My name is Onyx Reed. I’m seventeen years old, with auburn red hair, blue eyes, and freckles that dot my face like the stars I sometimes manage to catch glimpses of when the smog clears over District 8. My older brother Jax says they make me look like our mom, but I can’t remember her face anymore. It’s been too long since the accident at the dam—since the water swallowed them whole. One minute they were here, and the next, gone. It’s been just me, Jax, and my little sister Lira ever since.
District 8 isn’t known for its luxury. We’re not fighters by nature. The district’s purpose is simple: water power and wood harvesting. We keep the rest of the districts alive, running on the resources we provide. But that doesn’t mean we’re any better off. If anything, the work is hard, and the reward is little.
Jax works long hours at the mill. Lira helps where she can, but at fourteen, she’s still small, still fragile. I can’t let her see how much I worry, how much I fear for what’s coming. The **Choosing** is in less than twelve hours, and every year it looms like a dark cloud over all of us. No one in District 8 is trained for the games, not like the kids in Districts 1, 2, 11, and 12. They grow up knowing they might be chosen, taught how to fight, how to kill. The rest of us are left to fend for ourselves, hoping that we’re not the ones called.
But luck doesn’t last forever. I know that too well. My oldest brother, Cas, was chosen when I was nine. He didn’t make it out. None of us expected him to, not against the brutes from District 2. We all miss him, but for Jax and Lira, the pain is deeper, like a wound that never heals. And now, with the Choosing just hours away, the fear of losing another sibling gnaws at me, threatening to swallow me whole.
Everyone in the district thinks I’d have a chance if I got picked. Maybe they’re right. I hunt, I can handle a bow and a knife, and I know how to survive in the wild. It’s what keeps us afloat, the little money I make selling what I catch. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.
And even if I did make it out of the Blood Circle, even if I became the Victor, it wouldn’t matter. We all know what happens to the Victors. They return the next year, doomed to play the game again. You might win the fight, but you never escape your fate. Not in the Blood Games.
I can’t afford to think about that now. My only focus is Lira and Jax. If either of them gets chosen, I don’t know what I’d do. I can’t lose them. Not after everything we’ve been through. They’re all I have left.
I push my hair out of my face, looking down at my worn boots as I walk the dusty path home. The streets of District 8 are always busy at this time, people moving like ants from one chore to the next, heads down, voices hushed. It’s as if the weight of the Choosing hangs over all of us like a noose, waiting to tighten.
Jax is already home when I get there, chopping wood for the fire. His muscles strain under his shirt, his jaw tight with the same anxiety we all feel but don’t speak about. Lira sits nearby, drawing something in the dirt with a stick, her face focused, lost in her own world. I watch them both for a moment, my heart heavy.
“What’s for dinner?” Jax asks without looking up.
“Rabbit,” I answer, tossing the bag with my latest catch on the table. “Traded with the baker for some bread too.”
He nods, pausing in his work. “You’re getting better at hunting.”
“Have to be,” I mutter, glancing at Lira. “We can’t afford not to.”
Silence falls between us, the unspoken fear of tomorrow lingering. Jax knows it. I know it. Even Lira, though she’s younger, isn’t blind to the truth.
As the sun begins to set and the air cools, I find myself standing outside, staring at the fading light, wondering what tomorrow will bring. Wondering if this will be the last night I spend with my family intact.
