“My name’s Helena, and I’m an angel, just like him,” she said, gesturing with her chin at the disregarded body. “That’s what they call us anyway, but in reality, we’re more like mercenaries.”

  "Angels," I mouthed, then recalled that the boy had called me a demon. I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of her words, but it wasn’t easy. She must be confused, just like that boy had been.

  “Who are ‘they’?” I finally asked. She kept repeating that word, yet I had no idea whom she was referring to.

  “They, as in the people who own us. And you, for that matter,” Helena sighed, placing her hands on her hips.

  “But who are they exactly?” I asked again, impatience creeping into my voice. A part of me knew listening to her was a mistake, yet another part of me was desperate to understand.

  “I know a few names, but I don’t know who they are. Not exactly,” she admitted. “All I know is that they’re rich, powerful, and high-ranked. Politicians, priests. They have influence all over the continent, maybe even the world. They control the Stars' Blood, and they made us like this.”

  She lifted her hand. I instinctively stepped back, fearing an attack, but she wasn’t aiming at me—she was doing something else.

  The air turned colder in an instant. The grass beneath my feet shifted from green to yellow to brown, drying into brittle, lifeless stalks. The trees followed suit, their leaves darkening before cascading down all at once, blanketing the ground in decay.

  I stared at her, trying to determine what she truly was. Was she making me see things? Or was this real? The dead leaves continued to fall, spiraling in the chilled air. I held my breath, suddenly wary of even breathing it in.

  “I can do more than that. Different things,” she said. I stiffened under her piercing gaze. “But everything I can do is meant to kill.”

  “How can you do any of this?” My voice rose, raw with fear. My eyes darted between the falling leaves and the barren trees. It had to be the drugs. It had to be my imagination.

  “Remember that thing I mentioned? Stars’ Blood?” she continued. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. They created a drug using the stars that fell from the sky years ago, and then they inject it into our blood to change us.

  “For their soldiers—their angels—it makes us stronger, more resilient. They train us, use us to protect them from demons.” She pointed at me, a thin smile curving her lips before she let out a short, bitter laugh.

  “I’m so stupid,” she muttered under her breath.

  She exhaled sharply, sending another flurry of dead leaves tumbling from her shoulders and hair.

  “That’s what I thought anyway,” she continued. “I didn’t know they were taking kids from the streets until a few months ago. I didn’t know about the others they raised at the castle—the ones in white and red gowns. I think they call them Alphas.”

  I wanted to tell her to stop, but I was too overwhelmed to form words. Her voice poured out like the trees had emptied their leaves. I understood every word, yet none of it made sense. She spoke of familiar things in ways that twisted reality into something I couldn't grasp.

  A low-hanging branch brushed my shoulder, and I grabbed it for support. It snapped in my hand. Everything was falling apart.

  “There’s so much I don’t know,” she admitted, more to herself than to me. “But I want to understand. I want to find out exactly what they’re doing, and why. Because what they’ve done to us… it’s changed us so much, we’re barely human anymore.”

  Her gaze settled on me, and for a moment, swallowing became difficult.

  I let the broken branch slip from my fingers, straightened, and forced myself to stand without leaning on anything. I watched her pace in a small circle, speaking to me but also lost in her own mind.

  Who was she? The girl who had effortlessly drained the life from a part of the forest. The girl who had taken a life and already seemed to have forgotten. The wind had warmed, yet the birds remained silent. Were they afraid of her too?

  “You see,” she said, still not looking at me, “I never had a reason to doubt them. Not until I refused to kill someone they told me to. A kid, just like you, wearing a gown just like yours. He was five. Maybe younger. Drugged. Helpless. They told me he was a demon—just like they tell us about everyone we kill. That it was my duty to protect the world from him. No matter how innocent he looked.”

  She paused.

  “You can take him on your own, they said. But I did something I shouldn’t have. I helped him instead.”

  Her voice softened, haunted.

  “That’s when I realized he was strong. Maybe stronger than me. But he wasn’t evil. He wasn’t dangerous. He was just a small boy, and he didn’t remember anything from after they took him from his home.”

  “That’s when I learned about your kind. You’re neither angels nor Alphas. The thing is, I don’t even know what they call you. But I know this much—you all start as regular humans, just like us. Then they experiment on you. Then they lie to us. And when they’re done, they have us kill you outside the castle.”

  She stopped pacing, her gaze dragging over me, slow and assessing. I couldn’t tell if there was anger in her eyes or pity.

  I took a long breath. A leaf dislodged from my tangled hair, drifting down to my chest, but I didn’t move to brush it away.

  “In the end, no one can know what they did to you. No one can know where you really died.”

  For some reason, she stepped back, as if trying to take in the whole picture of what was happening. Or maybe I was the only one struggling to make sense of any of it.

  I opened my mouth to speak, to say something, anything—but the words weren’t there.

  She looked like any other girl. Young. Just another face in the world. And yet, she had killed. How many people? How many children?

  If anything, she was the demon.

