Killian
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Three years of silence can carve scars deeper than fire.
The man in black doesn’t chain me, but he doesn’t have to. His rules are the walls, his eyes the locks. I learned quickly: don’t ask questions, don’t speak unless spoken to, and most importantly—don’t hope.
But I do. Quietly. Secretly. I keep one ember alive: Gorge’s voice, screaming my name through smoke. It lives in me like a heartbeat.
If they’ve tried to break me, they’ve failed.
Because I am not broken.
Not yet.
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Gorge
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Everyone thinks grief has an expiration date.
After the fire, they gave me a year. Then they said, “move on.” But I couldn’t. Killian wasn’t ashes. I saw him taken. Nobody believed me—not the teachers, not Principal Winters, not even my parents.
So I stopped asking for belief. I started looking for proof.
Now, at seventeen, I’m not just haunted by his absence. I’m armed with it. With every shadow of a rumor, every scrap of a lead, every sleepless night filled with maps and theories.
Killian’s not dead. He’s waiting.
And I’m done waiting too.
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Killian
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They finally let me outside.
The man in black calls it “testing readiness.” I call it oxygen. Streets blur past the window, but I drink them in like water. Colors. Neon signs. A world that never knew I was missing.
And then—impossible, unbearable—there he is.
Standing at a crosswalk. Taller now, jaw sharper, but unmistakably him.
Gorge.
For a single heartbeat, our eyes lock through the tinted glass. My lungs forget how to breathe. His face twists—shock, hope, pain all at once.
The light turns green.
The van carries me away.
But the ember in my chest roars into flame.
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Gorge
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I stand there, traffic rushing past, like the world just cracked open.
I saw him. Not a dream, not a memory—Killian. Alive. His eyes on mine, wide with the same impossible recognition.
I chase the van until my legs burn, until it vanishes into the city. People stare, whisper. I don’t care. My chest feels like it’s going to break open.
When I stagger home, my mom tries to stop me at the door. “Gorge, you look pale. What happened?”
“I found him.” My voice trembles, but the words are steel.
“Sweetheart…”
“No.” I look straight at her. “He’s alive. I’m going to bring him back.”
And for the first time in three years, I believe it. Not like an obsession. Not like a dream.
Like a vow.
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Killian
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That night, I don’t sleep. I lie awake in the gray room, tracing that moment over and over—the flash of Gorge’s face, the way he moved like he would run through the world itself to reach me.
They want me obedient. Silent. Small.
But I’ve been reminded of who I am.
I am Killian.
And Gorge is coming.
The man in black doesn’t know it yet.
But his walls won’t hold me much longer.
Because hope, once lit, burns hotter than fire.
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and then Add to home screen.