Elara didn't say anything. She stared past him, eyes locked on the building's frame. The west wing was collapsed inward, the walls punched open like a giant boulder rolled from the inside.
They stepped forward together, slowly now. The guard's grip had gone loose.
He passed the first checkpoint gate. Then the side yard. His steps lost purpose. Eyes darting, jaw clenching, hand halfway to the weapon at his hip—not out of threat. Out of habit.
"Instructors should've been posted out front," he muttered. "This doesn't make any sense."
He led her inside.
Or tried to.
The door creaked open—half of it missing. The lobby was gutted. Blood across the steps. Papers strewn in wide fans.
"Juno?" he called out.
No answer.
"Captain?" he tried again.
Still nothing.
Elara recognized that name, that'd been how the instructors addressed their superior, Captain Juno, he was also kynenn. And he'd been in charge of many of the punishments Elara received in her life.
He stepped deeper into the compound, calling out, flipping open doors, retreating again. Every movement louder than the last. Elara waited for the right one.
He ducked past the eastern hall, entering what used to be the dorm monitor's office. And consequently adjacent to the barracks where they'd slept, just yesterday.
She moved.
A quiet step back. Then another. Her cuffed hands brushed the edge of the door—the one left off its hinges. She turned, ducked, and slipped down into the lower hall before the guard could resurface.
She didn't run. Not yet.
She moved fast, breathing evenly. Her mind counted steps, not thoughts. She passed through the long corridor of barracks, then directed into the doorless dorm that belonged to Hikari.
From there she found the hole.
She dropped to her knees, slid shoulder-first into the crawlspace, and vanished back outside into the yard of the stone building.
The white moss outside was still damp.
She rose slowly from the crawlspace, crouching low behind the shadow of the stone wall. No one followed.
Elara exhaled through her nose and moved along the building's edge, hugging what was left of the outer corridor. Finally, with no one watching, Elara allowed her hands to fall at her sides. Releasing the tension in her chest and shoulders.
So they were magnetic. They probably were powered by my takton.
But she had none.
That was her advantage—maybe the only one. The entire reason she studied the workings of takton was in effort to escape the feeling of inferiority, especially if she was to be forced into the Eclipse.
But with everything going on, the Eclipse seemed to be much less of a threat. Right now, the bigger problem was how she looked.
She was still wearing Foundation robes—white, stained, torn across the hip. Her boots were also state-issued. The stitched collar still bore her name. Anyone who got close would see what she was. And like that guard, know exactly she'd escaped.
I can't walk another block dressed like this. Not toward another checkpoint. Not anywhere near the wall.
She reached the base of the southern slope and ducked beneath a collapsed fence, emerging into a weed-ridden drainage cut that led toward the outer commons. Just past it was a scattered market fringe. Scavenger stalls, clothing barrels, the runoff crowd of a dozen dying corners.
Her eyes locked on a narrow concrete stairwell leading up to street level. She moved quickly, quietly. Her heart had slowed now, again. Her mind was sharper.
She needed clothes. She needed quiet.
She needed to disappear—completely.
And when she reemerged, it wouldn't be as Elara the runaway.
The stairwell led to a side lot pressed between two shuttered buildings. Steam hissed from a broken pipe overhead. The further she walked, the louder the crowd became—low voices, the clatter of crates, the shuffle of feet. Smoke drifted from makeshift grills and cracked chimneys. Elara moved through it with her head down, body angled slightly sideways to narrow her silhouette.
No one stopped her.
Most people here weren't looking for trouble. And if they were, they didn't expect to find it in someone walking like she had somewhere to be.
She kept her pace steady until she reached a cluster of vendor stalls—weather-worn boards, cloth awnings, buckets of mismatched goods. One section was devoted to clothes: faded dresses, tunics, sashes, and state castoffs picked clean of insignias. A barrel near the edge overflowed with satchels, belts, and worn cloaks.
Elara waited a beat.
Then stepped in, eyes scanning like she was just another scavenger with too little coin and too much time.
A woman behind the stall narrowed her eyes at her but said nothing. Elara moved quick, practiced.
She pulled a long-sleeve tunic dress from a bundle near the back—gray, unremarkable, high-collared and loose in the sleeves. The kind worn by inner-sector clerks or street stewards. No markings. No embroidery. It looked… invisible.
She grabbed a second-hand satchel next. Stiff, but clean. And Elara walked up to the lady selling.
She looked at her briefly—just for a second. The woman wasn't old. Eyes sharp, skin cracked from smoke and weather. Elara felt a flicker of something—sympathy, maybe. But it didn't last.
The moment the vendor opened her mouth, Elara turned and sprinted.
She was out of the stall before the woman could finish her first word. Elara heard her shout something—half shock, half curse—but no one followed.
Elara vanished down the first alley she found, ducking between two leaning walls of corrugated tin and mud-choked brick. She didn't stop running until the sound of the market had faded into nothing behind her.
Then she slowed. Turned off into a dead-end passage behind a burned-out canteen. Only then did she breathe.
She changed fast.
The robe hit the dirt, followed by the undershirt and tags. She slid the tunic over her shoulders, cinched it at the waist, then clipped the satchel crosswise along her back. It wasn't elegant. But it didn't need to be.
When she checked herself in the shattered windowpane next to her, she didn't look like a soldier.
She didn't look like anyone at all.
Exactly how she needed to look.
The new clothes helped, but they didn't buy her a way in.
Elara stopped in the shadow of a covered stairwell just off a drainage alley, the fabric of her stolen dress bagged against her frame.
These sleeves should cover the cuffs, at the very least. I should keep these, if i can.
She was clean now—plain, invisible to most—but she knew better than to test the same gate twice.
That one was burned.