Being wanted changed everything.
Before, the world outside the academy was dangerous because of creatures—things that crawled out of portals and twisted nature into something hostile. Now the danger had faces. Names. Orders.
We weren't just prey to monsters anymore.
We were prey to the academies.
And their dogs.
Kazim confirmed it before noon. He didn't need to explain much—he just tilted the screen toward us as the vehicle rattled northward. Intercepted chatter. Broken transmissions. Contracts moving fast.
Bounty hunters.
Not soldiers. Not instructors. Worse.
People who lived for the chase. People who understood how students thought, how they panicked, how fear shaped every bad decision. Former assets. Failed elites. Mercenaries who had survived long enough to stop caring who they hunted.
"They'll spread out," Kazim said. "Cut off routes. Force us toward predictable paths."
"Like roads," Ren muttered.
"Like towns," Aira added.
So we avoided both.
We pushed north—through broken land and half-frozen forests, through regions the academies labeled low value. Places where surveillance thinned and creatures grew stranger. The cold bit harder each night. Food became something we rationed without talking about it. Sleep came in short shifts, light and uneasy.
Every sound felt too close.
Every pause felt like a mistake.
Monisha stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
It wasn't the silence of someone resting. It was the silence of someone holding herself together, afraid that if she spoke, something inside her would fall apart.
It happened on the third night.
We stopped in the remains of a collapsed watchtower—stone walls, partial cover, high ground. Ren took first watch. Aira warmed her hands near a small flame she barely let breathe. Kazim worked silently, mapping patrol gaps from fragmented signals.
I sat beside Monisha.
She stared at the fire for a long time before speaking.
"They called me Queen," she said.
I stiffened.
"Not because I was important," she continued. "Because I lasted longer. Because I could summon high-level creatures."
I didn't interrupt. I couldn't.
"They made us summon again and again. If the creature obeyed, they killed it and harvested it. If it didn't…" Her fingers tightened in her sleeves. "They punished the summoner. Sometimes in front of everyone."
My chest burned.
"They said I was special because the creatures stayed stable longer with me." Her voice cracked. "But that just meant they locked me away. Alone. So no one else would 'damage the asset.'"
Aira's flame flickered.
"They told me someone would buy me," Monisha whispered. "That after that, I wouldn't have to summon anymore."
She looked at me then.
"They didn't say what would be left of me."
Something twisted inside my chest—heavy, violent, pressurized.
"I thought you were dead," she said softly. "And part of me wished I was too. At least then it would've stopped."
I reached for her hand. Slowly. Carefully.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I wasn't there."
That was when I made the decision.
We couldn't just save her.
We had to destroy what made people like her disposable.
But first—we had to survive.
Disappear from their radar.
Get stronger.
We didn't get much rest after that.
By dawn, Kazim froze mid-calculation, fingers hovering above the screen.
"We're being herded," he said.
Ren was already standing. "How close?"
"Too close."
A low sound rolled through the forest—not mechanical, not animal.
A signal horn.
Bounty hunters didn't use it to scare prey.
They used it to flush it out.
We moved fast. No fire. No clean tracks if we could help it. The north stretched ahead—mountains, borders, uncertainty.
Our vehicle was nearly out of fuel.
Which made the plan obvious.
We laid false footprints. Set Timed sounds. To led them away from their own transport. If they wanted to hunt us, they'd do it on foot.
And we'd take what they left behind.
This time, I wasn't letting my family be taken again.