War

Chapter Five

Luz

I was running down the steps in the stairwell as the building seemed to be tilting. My shoulder slammed against the wall but I pushed myself from it. "Luz!" Amity's voice called my name.

"Hold on!" I stopped at a door and slammed myself against it. The impact knocks me back and I stumble to a stop. "I'm coming Amity!" I screamed before rushing to slam into the door again. Pain shot throughout my body and I looked down at my hands in confusion. What was going on?

"Luz!" Emira appeared pulling the door open as the building shifted again. "What are you doing? Come on!" Her hand grasped onto a beam to hold herself up as she handed me a rope with her other one. I wrapped it around a beam near me and tied it into a tight knot. Before I could react the building fell more and I slipped and fell onto my back sliding down to the window. The force sent me forward and I slammed into the glass. It started to crack beneath me until hands wrapped around me and pulled me back.

Amity had used her strength to move me only to trade places with me as her back met the breaking glass. "Amity!" I screamed as the cracks spread. She reached her hand out and I grasped it just in time. When the glass finally broke and she fell through the only thing keeping her from dropping was my grip on her hand.

"Luz, you have to turn!" Emira shouted at me from above. But when I looked at my arms and the veins were missing, when I looked back at Amity and saw my vision was without its red hue, and I realized that holding her up was a strain for me; it dawned on me that I couldn't. I couldn't turn. The feelings and the senses that came with my monstrous side were nowhere to be seen.

"I-I can't! It's not working!" I panicked. My grip loosened and I felt myself shifting forward. "Amity! No, no, please. Don't let go! Just...just hang on!" I closed my eyes tightly and tried to turn. I tried to find that feeling. But that dark part of me had been replaced with something else. Something weak. Something human.

"I'm sorry Luz..." Amity started, "...but you can't save me." My grip slipped more and tears built in my eyes.

"No, no please," I begged. When Amity let go, is when I snapped awake, startled and in a sweat. Pushing myself up I screamed her name and held my hand to my chest over my heart. My breaths coming fast and unsteady.

There was the feeling of something shifting within my surroundings but it wasn't coming from here. "Emira," I whispered before pushing myself up and throwing the door to my room open. It slammed hard against the wall as I stumbled out into the hall and made my way down the stairs.

"Luz?" Emira stepped out of her room to look at me in confusion. After seeing her safe I let out a breath of relief. A guard appeared from another room looking alert and we exchanged a glance. He gave me a firm nod before following me to the door. I placed my hand on the cold doorknob before turning it and swinging it open to reveal the complete chaos taking place outside.

Taking a few steps onto the porch I saw some distant smoke from a fire coming from the mountain outside our walls. Members of the community were running around and some guards were shouting orders as screams of fear echoed all around me. I rushed down the steps and ran right into a scared woman. "What's going on?" I asked her but she pushed me aside and ran past me. A guard, one of the men I had previous shifts with, came up to me with a serious face handing me a gun.

"Some monsters have breached the front gate and there is a forest fire spreading nearby." He explained to me before Hunter's familiar face appeared as he stood in front of us.

"A group belonging to Belos was moving around the town nearby. We're not sure if they started the fire or not but we need to move our people somewhere safe until we figure out what's happening." He stated before focusing his attention on the guy next to him.