When the rage subsides, we're stripped to our core. I shivered as I stumbled down the unfamiliar streets, lined with gray buildings and dotted with passerby whose sullen expressions matched my own.

I had run for who knows how long—ran until my legs burned as much as my hands did. Until the wind stole all my tears away and left bare to my core.

Only what remained was a hollowed heart, struggling for empathy but swallowed by an overwhelming fear and anger.

Damnit! Why did I kill him? I collapsed against a worn house. Its charred edges smelled of overtoasted bread, and cracked windows revealed wrinkled blinds fluttering in the wind. As if its bruised face would sympathize with me... it only seemed to shirk away as I slumped my spinning head against the limp wood—I was the killer, not the killed.

But it felt anything but that. To have killed him killed me, too. A part of me, dead the moment the last breath left his lips. Stolen by the blank stare that held not anger, just a welling sadness that brought us together for a brief moment. We were just two people—vastly different, albeit, but people with lives to think about, family to go back home to. Him, at least.

I blinked, overcome with a sudden anger not at him, but at myself. Was it because I had nothing to lose, no family that would accept me, that I had become so insensitive to others? Was that an excuse for my actions, justification even? To strip others of their loved ones only so they could feel my pain. The curse I bore.

I slammed my hands against the ground, numb from the searing pain as I only felt hate for myself. Why?

The question lingered in the air like an unattended wound, begging to be noticed and when I tried to turn away from it, the burning just intensified.

"Loiter somewhere else, will ya?" A gruff voice barked over groaning wood.

I glanced up. My eyes fluttered at the sudden stream of light that bathed the street in a golden glow, and a silhouette stepped out.

Behind the door that didn't quite fit the doorway stood a middle aged man in plain, slightly tattered clothes, staring at me through thick spectacles and waving a hat down the street. A black one, rounded at the top and lined with a crisp brim—a brother to Ken's.

The man cast me a withering look as I steadied myself against the wall, streaking red finger marks along the wood.

"Get your grubby hands off the wall," He snapped. "I didn't hire anyone to do my house a paint job."

I glared at him, the same urge clawing at my chest as my cheeks flared and my breath quickened. I shoved my hands into my pockets and ran off into the night before he could taunt me anymore, jab at my wounded heart until it burst into flames.

A while later, I stopped, pausing to observe my surroundings. Confusion, then panic surged through my body when I realized all I could see was shadowy buildings and figures under a veil of darkness. Not a flicker of light that would illuminate recognition in my mind.

Deep breaths. I took a gulp of air, letting the coolness fill my lungs and course through my veins, dimming the burning sensation in my chest and loosening the knot in my stomach.

The air bit at my cheek as I stalked down the street—nowhere particular in mind, just letting myself wander like the thoughts in my mind.

Clank. I cursed silently, cradling my toe. I looked down the street, not cobbled, just plain dirt littered with metal scraps and patches of tousled grass that fought for every inch of space. Mangled cabs cluttered the rusted walls of buildings that were a patchwork of eroded metal sheets and pipes, their sickly forms coughing clouds of vapor into the street.

Only briefly, under the flickering neon signs of a large overhang, could I make out the sagging wires above as I tredded tentatively through the sea of junk. Some drooped over the overhang where they had accumulated like webbing and blotted out most of the faded letters.

I squinted, blinking as if I were seeing it wrong. But no, the remains of what used to be a thriving nightclub: shattered bottles, dim advertisements along the entrance, and the familiar purple luminescence had stood strong, a testament to its former glory that persisted even in the darkest parts of the night.

I could even hear the faint buzz of music in the distance, the wind bringing spirits that hummed along and the sporadic clank of metal outlined a crude beat.

The Swan. An abandoned iteration that used to be the hub of illicit affairs.

It had killed, and had been killed because of it. But even if a hundred people felt remorse for what they had done, as long as the heartless remained, the Swan would live again. It did live—thriving, really. A sliver of indifference that would turn a blind eye to a hundred atrocities.

A hundred and one, I muttered to myself as I stepped over a piece of metal. The man—Cyrus—now lay dead on their floor.

My hands itched inside my pockets and I threw them out into the air, letting the wind whip at my gashes.

I thought back to the man at the house. He probably was curled up on a cushioned armchair, sipping a cup of coffee while he smirked at my stupid figure: hunched over, eyes wide like a deer caught in the light.

How easy it would have been to kill him, A voice in my mind coaxed, licking my ear as it wrapped itself around my mind. Let it go. Too much fire in your system isn't good for you, is it?

Shut up. My heart raced, pounding against my heating chest. Shut up!

That's it, it lured. Feed that anger, let it go—

"Arrrrgggghhhh!" My arms shot out the fiery feeling from my chest surged my veins and out my hands, engulfing the metal frame of the cab in flames.

I staggered backwards, panting, and collapsed against the metal wall and sank into the wet dirt. The flames licked hungrily at the metal, eating away at the carcass until it and the fire was no more.