  For a moment, all I could hear was the storm inside my own head.

  “…They drain you first,” she continued. “Take as much of your blood as they can before leaving you with us. They’d take everything if they could. I guess in their heads, they still think they’re holy and pure as long as they don’t do the killing themselves.”

  She let out a laugh, sharp and bitter. And maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I saw something flicker across her face—regret, maybe. Then, just as quickly, her smile vanished.

  “We aren’t supposed to know any of this. We’re just supposed to kill whoever they tell us to. And that made me wonder—what else are they hiding?”

  “Why?” The word slipped out before I realized I’d spoken. It wasn’t even meant for her. Just a whisper, meant for myself.

  I tilted my head back, my gaze locking onto the empty sky. There wasn’t a single cloud. Just endless, suffocating blue. I felt naked beneath it. Exposed.

  “Why?” I asked again, louder this time.

  I heard her sigh.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I think they take people like you to see how much of the Stars’ Blood you can withstand. To study what it does to you. And when you become too strong—or too unstable—they get rid of you.”

  Her voice was even, factual.

  “The reason I believe that? They give the blood to us, too. But it’s a process that takes years. They start experimenting on us when we’re eleven, and it continues until we turn fifteen. But you—you have more Stars’ Blood than any of us. And they gave it to you in a matter of weeks.”

  Her words took a moment to sink in. And when they did, it felt like something sharp lodged itself in my ribs.

  I felt lost. Betrayed. Furious.

  They hadn’t just taken me from my family. They had changed me.

  To them, I wasn’t a person. I was an experiment. A thing.

  But she had to be lying.

  I still felt like myself.

  I couldn’t change the leaves. I couldn’t move like a ghost. I couldn’t do any of the things they could.

  She was lying. She had to be.

  “How do you know they changed me?” I snapped, my voice tight with desperation. “You can’t be sure. Did you see what they did to me?”

  “No,” she admitted, unfazed. “But I can feel it. Just like I’ve felt it before. Dozens of times. And I bet you can feel it too—you’re just not used to it yet.”

  “You’re lying!” I shouted.

  Like a child, I crossed my arms, clamping them over my stomach. The second I realized how weak that must have made me look, I dropped them. My hands went to my temples instead, rubbing hard, as if I could press her words out of my skull.

  All I wanted was to go home. To see my parents.

  How long had it been since I saw them?

  I didn’t know.

  I just knew I needed them.

  I needed to wake up from this nightmare.

  “I may not know the whole truth,” Helena said, her voice as cold and detached as ever, “but I’m not lying to you. Didn’t you see what I just did? What other explanation do you have for it?”

  “You tell me what that was!” I demanded, my voice rising. “Why are you lying to me? Why can you move like that? Why did you make the trees die? Why did he try to kill me when I had done nothing?” My breath hitched. “None of this makes sense!”

  I clutched my head, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “I already told you why.” Her tone was infuriatingly calm. “He tried to kill you because they told us to. And we do as they say.”

  I felt the heat rise to my head, and before I could stop myself, I was moving toward her.

  She looked so normal. So human.

  But then again, all monsters did.

  “But you just said you know they were lying to you!” I shouted. “Why didn’t you tell him? Why didn’t you stop him instead of killing him like that? Why did you help me?” My voice broke. “Are you just playing with me? Messing with me?”

  I reached for her, rage making my movements reckless.

  But before I could touch her, she grabbed my shoulder and threw me to the ground.

  It was effortless.

  I hit the dirt like a rag doll. My limbs felt boneless. Weak.

  “I can’t tell anyone what I know,” she said, unbothered. “The other angels would kill me.”

  Dirt clung to my lips. My shoulder throbbed as if I’d slammed into a wall. And that worried me. Because she had barely touched me.

  She was just as strong as the boy had been.

  I cursed under my breath.

  “We both got lucky today,” she continued, unfazed. “You—because of the way you’re dressed. And me—because he wasn’t expecting me to attack him. They always pair us together when we kill the older kids in the grey gowns. Because, like I said, you have more Stars’ Blood in you than us. And even when they drug you and drain most of your blood, they don’t like to take chances. That’s why there were three of us.”

  “Shut up,” I muttered.

  But she didn’t.

  “We’re supposed to be getting rid of you right now. But as you can see, I took your side. I can lie and tell them you woke up enough to kill one of us. But if anyone saw us here, I wouldn’t have a choice—I’d have to kill you. They can’t know I don’t fully trust them anymore.”

  I pushed the hair out of my face and slowly, unsteadily, got to my feet.

  “Then why don’t you just kill me?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

  She looked at me, her expression unreadable.

  “Because I want to know the truth.”

  Her voice was quiet now. Steady.

  “If we’re not here to kill demons like they say,” she said, “then why make us at all?”

  “You at least had a family. All we ever knew were doctors and chemists,” she said, her voice sharp with resentment. “They use us, manipulate us, make us believe there’s nothing else but their truth. They turn us into murderers. And I want to know why. But I can’t do it alone.”

