Chapter 15 The First Choice
SERINA POV
I woke to screaming.
Not the memory kind that haunted my sleep. Real screaming, coming from the street below our hideout.
"Enforcers!" someone shrieked. "They're taking everyone!"
I was on my feet before my brain caught up, ribs protesting where bandages still held me together. Through the cracked window, I saw chaos—Council soldiers dragging families from their homes, binding their hands with glowing chains.
They're purging the sector, Kaelthar said, his voice sharp in my mind. Cleansing the contamination, as they call it.
"Tym—" I spun toward where my brother slept.
"Already awake." Arvain appeared in the doorway, Tym pressed against his side. My brother's face was pale but determined. "They're not here for us. Not yet."
"Then who?" But I already knew the answer.
"Everyone who lives near where Tym recovered," Arvain said quietly. "The Council declared the whole sector contaminated. Fifty families. They're executing them all at dawn."
The screaming continued. A child's voice now, begging someone not to take their mother.
I turned away from the window. This wasn't my problem. I'd already risked everything saving Tym. These people—I didn't even know their names.
"We can evacuate them," Arvain said. "The resistance has safe houses across the city. We could save most of them if we move fast."
"No." The word came out harder than I meant. "We just survived Vyraxis. I'm barely healed. Tym's barely stable. We can't—"
"Can't or won't?" Arvain's voice stayed gentle, but I heard the question underneath.
Smart human, Kaelthar observed. He knows you're making excuses.
"I don't owe these people anything," I snapped at both of them. "I never asked to be anyone's savior."
"No one's asking you to save the world." Arvain stepped closer. "Just fifty families. Just tonight."
"And tomorrow? When the next sector gets purged? And the next?" My voice cracked. "Where does it stop?"
"Maybe it doesn't," Tym said quietly. We both turned to stare at him. His gray eyes—so like mine—held something harder than a twelve-year-old should know. "Maybe Mom kept healing people because once you start caring, you can't stop. Even when it kills you."
The words hit like a physical blow.
I thought of our neighbor, Mrs. Chen, who used to sneak us bread when we were starving. The enforcers had dragged her away last year, accused of hiding contaminated relatives. I'd watched from the shadows and done nothing.
Because I was nothing. Because nothing people can't save anyone.
Except I wasn't nothing anymore.
Careful, Kaelthar warned. Sentiment is a weakness your enemies will exploit.
"Maybe," I whispered back. "But Mom died protecting people. If I don't—if I just walk away—then what was the point?"
Through our bond, I felt something unexpected from the dragon. Not approval, exactly. But not mockery either.
"I'll help," I told Arvain, even as every survival instinct screamed at me to run. "But only this once."
Kaelthar's laughter echoed through my skull. Liar. You've already started caring.
The evacuation should have been simple.
Arvain's resistance had routes planned, safe houses prepared, signals worked out. Get the families out quietly before dawn, scatter them across the city where the Council couldn't find them.
We should have known the Council would anticipate that.
I was helping a terrified mother with two small children climb through a basement window when Kaelthar suddenly screamed in my mind: MOVE!
I threw myself backward as fire exploded where I'd been standing. The blast hurled me into the wall hard enough to crack stone. Pain detonated through my barely-healed ribs.
"Dragon vessel!" A woman stepped through the flames, violet eyes glowing with power. High-rank mage, maybe Council elite. "You're coming with us."
That's Magistrate Elara, Kaelthar identified. Memory specialist. She can rip thoughts from living minds.
"Run!" I screamed at the mother and children. They didn't need telling twice.
Three more mages materialized around me, blocking escape. Not enforcers—these were hunters. Sent specifically for me.
"The Council offers you a choice," Magistrate Elara said, her voice cold and precise. "Surrender quietly, and the families in this sector live. Resist, and we execute them all. You have ten seconds."
My blood went cold. "You're bluffing."
"Eight seconds."
"Serina, don't—" Arvain's voice crackled through the communication crystal at my belt, but another mage crushed it with a gesture.
"Five seconds."
I could fight. Kaelthar's power sang in my veins, hungry for release. I could probably kill these four mages before they knew what hit them.
But the families. The children I'd just saved. If I fought, they died.
If I surrendered, I died.
Fight, Kaelthar urged. We can take them.
"And doom everyone I just tried to save?"
Better they die free than you die in chains!
"Two seconds."
I looked at Magistrate Elara's cold, certain face. She really would do it. Kill fifty families just to make a point.
My hands shook as I raised them in surrender.
"Smart choice," Elara smiled. "Binding chains."
The magic wrapped around me before I could breathe, cutting off my connection to Kaelthar's power. The dragon roared in fury, but distantly, like he was suddenly very far away.
They dragged me toward a waiting transport. Through the window, I saw Arvain and Tym watching helplessly from a rooftop, too far away to help.
Then Elara leaned close, her breath cold against my ear. "Oh, and that offer about sparing the families? I lied."
She nodded to her mages. "Kill them all."
"NO!" I screamed, thrashing against the chains.
But through the transport window, I saw flames bloom across the sector. Heard the screaming start again.
They'd never planned to let anyone live.
The transport lurched into motion, carrying me toward the Council Spire and whatever horror waited there.
And behind us, everything I'd tried to save burned.