Chapter 32: Shelter with No Sanctuary
The road behind them was stained with blood, old and new. Jaden didn't look back. None of them did.
Their group walked in grim silence, the only sounds the crunch of dirt beneath worn boots and the occasional hiss of wind through shattered glass. The smoke from the earlier fight still clung to their clothes, sour and metallic, curling in their throats like something alive.
Jaden led the way, his face pale, eyes distant, jaw set in quiet defiance. He hadn't spoken since the mother died. Hadn't reacted when her last, bitter words cut deeper than any blade.
Moral is for the weak.
Her voice echoed in his skull like a curse he couldn't scrub out.
Behind him, Rowan's limp was getting worse. Kael kept glancing at the horizon, as if expecting the world to collapse under their feet. Niko walked stiffly with a hand clutched to his side, Aya keeping pace at his shoulder, silent and shaken.
Silas, unusually quiet, stayed close behind Jaden. His wings had retracted, the last shimmer of his summoned magic fading. He didn't tease. Didn't smile. Not this time.
There was nothing left to smile about.
They had seen cruelty before. Bandits. Monsters. Selfish loners with twitchy trigger fingers. But today had been different. The woman's words clung to them like ash, the brutal truth that survival didn't just warp people it unmade them.
Rowan finally broke the silence.
"She looked so normal," he said, voice hoarse. "Just someone trying to feed her kids."
"Maybe she was, once," Kael replied softly. "Before she decided they were worth less than she was."
Jaden said nothing. His grip on his weapon tightened.
They kept walking.
The road eventually bled into the outskirts of an old city block. Crumbling storefronts leaned against each other like exhausted drunks, their windows long shattered and signs faded into unreadable ghosts. But nestled behind a warped, half toppled fence was something sturdier.
A large, squat concrete building loomed beyond rusted wire and debris. Rows of metal barricades lay scattered like bones. Overgrown weeds choked the path, crawling through the cracks like they had claimed ownership of what humanity left behind.
A bent sign swayed slightly in the wind. Its paint was mostly peeled, but a few letters still clung to its surface.
Redridge Evac Center.
"Government shelter," Rowan muttered, eyes scanning the remnants. "Meant for civilians during the first system breach. Before the collapse."
"Looks like it didn't go well," Niko said, eyeing the rusted fence. "Nothing ever does."
Jaden approached the gate slowly. His foot nudged a crushed water bottle near a weather beaten emergency poster. Families Welcome. Safe Zone. Protect the Innocent.
He pushed open the gate with his shoulder. The hinges screamed as it gave way.
Inside, the courtyard was eerily still. Half-destroyed luggage lay slumped beneath old benches. A child's sneaker, no larger than Jaden's palm, rested beside a cracked toy soldier. Flies circled a dark patch on the pavement that looked too old to bleed anymore.
Aya stopped beside a crumbled wall. Her eyes locked on something half-buried in the rubble.
It was a child's doll, one side scorched black, the other smeared with something darker. The smile sewn on its fabric face made her flinch.
"There were kids here," she whispered.
Kael moved toward a broken kiosk, his voice distant. "And they left in a hurry. Or they didn't leave at all."
Silas walked slowly, brushing his hand against the old concrete walls. His fingers came away smudged with soot.
"They thought this would save them," he said. "People came here believing help was coming."
"And it didn't," Jaden said, voice hard.
He stepped over an overturned crate and paused at the shattered entrance doors. Inside, the dark yawned wide.
"Let's check for shelter. Just enough for one night."
No one argued.
They passed through the broken threshold, swallowed by the ruin that once promised sanctuary.
~~~~~~~~~
Inside the evac center, the air was stale and heavy with the scent of mildew and rust. The main lobby was gutted long benches overturned, vending machines cracked open, and shredded papers littering the floor like dry snow. Faded posters still clung to the walls, their edges curling and brittle.
"Report to your assigned unit leader."
"Your safety is our priority."
"Hope is stronger than fear."
Each line felt like a lie now, paper thin and meaningless.
Rowan led the way past the ruins of the front desk and into a hallway that looked marginally intact. His flashlight flickered over names etched into the wall, some in marker, some scratched in with keys or fingernails. Dozens of them. Some had been crossed out.
"We'll take the west corridor," Rowan muttered. "Looks like it didn't collapse."
They found a small room with a reinforced door still hanging on its hinges. The inside was cramped but dry. Scattered debris littered the corners molded blankets, cracked tiles, the crumbling remains of a firepit.
Rowan kicked debris aside and dragged a rusted metal beam across the door. "Won't stop anything determined, but it'll buy us time."
Silas stepped inside last and flicked his fingers. A faint shimmer passed across the doorway his magic forming a thin, rippling ward just past the threshold. It glowed faintly before fading into invisibility.
"It won't hold back anything massive," he murmured, "but we'll hear it coming."
The group settled into a slow rhythm. Aya unpacked a cloth wrap of dried food. Kael collapsed into a corner and exhaled with a sigh too tired to be dramatic. Niko leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes.
No one said much. The kind of silence that filled the room wasn't peaceful. It was the kind that settled into bones after too many close calls.
