Page 1 of Bonds of Starfall

1

HUNTER

Fire scorched Atlas’s lungs.

The Celestial breathed through it, not feeling a hint of pain, even as ash stained his clothes and filled his body with every inhale.

He had only one thing in mind.

Her.

The cityscape was cloaked in ash, tendrils of smoke puffed in mushroom-like clouds, obscuring his vision. He was the only living thing for miles—except for her. He sensed her heartbeat and her breath, a twin to his own, shallow and light as she struggled to take in air.

Each one grew fainter and fainter.

Atlas ran past smoking ruins, past Rogues feasting on bodies in the streets.

The stone-like appearance of the Rogues was threaded through with pulsing blue energy. One Rogue loomed nearby, its clawed fists crashing through the brick of a house. No screams or cries for help came from within—the owners had already perished from proximity to the explosions. The energy emitted from the Nova in the area was deadly.

The Rogue’s pointed head butted against the roof of the house, making shingles crumble as rubble fell to the soot-stained concrete streets.

Atlas ignored it, even as the Rogue tugged a dead woman from inside. Her skin was pale, threaded through with veins of blue from the excess of Nova, brown hair limp, half-fallen in her face as the Rogue bent down and held the woman like a ragdoll in its rocky grip. Atlas knew what was going to happen before he saw it.

He turned his head just in time. The obscene rip as the Rogue tore the woman in two echoed around him. He kept walking, but the sounds of the Rogue feasting upon the woman’s flesh followed him.

That could easily have beenher.

The grey smoke dissipated for only a minute, long enough to reveal a house at the very end of the street. Picture perfect. A white picket fence, a green manicured lawn. But the tranquility of such a life was nowhere to be found, tainted by ash and the trilling calls and ear-splitting screeches of the Rogues.

A smaller, midlevel, obsidian-colored Rogue ran forward on its hands and feet, jaw hanging open with a cry as its nostrils flared, scenting fresh meat. Atlas wasn’t prey to the Rogues, but they still sensed his heartbeat. And that was more than enough to gain their attention.

Atlas didn’t let himself feel fear. He merely raised a hand, and a ball of white light knocked the Rogue off its path, forcing it to slam into the side of a house, taking down a mailbox and leaving a trail of ash on the lawn.

It got up, snapping its jaws at him. Atlas raised a brow, letting the pure Nova within him seep out in a halo of light around him. The Rogue shrank back, sensing his power. He was not prey to this Rogue, but a predator.

Atlas smiled.

The Rogue disappeared into the smoke, but that did not meanshewas safe. Far from it.

He walked up the sidewalk leading to the house, eyes scouring the ash-coated lawn. A severed arm lay near a swing set, tendrils of ribbon-like flesh hanging from the end of the limb. Next to it, a red mass of intestines curled around the lower half of a body.

The door hung from the hinges, blasted open. Atlas sidestepped the broken bits of wood, pieces snagging on his long, dark coat. The house was filled with smoke, the dark light of the television flickering, static illuminating the dust in the air. Sparks zapped around the tangled cords. Atlas followed the bloody footprints tracked on the hardwood floor, heart in his throat.

Not yet. She was not dead yet. She couldn’t be. He would have felt it.

He’d felt every one of her deaths.

Grief did not crush him, as if a tether was cut, leaving him to drift upward.

So she still lived.

And so too did his resolve to find her in this life.

Walking down the dark hallway, he found her parents’ room. The sheets were soaked in gore, the corpse atop it barely recognizable as a man. A woman was face down on the ground beside the bed—her mother, Atlas assumed. He entered their room and turned the body over with the tip of his boot.

No. Her mother didn’t have a face anymore.

It had been torn off by the Rogues.