Chapter 180 up
Chaos did not arrive loudly.
It arrived in fragments—half-seen movement, breath caught mid-inhale, the sudden understanding that time had begun to stutter. Evan would remember it later not as a sequence, but as a collapse of moments folding into one another.
The first blow came without warning.
There was no shouted threat, no raised fist he could track with his eyes. Just the sound—a dull, heavy crack, like something solid striking something that should not be struck. Bone meeting flesh. A sound that did not belong in the open air.
Nyla’s body jolted.
Evan felt it before he saw it—the shock traveling through her arm, through their locked hands. Her grip tightened reflexively, painfully, as if her body was trying to hold itself together by holding onto him.
“Nyla—” he started.
Another sound cut him off. A second impact, closer this time. Louder.
Nyla staggered. Her breath left her in a sharp, broken exhale. Evan saw her face twist—not in fear, but in shock, as if her body had been betrayed by a reality it had not been warned about.
She didn’t fall immediately.
She tried to stay standing.
Evan watched her knees bend, her balance falter, her free hand flying out uselessly to steady herself. He heard someone swear. He heard his own breathing, loud and erratic, as if it no longer belonged inside his chest.
Then she went down.
The fall was fast and unforgiving. Nyla’s body hit the asphalt with a sound that was somehow worse than the punch—heavy, final, the sound of something breaking contact with the world the way it was supposed to exist.
Evan screamed.
The noise tore out of him, raw and uncontrolled, his voice cracking under the weight of it. He lunged toward her, but hands closed around him instantly, stopping him mid-motion.
“Nyla!” he shouted. “Nyla!”
She was on the ground, her cheek pressed against the pavement. Evan saw the smear of red at the corner of her mouth, thin but unmistakable. Blood. The word echoed in his mind, detached and unreal.
Her eyes were open, but unfocused.
She tried to move.
Her arm lifted, trembling violently, fingers stretching toward him as if distance itself were something she could tear through by force of will.
“I’m—” she tried to say.
The word didn’t make it out.
Her vision swam, the street tilting wildly. Faces blurred together above her—indifferent shapes, moving shadows. The sky fractured into pieces of white and gray.
Her hand fell back to the ground.
Evan’s chest felt too tight, as if the air had been replaced with something thick and heavy. He struggled against the hands holding him, kicking wildly, nails scraping skin.
“Let me go!” he screamed. “Let me go—!”
No one answered him.
Nyla forced herself to focus.
The pavement was cold beneath her cheek, rough enough to scrape skin. Her mouth tasted like metal. She swallowed and immediately regretted it as pain flared through her jaw.
She tried to push herself up.
Her arms shook violently, refusing to cooperate. Her body felt disconnected, as if it no longer belonged entirely to her.
Evan.
The thought cut through the haze like a blade.
She turned her head slowly, each movement sending waves of nausea through her. Her vision blurred and doubled, but she found him anyway—small, struggling, surrounded by bodies that did not care.
Her hand lifted again.
“Evan,” she whispered.
She didn’t know if the sound reached him.
Her fingers scraped uselessly against the asphalt as she tried to crawl. Every inch of movement felt like dragging herself through broken glass. Her shoulder screamed in protest. Her ribs burned with every breath.
Still, she reached.
Evan saw it.
He saw her trying to get to him, her body failing her one movement at a time. He saw the blood at her mouth, the way her face looked wrong—too pale, too slack around the edges.
Something inside him broke.
“Nyla!” he cried again, his voice hoarse. “I’m here! I’m here!”
Hands tightened around his arms, lifting him slightly off the ground. His feet skidded uselessly against the pavement.
“Stop!” he screamed. “Stop it! You’re hurting her!”
No one listened.
Another sound reached him then—not a blow, but something just as terrible. The wet, dragging sound of Nyla’s breath as she tried to pull air into lungs that refused to cooperate.
She coughed.
Blood dotted the pavement beneath her mouth.
Her vision darkened at the edges.
She forced herself to keep her eyes open.
If she closed them, she was afraid she wouldn’t open them again.
She stretched her arm toward Evan one last time, fingers trembling, reaching past pain, past dizziness, past the roaring in her ears.
Almost.
Almost.
Her hand fell short.
A foot stepped into her field of vision, blocking her view of Evan completely.
“Stay down,” a voice said.
The pressure came next.
A weight pressed into her side, pinning her against the ground. Pain exploded through her ribs, sharp and overwhelming. She cried out, the sound torn from her without permission.
Her arm collapsed beneath her.
Evan screamed as well.
The sound of his voice—high, panicked, desperate—cut through the noise in her head with brutal clarity.
“I don’t want to go!” he sobbed. “Please! She needs me!”
She tried to answer him.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The world narrowed to sensation: the grit of asphalt against her skin, the pounding ache in her head, the crushing pressure on her chest that made each breath feel like a negotiation she was losing.
Evan was being pulled away.
She could tell by the sound—his cries growing more distant, stretched thin by space. Each step they took with him felt like something being torn out of her body.
“No,” she whispered, or maybe thought. “Please.”
Her fingers curled uselessly against the pavement, nails digging in until they bent painfully.
She had promised him.
She had promised she wouldn’t let anyone take him.
The promise burned now, heavy and cruel.
Evan twisted violently in their grip, his small body rigid with terror and fury. He kicked, screamed, tried to bite a hand that came too close.
“Don’t touch me!” he shouted. “She’s hurt! She’s hurt—!”
His words dissolved into sobs.
Nyla’s vision blurred completely now. Tears mixed with blood, streaking across her cheek and into the cracks of the pavement.
Her body shook uncontrollably.
She felt the pressure lift suddenly, the weight moving away. The men were leaving. Taking Evan with them.
She forced herself to roll onto her side, ignoring the scream of protest from her ribs. She pushed herself up on one elbow, her arm trembling violently beneath her.
“Evan,” she croaked.
The sound barely resembled her voice.
She saw him one last time—his head turned back toward her, eyes wide and shining with tears, face twisted in fear.
Their eyes met.
In that instant, everything else fell away.
She lifted her hand again, fingers shaking, reaching.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
Evan’s mouth opened, forming her name.
Then he was pulled around the corner.
Gone.
The street fell silent.
The city rushed back in slowly—distant traffic, a door slamming somewhere, a voice shouting in alarm. But none of it reached her properly.
Nyla collapsed back onto the pavement, her body finally giving in.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Her head throbbed violently, each heartbeat sending pain spiraling through her skull.