No stars. No sky. Seasons were just words in a book she'd never touched.
Rustina Gale had been born into a world of ceilings. Not the smooth, clean panels of the richer shelters, but the low, sweating stone of an abandoned freight tunnel, where her first cradle had been a salvaged crate padded with scraps of cloth. She didn't remember the birth itself, only the way her father told it later—how her mother, Irena, had laughed through the pain and said a child born underground would learn to stand faster, because there's nowhere to fall.
That was Irena. She could put light in anything.
Her parents had carried her from that crumbling hideout to the safety of their first real shelter when she was still red-faced and squirming. Life there was almost… gentle. Not easy, never easy—but her earliest memories were of her father humming old mining songs while fixing a kettle, and her mother's hands smelling faintly of candlewax and metal polish.
Then the sacrifices began.
The first time the Mother Below took her due, Rusty had been maybe seven.Old enough to understand, too young to stop it.
She remembered the announcement— voice booming in the Tunnels—and how the air seemed to curdle as the name was called: Irena Gale.
Her mother had been pregnant then. Still months from term, belly just beginning to show. People whispered after the announcement—two lives for the price of one. A bargain for the worms.
Rusty had clung to her mother's leg all the way back to their quarters, ignoring her father's hand on her shoulder. Irena had knelt, brushing Rusty's hair back. "It's all right, Rustina. You've got your father's stubbornness. You'll carry it for both of us."
"We can run," Rusty had said. "We'll go before they—"
But her mother's smile had been that same maddening, warm one. "And leave another family in our place? No, love. We don't trade deaths."
Torren had been a storm in those hours. Cursing at the Overseer. Shoving him against a wall. But it was no use. The gates open for none but the chosen, and they were watched day and night.
The night before the sacrifice, her father had taken her aside while Irena slept. His voice had been low, ragged. "Tomorrow, you stay close to me. No matter what happens."
The next day, they walked the long corridor toward the breath-fogged tunnel. The guards had their spears, the crowd its silence.
At the last moment, Irena stopped, turned to Torren, and pressed his hand to her belly. "Take her"
It happened fast. She shoved Rusty toward Torren, shoved Torren toward the guard line. Confusion bought them seconds. And Torren—gods, he ran. Rusty's hand in his, the sound of shouts, of feet pounding behind them—
Then the crack. A sharp, wet sound as Torren's leg was caught in the collapse of an old side shaft. He'd gone down screaming, but hadn't let go of her or the bundle wrapped around his chest.
The guards hadn't followed far—once Irena turned back toward the gate, they had no reason to. Rusty had seen her mother's face one last time, framed in the choking mist. Still smiling.
The worms took her in minutes.
They never stayed in one place again after that. Every shelter had its own calendar for the sacrifices. Some stretched the intervals to months, some demanded blood within weeks. The Gales never waited for their turn.
Torren's leg never healed right. He'd bound it with scavenged metal and leather, a makeshift brace that clinked faintly when he walked. "Keeps the bones from shifting," he'd say. Rusty knew it kept him in pain too, but he never complained—only moved them along, shelter to shelter, before the law came calling again.
And Rusty… Rusty learned. How to pack fast. How to forge names. How to smile like everything was fine for the sake of her little brother.
But now… the smile wouldn't come.
The Rust Mist had found them. It clung to their skin like wet iron dust, seeping into their lungs, weighing down every breath until even blinking felt like pushing against stone. Rusty, Olmo, and Torren could barely move—every muscle screaming but refusing to obey.
Olmo whimpered, his eyes darting wildly. "Rusty… I can't… I can't feel my hands."
Torren's arms tightened around them both, his voice strained but calm, the way only a father could lie. "It's alright, it's just the mist. Just hold on."
Rusty tried to force a smirk, to make it look like she wasn't scared, but her jaw trembled instead. "We've been through worse, right?" she rasped.
Olmo's lower lip quivered. "No we haven't."
The ground beneath them shuddered—deep, grinding vibrations like the earth was chewing its own bones. A fissure split open, and from it rose the Worm. Not the wriggling kind you might step over in the rain, but a mountain of glistening, pale flesh, ringed with teeth like the mouths of rusted saws. Its breath was heat and rot, and each exhale peeled the air from their lungs.
Torren pulled them in tighter, but the mist had already stolen their strength. They could do nothing but watch.
"Close your eyes," Torren whispered, though his own were wide open, fixed on the horror before them.
Rusty's lips parted—maybe to comfort Olmo, maybe to beg for help—but the Worm lunged. The ground dropped from under them, and suddenly they were sliding down a tunnel of wet, living muscle. The stench hit first—burning metal, spoiled meat—and then came the squeezing. Every wall of the Worm's throat clenched around them, pushing them deeper, pulling them away from the light.
Olmo screamed until the air left him. Rusty reached for him in the dark, but her fingers met only the slick, crushing press of flesh. Torren's voice called out once, hoarse and breaking—then nothing but the pounding of blood in her ears and the endless, suffocating dark.
The smile was gone for good.