Against the Dying Night

Below the scorched earth, the sound of pursuit faded. The distant hum of drones, once an ever-present threat above, was now little more than an echo in the rock.

Kerrin leaned against a crumbling wall, the last of his nerves uncoiling. Around him, the rebels began to breathe again. Their makeshift headquarters—a vast chamber carved from the ruins of an old subway terminal—glowed faintly with candlelight. The flicker of flame danced across cracked tile and old rail lines swallowed by dust.

“She did it,” whispered one of the scouts, a young woman named Kera, eyes wide with awe. “They’re moving east—every signal. The skies are clear above Sector Nine.”

Kerrin nodded, though his jaw tightened. “At what cost?”

He turned toward the rough stone table in the center of the chamber, where maps lay spread in a tangle of lines and notes—old city schematics, sewers, tunnels, forgotten routes. The paper trembled slightly under the draft, as though the city itself were exhaling in relief.

“She knew what she was doing,” came a voice from the shadows. It was Dalen, the eldest among them, a stoic man whose face carried the deep grooves of too many battles. “Silen trained her for this. She’s her brother’s blood.”

Kerrin looked up, the candlelight catching in his tired eyes. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

The room fell silent. They all knew what he meant. Silen was more than a name down here—he was a symbol. The last of the old scouts who’d dared to fight back when the first shutdowns began, when the government still pretended to function. But he had vanished years ago, leaving only rumors and maps scattered through the underground.

Now his sister had appeared, bearing the same quiet resolve, the same dangerous willingness to sacrifice.

“She’s drawn the hunters,” Kerrin said, tracing a line across the map with his finger, “but they’ll realize soon enough it’s a decoy. We have maybe hours before the sweep returns.”

“Then we use them,” Dalen said. “Every second she’s bought us. We move the archives before dawn.”

Around the chamber, heads nodded. A murmur of purpose rippled through the rebels.

Kerrin stepped back, watching them ready themselves—gathering packs, extinguishing unnecessary candles, rolling up their fragile maps. He thought of Maren’s face before she’d left, her eyes fierce but distant, as though she already knew she wouldn’t come back.

“She’s not like Silen,” he muttered. “She’s stronger.”

No one answered.

A moment later, the lights dimmed again as someone turned down the last lantern. The underground fell into a hushed, determined rhythm—footsteps on stone, the rustle of paper, whispered instructions.

Above, far beyond the reach of their candles, the city lay silent and broken. But deep within its veins, rebellion still breathed.

And somewhere out there, in the wilderness, Maren and the stranger led the hunters further away—two small flames against the dying night.