The city burned in front of him—
not just a fire, but an unholy blaze, a roaring, crackling beast that devoured timber and stone without remorse. Flames writhed like serpents across rooftops, throwing manic shadows across the shattered skyline. Rain poured in sheets, useless against the inferno, hissing where it met the embers drifting like fireflies in a storm-tossed night.

Neon ran.

His boots struck the cobblestones hard—
clack, slap, clack—each step splashing through water laced with soot and blood. The alleys were slick with ash and rain, the very stones steaming beneath him as the inferno breathed heat down his neck. Smoke bit at his eyes. The stink of burning oil curled through his nostrils, sharp and suffocating.

His lungs screamed. His heartbeat thundered.

Orange light painted the walls, graffiti twisting in surreal relief as if the city itself had gone mad. Rain slid in cold rivulets down his face, tracing through grime and the blood trickling from a gash near his temple. Somewhere behind him, a building groaned—and collapsed with a shriek of shattering glass and bone-deep thunder.

He didn't look back.

---

The sirens wailed—
not the clean, ordered wail of safety services, but a rising chorus of something ancient, wrong. Beneath them, human voices broke through—screams, orders, sobs swallowed by the roar of fire.

Then he saw him.

Pinned beneath a half-collapsed awning, a man clawed at the ground, breaths coming in sharp, shallow gasps. Neon skidded to a stop, slipped, caught himself, and crouched low.

His hands met splintered wood. Hot, wet. Unyielding.
He gritted his teeth and heaved.

The beam shifted with a scream of metal. Just enough.
Neon dragged the man free, his arms shaking with effort, muscles twitching under the strain of soaked leather and dwindling mana.

"Go east!" Neon gasped, voice raw and jagged as the smoke around them. "Barricade by the canal—run!"

He'd seen it earlier—when he stood on the jagged cliffside watching the city burn. Through the waves of fire and ruin, that small stretch of canal had held. A wall of scavenged metal and mana-scorched stone. Still standing. Still untouched.

It was a sliver of hope. The only one left.

The man staggered away, limping toward some thread of hope.
Neon turned.

---

A snarl froze his blood.

It slithered from the firelight—an abomination of slick limbs and needle teeth, its form warping like a shadow that refused to obey the laws of light. A Netherling. Its eyes locked onto him—void-black and bottomless.

He struck before it could lunge.
His dagger sang—ice-blue and merciless—flashing once in the gloom. The creature split apart in a hiss of shrieking shadow, dispersing into a cloud of ash that spiraled into the rain.

But his dagger glowed. A sickly, pulsing light.

A warning.

It didn't burn too fast—it hungered for it, like every flicker of power was a gift it had waited ages to devour.

Neon winced. The pain lanced up his arm, deep and cold. He tucked the blade away, breath shallow. He didn't have time to think. Just run.

Keep moving.

The alley yawned into a crossroads.

Then—steel.
A Knight. Gleaming, radiant even in the soot-choked dark, standing like a bastion of light amid the ruin.

But something else moved.

The beast emerged behind him—massive, claws jagged like rusted saws. A nightmare given flesh.

It struck.

---

The Knight didn't have time to scream. The blow crunched through steel like paper. Blood sprayed. His helm hit the ground with a hollow clink as his body folded.

Neon froze.

The fire's roar faded. The rain became distant.
Grief crashed over him, swift and brutal—grief laced with helplessness, with guilt, with rage. Another death. Another face.

Gone.

But he couldn't stop.
Not here.

He ran—past the body, past the flames, past the place where his soul threatened to crack.

Toward the workshop.
Toward the man who'd raised him.
Toward the faintest chance that his only family was still alive.
Toward home.

Tears blurred his vision. He blinked them away, each one burning worse than smoke.

Grief was a weight in his chest—
molten iron, heavy and alive.

But his legs moved.
And so, he ran.