Page 2 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

Last Call

The ice machine groans as if it is dying... again. Sounds like it’s choking on its last cube. I kick it once with the toe of my boot, then slide the bucket underneath to catch whatever pathetic scraps it decides to give me. I’m not in the mood to fight it tonight. I’m not in the mood for much.

The bar is half full and two drinks away from boiling over.

You can feel it in the air. It’s thick with sweat, cheap whiskey, and whatever weird brand of frustration everyone’s dragging around this week.

Another round of political shit storms on the TV, another natural disaster graphic scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

No one’s talking about it, yet we all feel it.

The world’s tilting. Seems like it has been for a while.

I’ve worked at this place since I turned eighteen. From barback to bar manager because I don’t know how to quit, and no one else could take the heat. Ten years in this city. Ten years behind this bar. Not a damn thing has broken me yet. Not even the fire.

Not that anyone here knows about that.

The bottles clink as I line them up, fingers moving on autopilot. My eyes drift to the busted neon sign in the front window. Flickering again. Another thing I’ll have to fix when I’m off shift, because God forbid, I let the place fall apart more than it already has.

“Lux,” Dragana, the owner, calls from the far end of the bar. “Keg’s running low.”

I nod, toss her the tap wrench, and crack my neck. “On it.”

I slip into the back hallway, away from the noise, the lights, the heat of too many bodies crushed into too little space. The cool air is a welcome change. I exhale and lean back against the storage room door.

And that’s when I hear it.

The scrape of a shoe behind me. Light, deliberate. Not one of mine, and definitely not Dragana’s. I straighten slowly. No panic. Not yet. Just alert.

“The storage area is closed to customers,” I say, turning with a smirk already locked in place. I’ve stared down drunk creeps and belligerent assholes more times than I can count. Whatever this is, it’s just another Tuesday.

The guy isn’t drunk. He isn’t anything.

Tall. Lanky. Maybe early thirties. Plain clothes…hoodie, jeans, nondescript face you’d forget in a crowd. Except for the eyes. Too sharp. Too still.

“You’re not what I expected,” he says, tilting his head like I’m some kind of fucking puzzle.

“Cool. You’re not what I ordered,” I snap. “Turn your weird ass around and crawl back into whatever hole you came out of.”

He doesn’t move.

“I just wanted to see for myself,” he murmurs, voice too calm as he steps closer, “You smell… different. ”

I don’t give him time to say anything else.

My fist connects with his face, smashing into his jaw before the thought even finishes forming. The impact rings through my knuckles, and he stumbles back, eyes wide with surprise.

He touches his face, grins like I handed him a gift, and slips out the door without another word.

I stand there breathing hard, hand throbbing, heart thudding a beat too fast. Something about him felt not dangerous exactly, but wrong.

By the time I get back behind the bar, with fingers tingling and adrenaline riding just under my skin, the crowd has thinned.

Last call hits, and like cockroaches under fluorescent light, they scatter.

Dragana gives me a look and doesn’t ask.

She knows better. She is already flipping chairs on tables like we didn’t just nearly have a goddamn situation.

I walk home through the rain with my keys clutched like brass knuckles in my coat pocket. The streets are slick, shadows bending in ways that make me want to keep looking over my shoulder. I don’t. I keep my head down and my pace steady .

I’ve been prey before. Never again.

My apartment is a shoebox on the fifth floor. Too many stairs. Not enough insulation. The kind of place you rent when you’ve got no family and no backup plan. Yet it’s mine. I kick off my boots, shrug off my damp jacket, and head straight for the sketchbook waiting on the coffee table.

It’s always been like this. The only way I know how to shake off the static is to draw it out. The noise. The chaos. The things I can’t put words to.

When I sit down and open the page, it’s already full with a haunting portrait of a man I don’t know, or at least I don’t think I do…

I don’t remember sketching it. Not even a little.

Eyes. These aren’t just generic eyes. Sharp. Piercing. Too real. Too familiar .

My skin prickles. I don’t know who they belong to, yet I know this: I’ve seen them before.

Somewhere in my dreams.

And now they’re staring back at me from the page…watching.

Waiting .

