Aveline
The night air tasted of earth and fear.
I slipped through the servant’s corridor behind Mila, our footsteps feather-light against the stone floor. My heart pounded so loud, I was certain it would draw every guard in the compound. Every creak of wood or distant howl in the night made me flinch. I clutched my satchel tighter to my chest—water, a makeshift map, a knife, and the last of my courage.
Mila didn’t speak as she guided me past the Omega quarters and into the overgrown greenhouse. Her eyes flicked in every direction. She moved like a shadow—quick, careful, quiet. We were running on borrowed time, and both of us knew it.
She crouched behind a tangle of ivy and rusted iron, where an old grate was half-hidden beneath years of plant decay. “This is it,” she whispered, pulling
