Dawn

Taken aback by the strange voice, Lunas turned his head to look at the hole in the wall behind him but he wasn't scared. A warning was much better than the rude screaming and laughter from the other side but that didn't mean he trusted it.

"Are you safe?" Lunas half-whispered to the wall.

The man on the other side let out a chuckle like grinding stone before a coughing fit,

"None of us here are safe child. Abandon any hopes of some white clad savior," he spat out like sour wine, "You'll never see the light from beneath Saint Lorraine's chapel again. "

Lunas heard a soft rustle of cloth and a thump as the man on the other side slumped against the wall.

As soft as an exhale, the man whispered "You'll never see anything again. If you're lucky."

The wretched words echoed throughout his mind as he sat down defeated. It had been barely a day since his exile, and he was imprisoned in some hellhole. He pulled his legs to his chest, letting his breathing soothe him to sleep.

The serene silence was not long lasting.

A thunderous roar stirred his mind into overdrive, prepared to jump into a stand but what came from the signal to his body was nothing like his intentions. The air resisted his movements like water and a searing pain emanated from his sides. His eyes finally opened and he was faced with a black and red feathered bird from whom he could feel relentless waves of ether rolling off of.

He was yet to develop any ether sensitivity, neither from breaking a seal nor awakening his ether core, but seeing the beast's claws around him made it clear.

'This is a Calamity, one of father's foes!' The knowledge of the nature of the creature did not resolve the crippling fear Lunas felt, nor soften the jump he felt in his stomach when the Calamity let go of him.

He was falling!

Lunas pulled his eyes shut as fast as he could before he heard shattering glass all around him. As the wind tore at him from every direction, the sound began to get louder and louder, whilst little cuts accumulated on his skin which he had yet to notice.

His eyes shot open once the pain pierced through the veil of terror, only to see the ground right before he hit it.

Lunas flailed momentarily before realizing how sore his wrists were and how horrible death smelled. Then, he realized his eyes were still closed and opened them to the familiar sight of black bars and disgusting bricks. The calamity, the fall, even the pain of death, it was all just a bad dream.

He wished this cell was naught but a dream as well, but reality had long since set in. Besides, with the armor the guard from earlier wore, the name "Saint Lorraine", and the bedtime stories of an evil church which would steal away bad children Miss Laurel had used to scare him as a boy, he had an idea of where he was.

The Andesian Colonies, the Krael Empire's last hope at enough food and resources to last much longer against the handful of calamities which directly threatened the Empire. It had been advertised to the pioneers of this frontier as a land rich with natural resources, 'almost' devoid of human interaction.

They didn't mention that this meant nature ran wild. Calamities spread unhindered, integrating with the ecosystem over the centuries as keystone species. They were as indivisible from the Colonies as the ether composing them, which meant they had to learn to live alongside them like the native groups had.

His situation couldn't have been much worse, but he didn't feel hopeless. Surely, they wouldn't just execute a child, right?

Soon after the thought left his mind however, the wavering illumination of a torch started to scatter across the walls across his cell. Someone was coming. Lunas felt the slight tremor in the ground grow stronger as heavy boots came closer and closer to his cell.

He wanted to look away from the bars of the cell, but he knew it wouldn't help. He would just be blind to what was coming. But to his surprise, the steps stopped short.

Clinking of keys and a rusty scrape echoed as the man with the light opened the cell next to him.

'The man's ce-!' Before he could finish his thought, the screams began again, this time from the cell to his right.

Half incoherent, half pleas for a similarly captured daughter, the sobs and screaming were something that Lunas felt would never leave his ears, but he covered them anyways.

He sat there with his heart beating out of it's cage for as long as he could. Before long however, he heard a scratching on the wall of the man's cell which chilled his spine.

Lunas brought his face closer and closer to the peephole in the wall, but as his eyes crossed the edge, a breathe of almost scalding air tickled his forehead. He managed to avoid the worst of it as his legs buckled the second he felt the heat, too fearful to meet the gaze of what may lay beyond his cell.

…

Days had passed since his arrival beneath Saint Lorraine's Chapel, marked only by the daily dragging out of a prisoner to either be executed or experimented on. The whispers and laughter in the dark uninhabited cells had been silent for days, as if it was sleeping,

'Or digesting something. But hopefully sleeping.'

He wasn't even sure the voices would have the same effect on him anymore. After all, he didn't have much time left.

Last night, a mere hour after a prisoner had been taken out, a guard walked to the front of his cell, each step a death knell to those trapped there.

He began to read off from a scroll in his hands, but the words were drowned out by Lunas' thoughts.

'That voice! It's him!'

Even the thought that he was the same guard who had captured him couldn't deafen his ears to the next thing that came out of the guards mouth.

"You will be executed at dawn, mongrel."