrayed us.
From the left and right, two furious waves of dust and wind slammed together with a deafening crash. As the fury dissolved, silence fell, and through it stepped Hector.
His smile spread slowly across his face, a smile that did not welcome but warned, a smile that screamed danger.
"What is this?" My voice broke from me in rage, steady only because I forced it to be. "You said we could leave!"
"When did I say that?" Hector tilted his head, rubbing his jaw between thumb and forefinger as if pondering a riddle he already knew the answer to. "I do recall saying something about choosing one over the others." He shrugged, casual as death.
"So we're trapped?" I roared, my fists shaking at my sides.
"I never said that either." His eyes glinted, and with a single finger, he carved the air. Reality tore open like cloth, a glowing wound stretching wider and wider until a portal yawned before us.
With an almost lazy shrug, he gestured toward the gaping passage.
"There. Your way home. Go."
His other hand slipped behind his back, concealing whatever it held, and that hidden motion was more dangerous than the storm, more terrifying than the wall, more suffocating than the wasteland itself.
I didn't know what it was, only that something was wrong. The air shifted, heavy, and I froze.
"Liam, you should go first. I'll follow," I whispered, but the words weren't mine alone. Hector heard them.
"Liam is not the one who will leave," he said. His finger leveled at me like a sentence. "You will."
My chest tightened. "Why are you doing this? You asked me to choose, and I did. Now let him go!" My hands rose in anger, trembling, useless.
Liam's eyes darted between us, searching for meaning in the chaos. He was lost, blind to the weight pressing down.
"I gave you that option because I had heard something about you," Hector continued, his voice slow, deliberate. He raised a finger toward me, almost as though accusing a ghost. "They say you once gave yourself up, that you sacrificed yourself to save everything. But I don't believe what I hear. So I tested you. And you failed. You are not selfless, Zinnia. You are selfish. Weak. Foolish."
"Don't speak as if you know me," I screamed, clamping my hands over my ears as if to drown out the venom in his words.
"Here is the truth," he said lightly, as though all of this were no more than a game. "Walk away without Liam, or remain with him here. For eternity."
"He will not stay!" My voice broke against the stone, raw and desperate.
Liam's hand found mine, firm, grounding.
"This is right," Hector purred. "Let the men talk." His smile stretched, too thin, too knowing, as though it had been carved into his face.
"Why do you want to keep me here?" Liam asked, stepping forward, his voice steady but lined with unease.
Hector pressed his palms together, then pointed at Liam with a theatrical flourish. "See? That is how one discusses serious matters."
He leaned closer, "I have no quarrel with you. No grudge. Your life means little to me." His eyes flicked back to Liam.
"I need you here, Liam, because if you leave, Grace will be torn from me again. Do you understand? She will be pulled apart from me." His voice cracked into something fevered, trembling with devotion.
We stared at him, confusion tightening around us like iron chains. His words twisted sense into madness, but Liam still stood there, listening, as though some hidden thread might unravel the meaning in Hector's madness.
"I do hate Samantha, I truly do," Liam said coldly, arms folded tight across his chest, his stance rigid with disdain. "But I will never stand by and let you keep her daughter from her. Whatever she has done, she is still the girl's mother. And you—" his gaze sharpened, "I still don't understand why you kidnapped her in the first place."
"I!" Hector's voice cracked like thunder. The ground beneath us shivered, shadows coiling outward like spilled ink, reaching hungrily toward Liam's boots. His composure faltered, but after a jagged breath, he reeled it back, lips curling into something that only *resembled* a smile. The darkness dissolved, retreating reluctantly into the earth.
"I didn't kidnap her," he said, softer now, though every word carried an unsettling weight. A pause. His eyes gleamed with something close to nostalgia. "I wanted to… at first. Yes. But the moment I met her, everything changed."
Liam tilted his head, silent, watching.
Hector's voice sank lower, as though speaking to ghosts only he could see.
"When I was born, I carried power—unnatural, impossible power. My family was ordinary. Too ordinary. They couldn't bear it. My mother… threw me away. Left me in a rusted trash bin on the street, like spoiled fruit." His lips trembled, but his eyes burned steady. "The dogs came first—circling, snarling, waiting for me to stop moving. But fate, or cruelty, had another plan. A woman found me. She was no mother of mine, yet she held me as if I had been her own blood. She fed me, clothed me, shielded me. She taught me how to hide, how to wield the strange currents running through my veins. I was safe. I was loved. For the first time, I was happy."
The memory shifted. His jaw clenched. "Then… *he* appeared."
"A man," Hector continued, voice darkening. "A long face, a thick mustache, always hiding under a ridiculous hat." He tilted his head, studying Liam as if savoring the moment. "Does that sound familiar?"
Liam's eyes widened. The air left his lungs.
"Yes," Hector hissed, hatred dripping through his words. "The very same man who took you."
His smile vanished, his eyes hollowed. "He pretended kindness at first. He married my mother. Three days later, when she was away, he handed me a glass of juice. Sweet. Ordinary. I trusted him." His hand twitched as though holding the glass again. "Three sips… and the floor rushed up to meet me."
A silence fell.