The Longest Night

Chapter Four

They were close.

Ádin didn't dare look back, but he could feel them behind him—boots slamming into the earth, voices barking in half-garbled chants, calls for the heretic, the marked one, the ash-blooded. He couldn't count them, not exactly. But every corner turned brought another set of feet, another torchlight flaring in the shadows. The tunnel had spat him into the open like blood from a wound, and the night air, once cold and vast, now pressed against him like a vice.

They're not stopping.

He ducked through the shattered fencing of a dump site, the rusted remains of forgotten tech scraping against his side as he slid between wrecked panels and long-dry cables. Debris crunched underfoot—fractured screens, melted steel, even bones turned white from time and sun. The sky above was a hollow vault of gray clouds, and the moon—bloated and indifferent—watched him fall apart.

I shouldn't have come here. Ragar… you bastard. You promised safety.

But Ragar was gone. Or hiding. Or dead.

The first pursuers crashed into the dump after him, heavy boots slipping on trash-slick gravel. Ádin vaulted a pile of shredded circuit boards and tumbled down the other side, nearly hitting the ground on his face. He scrambled to his feet and tore through the maze of decay, veering right into a scrap yard fenced by broken light poles and car frames older than memory. Towering stacks of twisted metal groaned in the wind.

His foot hit something solid—a steel beam—and he stumbled. Instinct pulled his eyes toward a bent iron rod half-buried in soot.

I could take it. Swing once. Maybe break a jaw. Maybe two.

But no. No.

Running was survival.

He spun away from it and kept going, lungs burning, throat raw. The voices were closer. He didn't know if they were Children of the Sun or Moon or Stars—it didn't matter. They were the same now. Bloodthirsty shadows in holy masks.

I've been chased before, he thought. But not like this. Never like this.

Every breath was fire. His legs screamed at him to stop. He jumped a pile of broken washing machines and skidded down a metal chute used to funnel rainwater—or blood, judging by the stains. Ahead, a jagged stairwell of stone and bone climbed toward a half-shattered building still clawing at the night sky. He sprinted for it, boots pounding against a cracked sidewalk.

The compass in his pouch banged against his chest with every step. He could feel its weight, its memory. His grandmother's voice echoed faintly:

"That compass knows more than I ever could. Follow it when I'm gone."

He gritted his teeth, yanked it free, and without looking, hurled it over his shoulder into the dark.

A shriek followed—not from a pursuer, but from something fragile inside him.

Forgive me.

He reached the stairs and flew up them two at a time, hands dragging along walls smeared with faded cult graffiti and blood rituals. The fourth floor gaped open ahead, and half the building was missing—collapsed decades ago in some forgotten blast, leaving only jagged concrete teeth and rebar ribs.

Ádin didn't stop.

He ran into the open void and leapt.

The building across from him loomed like a corpse waiting for breath. He landed hard on its rooftop, knees buckling, pain ripping through his legs. He kept moving. His right boot caught on broken cement as he crossed the rooftop, and one of them—one of the masked zealots—reached him.

A gloved hand latched around his ankle, wrenching back.

Ádin kicked.

His heel smashed into the cultist's mask with a sharp metallic clang. The grip faltered. He kicked again and again, wild and desperate, until the hand fell away. But the boot did too—ripped from his foot and left behind as he stumbled forward barefoot across gravel and glass.

Don't fall. Don't fall. Don't die.

He scaled another wall, then leapt across a sliver of alley between buildings, landing hard on a tilted roof tile that cracked under his weight. He rolled, came up gasping, and sprinted again.

Below, the marketplace roared back into view.

He was too high to stop. Too late to slow.

Ádin jumped.

He crashed through a tarp stretched over a spice vendor's stall, smashing into baskets of moldy powder and pungent herbs. People screamed. The smell choked him as he staggered upright.

And then the voice came.

"Seize him! Heretic!"

It was one of the cultists—his voice breaking through the chaos, louder than flame.

Every pair of eyes turned.

Vendors dropped meat skewers. Drunken traders froze mid-step. Children stopped chewing on insect shells. Then, as if summoned by blood, a swarm of filthy bodies surged toward Ádin with greedy hands.

"Get him!"

"I saw him first!"

"Let me touch him! I want the blessing!"

"No, the Sun will shine on me!"

They didn't want to help the cults. They wanted reward. Recognition. A few scraps of meat. A whisper of divine approval.

Hands clawed at him—pulling at his shirt, yanking his arms, grabbing his hood.

He swung wildly, trying to break free.

Don't let them take you. Don't let them take you.

Fletcher. If they take me, they'll find him.

He won't bark. He can't. But they'll know. They always know.

He twisted his body, flailing like a man possessed. Someone punched him. Another tried to bite his wrist. They argued over who caught him first. They laughed. They shrieked.

Someone, somewhere, began singing a cult hymn.

Ádin looked past them—and saw it.

The pole.

They were erecting it already.

A tall iron rod. A base of rocks and nails. A length of chain.

He froze.

Not because he was weak.

But because he knew, in that moment, that the world had finally caught up with him. The quiet, the songs, the warmth of his grandmother's voice. The way Fletcher whimpered at night. The way his own body folded and unfolded in moonlight. It had all been a borrowed dream.

I always knew it would come to this.

But he wasn't ready to die.

Not yet.

He screamed—not words, but sound—and threw himself forward with everything left. He didn't care where he was going. Only that he wasn't going to burn. Not like this.

Not tonight.