I stare at the sketch like it’s somehow going to blink.

The page is still warm under my fingertips, like it was only just finished. I haven’t picked up a pencil since yesterday, when I drew a broken wine glass and half a cigarette. Not this.

Not him .

The eyes are too detailed. Every line, every glint of light reflected in the irises, like I saw them up close. One of them is slightly narrower than the other, the way someone looks when they’re calculating something. The pupils are pinprick sharp. The lashes? Too precise to be a dream.

Except I’ve never seen those eyes. I would remember.

I haven’t slept well in years. Dreams come in flashes. Fragments. Faces I’ve never seen doing things I don’t understand. Half the time, I wake up tangled in sweat-soaked sheets with ink on my fingers. This? This is different. This isn’t dream weird. This is really weird.

I flip the page, half expecting the rest of the face to follow, and it’s just white space. Blank. Like he’s hiding.

“Great,” I mutter. “Now I’m haunted and sleep-sketching. ”

I throw the sketchbook onto the couch and head to the kitchen. Open the fridge. It hums like it’s on its last leg, same as the ice machine. I grab the last beer, pop the cap, and take a long pull. It’s warm and flat. Doesn’t matter. Still numbs the edge.

I lean against the counter and stare out of the kitchen window. The city looks hollow from up here. Lights flicker. A siren wails in the distance. Rain snakes down the glass in rivulets like it’s trying to claw its way inside.

I swear I see something move across the street. Just a flicker in the shadows, I blink and it’s gone.

My brain’s short-circuiting. That guy in the hallway. The sketch. The feeling I’ve had all night, like I’m being watched. Followed. Tracked.

Paranoia is a hell of a drug. Instinct? Instinct doesn’t lie.

I finish the beer, chuck it in the sink, and grab my pencil again. If I’m already cracked wide open, I might as well bleed on paper.

I start drawing without thinking. The pencil moves like it has its own agenda. Lines curve. Shapes form. Not another face or eyes this time, but…something else .

A spiral. No, a knot. Wait…no, not quite. It loops in on itself like a maze, and there’s a center. I press harder. Darken it. At the core, something juts downward. A blade.

I sit back. The symbol pulses behind my eyes.

I’ve never seen it before, but I know it. Like it’s carved into some part of me I can’t reach.

I close the sketchbook. My fingers are shaking. The slight buzz from the beer, gone. Every light in the apartment suddenly feels too bright. I shut them off one by one, the place dipping into shadow, the only light left a neon glow leaking in from the street below.

My bed calls to me like a curse. I collapse face-first onto it without even changing. My brain keeps buzzing, but my body’s done fighting.

Right as I’m fading out, I swear I hear a whisper…not from outside, not from the hallway, not even really in my head. It’s coming from underneath me.

A voice, rough and indistinct.

“Soon.”

I bolt upright .

The voice evaporates, yet the chill it leaves behind sticks to my skin like frost. I’m covered in sweat, heart hammering like I just ran a mile, breath coming too fast for how still the room is.

I grab the sketchbook. Flip it open.

The eyes are still there.

So is the spiral.

But now…now there’s something else. Something new.

In the space between the two drawings, right where the pages naturally fold together, someone— something has etched a single line in ink that doesn’t quite shine, but isn’t quite dry.

“You saw him.”

I didn’t write that.

I didn’t.

I fucking didn’t .

I run my fingers over the words. They smear a little, just enough to prove they’re real. I should be screaming. I should be burning the page, the book, the whole fucking apartment.

Instead, I sit there .

Frozen.

Because some part of me—some low, dark, feral part—isn’t afraid.

It’s calculating.

I don’t know who the man in the hallway was. I don’t know why he looked at me like he recognized something under my skin. But he knew something. And now this symbol, these eyes…they’ve been living in my head before they ever hit the page.

And whoever he is, he isn’t working alone.

Someone’s watching. Maybe more than one. Maybe they’ve been watching longer than I realize.

I fall asleep with the sketchbook still open in my lap, pencil still in my hand.

This time, when I dream, it isn’t fragments.

It’s fire.

A battlefield.

A name I’ve never heard before now echoes in my head.

Vescari.