Jaden stood near the window, what was left of it, gazing out through the cracked pane. The city outside was a ruined skeleton, half eaten by ash and silence. He hadn't even taken off his coat. His posture was tense, like if he moved too much, he might fall apart.
Silas moved to stand beside him, close but not touching.
"You should sit," he said gently. "At least lean."
Jaden didn't answer at first. His voice came quiet, strained. "If I sit, I'll think. And I don't want to think right now."
Silas tilted his head. "Then don't think. Just feel."
Jaden let out a breath. It wasn't a laugh. It wasn't relief.
It was just... empty.
~~~~
The ruined city outside the window offered nothing but darkness. No stars. No moon. Just the faint, pulsing glow of a distant fire someone else's fight, someone else's loss.
Jaden didn't move. He stood like a statue, one hand braced on the windowsill, shoulders tense. His reflection in the glass looked like a ghost.
Silas stood beside him, silent for a while. No wings. No light tricks. No flirtatious banter.
Just Silas, quiet and steady.
"She meant it," Jaden finally said, voice hollow.
Silas nodded, expression unreadable.
"She didn't say it because she was scared. Or delirious. She believed every word. She used her kids, and she'd do it again if it meant living one more day."
"She's not the only one," Silas said softly. "I've seen people trade their sisters for medicine. Burn their homes with their families still inside because something was chasing them. One man slit his best friend's throat for a working flashlight."
Jaden flinched. "That's not survival. That's... that's giving up everything human."
"Not giving up," Silas said. "Just reshaping. Survival's not some noble goal. It's an animal instinct. And instincts don't care about morals."
Jaden turned to him, eyes rimmed red, not from tears he was too tired to cry but from something deeper. "And what happens if we start thinking like that? What if I do? What if I get pushed far enough?"
Silas didn't look away. "Then you choose. Every single time. You choose who you are. Even if no one else does."
Jaden looked back out the window.
"She was starving. But she was alive. And I think she would've kept going. I think if I'd handed her a can of food, she'd have left me bleeding on the floor and walked away without a second thought."
"She might have," Silas admitted. "And that's the part that haunts you."
Jaden's voice dropped to a whisper. "I'm scared of becoming someone like her."
Silas finally reached out, placing a hand gently on Jaden's shoulder. "Then hold on to the part of you that's still afraid of becoming her. That fear means you haven't lost yourself. Not yet."
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The shelter creaked in the wind. Somewhere outside, a distant scream echoed and vanished into the ash. But inside the room, there was only quiet the kind of quiet that clung to broken things.
~~~~~~~~
Silas eventually drifted away, leaving Jaden alone at the broken window.
The others were quiet. Aya had curled up beside Kael, her knife still clutched under one hand. Rowan sat with his back to the wall, a piece of gauze pressed to his leg wound. Niko hadn't said a word in over an hour, just kept staring at the empty emergency supply crates like they might magically refill themselves.
It wasn't peace. It was just stillness.
Jaden closed his eyes for a moment, trying to slow his thoughts. His heart beat slower now, but the heaviness in his chest hadn't gone away. If anything, it had sunk deeper. More permanent.
Then, somewhere in the darkness outside, something cracked.
Wood snapping. Or bone.
Jaden's eyes snapped open.
The others stirred. Silas reappeared at the doorway, already holding a small blade that shimmered with pale silver light.
"Stay low," he said softly. "Something's moving out there."
Everyone held still, barely breathing. Even the dust in the room seemed to freeze.
A long, slow scrape echoed from somewhere deeper in the shelter metal against concrete. Not footsteps. Not quite.
Then a voice, faint but unmistakable, filtered through the broken hall.
It was singing.
Off-key. Childlike. Almost… playful.
"Knock knock... let me in...
No more doors and no more skin..."
Kael's eyes went wide.
"What the hell was that?" Rowan whispered.
Silas didn't blink. "Not human."
Jaden stared into the hallway, throat tight. Whatever was coming, it wasn't scavengers. It wasn't desperate survivors.
It was something worse.
Outside, the wind howled through the empty streets like it knew what was coming.
And the group waited in the dark, breaths held, backs to the wall, hope bleeding out like warmth from a cracked room.
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End of Chapter 32
Absolutely! Here's a version of the Author's Note for Chapter 31 that keeps the bleak tone but adds that signature dark humor to reflect your storytelling style—emotional, grim, and just self-aware enough to hurt in a good way:
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Author's Note : Chapter 32
This chapter was brought to you by: emotional damage and moral erosion!
We took a break from running, bleeding, or being ambushed by desperate humans… to sit in a moldy shelter and emotionally unravel instead. Progress!
Jaden got a whole crisis buffet: regret, fear of turning into a monster, and a side of "what if mercy is the weakness?" Meanwhile, Silas was serious for once. That should've been your first red flag.
But wait there's more.
Just when everyone was finally quiet enough to sleep, something decided to start humming lullabies from the void. Because why not end the day with a cryptic rhyme and potential eldritch horror?
Moral of the chapter: even shelters rot, ghosts have playlists now, and kindness feels like a luxury item in the apocalypse economy.
See you in Chapter 33, where we meet the kind of people who smile too much and not in a good way.
-stay lit
Sky_xyn