A few sparks danced on the ground before night went still once again and all I could hear was my ragged breathing racing my thumping heart.

The voice was gone now, intimidated by the sudden outburst or whatever, but fear only wrapped itself tighter around my shivering body. Fear of what, you may ask? A sickening feeling that I was becoming the very monster I had sworn to kill from myself.

"No..." I rasped through my blood-caked lips. "NO!"

But I didn't lash out this time—too tired, exhausted of anger for the first time in many years. Everything I had bottled up had left and all that remained were the tears that fell silently down my cheeks, and the fear that lapped eagerly at the blood from my wounded heart.

Whirrr. I almost didn't hear it for a moment, but—

Whirrr. The gentle scrape of gears pricked my ears with the hint of worn raspiness from rusted metal. I perked up as well, the hairs on my neck standing up straight. That sound—I could recognize it from a mile away, but it was impossible.

She was gone. A part of me grazed over the littered streets in a feverish hope, but under the veil of darkness, amidst heaps of metal, and in between brief flickers of neon, I could only make out my sullen reflection in the purple glimmer.

A shattered collage of metal that stared back at me with a blur of... red. I froze. My shoulders tensed—no, something clenched it.

"Camila?" I whispered.

The familiar cool metal squeezed into my flesh a little more. I turned, slowly, and the faint amber glow warmed my face.

My jaw went slack and the tears rolling down my cheeks only streaked hotter marks against my flesh. I stammered. "H-how?"

She fluttered off my shoulder and perched on my bloody fingers, pecking at strands of bandages that clung to my hands.

"What?" I snapped, flinging her off with a forceful flick. "Have you come to wipe your dirty beak on my hands?"

Oblivious to my outburst, she returned to my hand, cocking her head so that her curious gaze stared up at me patiently. She waited, pecking at the bandages until my hands cried as the cold wind grazed over their bare, bloodied figures. Waited until the last of the hot tears sprang out of my eyes and trickled to the dirt where they soaked away.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. To Camila? Partly, but some of it seemed to linger in the air, waiting for me.

Then it struck me. She had escaped from him—Alistair—that was what his friends had said. What had pained me to overhear then, now brought relief.

"You clever bird." I stroked her feathers with my free hand and the whir softened to a gentle hum, like a cat purring.

Matilda. She had been the one with me, eavesdropping. Ken. Albert—his frightened expression that never left me as I ran away. What had pained me to overhear then had now closed an old wound, and opened another.

My hand dropped limply to my side and Camila churned louder in annoyance.

"I don't want to get your feathers stained, alright? Give me a break." I nearly rolled my eyes as I spoke, thinking she would respond.

She didn't. But the whir died down to a bearable hum and she flapped back to my shoulder, her golden, scaly talons gently sinking through the fabric and into my skin.

She cocked her head again, staring at me with the amber eyes that had drawn me to her initially.

What are you doing here? She seemed to ask. Not a hint of prodding, harshness in her voice—at least what I imagined it to be, only an ample curiosity in those eyes that wanted to see all the world had to offer.

"I... ran away," I said after a while.

Why?

I clenched my jaw, as if not to let my voice betray my emotions. But I could only stare into her soft eyes in silence for so long.

I sighed. "I killed him. I couldn't stop it, the fire. It..."

My mind flooded with the echoes of the fire. The fire that I couldn't keep bottled up, that I had let escape me in a burst of anger. To be big is to let loose, to be small is to hold back. To do both is to control.

I had lost control of the very thing—the only thing—I had to my name. What was I without magic? Just a plain boy that worked in a restaurant. I had liked that before, living a simple life, but magic felt like the something I could change in my life. And that it could change my life as well.

It what? Camila pecked at my neck, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"It took control of me," I said. "So I thought that, I thought run away from it. But it's hard to run away from yourself."

I chuckled, a bitter laugh that tasted like medicine. The kind that Dave would shove down my throat and I would gag on it for hours, washing my mouth just to get the taste away. But the cold always went away afterwards.

"Where am I now? I don't know." I threw my hands up and sighed.

The mechanical flecks in her eyes danced humorously. That makes two of us.

A boy and cardinal, surrounded by heaps of junk on a dim, littered street. Great company, wasn't it?

Bzzz. I paused. Recognition flickered in my mind as I blinked. Not at the dilapidated Swan, but what strewn the streets in front of it. The buzzing letters above the overhang remained static for a moment, illuminating a small radius, but enough for me notice what the darkness had concealed.

The mounds of metal, spread apart by the dark's nature of trickery, now lay unnaturally organized in the purple light, clustered as if someone had sorted them into piles.

I looked down. Deep, fresh footprints—scattered across the dirt.

And one of the cabs, as I peered closer, was only a silhouette of what looked like the patchwork of wood and metal plating on a hull.

"Oh crud," I whispered. I knew where we were now, but that didn't settle my stomach; it only churned it more.

We had stumbled into the storm strip.