  She looked at me, and I laughed—because none of this made sense, because for a moment, I truly believed she was insane.

  “I can’t trust anyone at the castle,” she exhaled. “So I only have people like you. But the choice is yours. You decide whether to help me or not.”

  “How am I supposed to help you?” I asked, the laughter still lingering in my voice.

  “I have a plan,” she said, “but I’d only need you if things go wrong. I want to reach someone important—someone who might know the whole truth—and make him talk. If it doesn’t go as planned, I’ll need you to help us fight our way out.”

  “Fight?” I scoffed. “Against who? The others like you?” My brow furrowed. “How many of you are there, anyway?”

  “Yes, against the other angels,” she said, her tone rising. She looked like she wanted to say more, but after a moment, she exhaled and continued in a calmer voice. “There are many of us. But I’ll be careful. I won’t let it come to that. I promise.”

  “And you actually think this man will just tell you what you want?” I asked, unable to hide my disbelief.

  “Well,” she said, a knowing glint in her eyes, “he won’t have a choice.”

  I sighed. I was exhausted. I wanted her to shut up.

  “You do realize what you’re up against, don’t you?” I said, my patience wearing thin. “That castle belongs to the Governor of Aurora, which means it belongs to Ancora itself. This isn’t just a city problem.

  “If I help you—if we somehow make it out of there alive—they won’t just let us go. And if what you’re saying is true, and they’re using the stars, it won’t just be the government coming after us. The Church will, too. And they’re just as powerful, if not more.”

  I exhaled sharply, anger curling around my words like smoke. “If I help you, I’ll need more than a miracle to stay alive. And worse, my family could be in danger. I can’t risk that—not for your questions.”

  She smirked, tilting her head. “I think the one who’s clueless here is you,” she said. “Like it or not, I’m the only reason you’re still breathing. But if you’re going to make me regret that, there’s only one thing left to do.”

  I froze.

  Whatever she was—crazy or not—I was trapped. I swallowed hard and met her gaze. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if she thought it was the best option, just like she had with that boy.

  It didn’t matter how many ways I played this out in my head—I had no way out.

  Refuse her, and she’d kill me on the spot.

  Help her, and I’d probably end up dead later anyway.

  “You said it was my choice,” I muttered. I didn’t know why I said it. I already knew she wouldn’t just let me go.

  She tilted her head. “If you help me, you might actually have a chance to survive. I’ll burn their records—erase every trace that says you and I were ever there. No one will come looking for you. No one will chase you. But if I think you’ll be a problem…” Her eyes sharpened. “I’ll kill you now and find someone else. I don’t need you, just someone like you.”

  She stepped closer. “So, as you can see, you do have a choice. And it’s a very easy one.”

  I shut my eyes and rubbed them hard with my palms, smearing dirt across my face. I didn’t know what to do.

  Or worse—I did.

  I just wasn’t sure if I could.

  My best option was to pretend. Act like I wanted to help, then disappear the first chance I got.

  “And when exactly will you need me?” I asked, stalling for time. “You don’t even have a full plan yet.”

  “A few weeks, maybe,” she said. “I’ve been tracking everyone’s movements in the castle, but some patterns still don’t make sense. Once I have everything I need, I’ll call you.”

  “And what am I supposed to do until then?” I asked. She wasn’t about to just let me roam freely—not when she knew I might run.

  “Hide,” she said simply. “Find a place in the forest. And don’t go to your family, unless you want to get them all killed. Understand?”

  I inhaled deeply and nodded, pretending her threat didn’t rattle me.

  I’d figure out a way to get my family out. It had never been more important.

  Time was running out.

  This wasn’t a dream.

  This wasn’t a game.

  “So,” she asked, and for the briefest moment, I thought I heard something almost like a plea in her voice. “You’ll help me?”

  I must have imagined it.

  “You’ve given me no choice,” I said evenly. “But in return, I want those files gone—the ones you promised to burn. Make sure you do it.” I held her gaze. “If you swear to that, then I’ll even be happy to help you.”

  I’d make her believe whatever was necessary—just for her to leave me alone already.

  “Very good. We both get something out of this.” Helena’s tone carried a hint of satisfaction, but I didn’t trust it. “Now, apart from the Stars’ Blood, they gave you something else to keep you under. Most of it must be out of your system by now, so I suppose this is a good time to try something.”

  I eyed her warily and took a small step back.

  The dead leaves crunched beneath my weight. My balance had returned—I wasn’t as weak as before. I exhaled in quiet relief, only to tense again when I caught her watching me, her gaze sharper than before.

  “All of us can do different things, you included,” she said, stepping toward me with slow, calculated movements, her hands resting lazily at her sides. “And whatever your ability is, it will help us get what we want. The trick is that most of our powers only surface under high pressure.”

  What is she doing?

  I stepped back again.

  “But sometimes,” she continued, “kids and even others my age are afraid of using their abilities. Despite having the Stars’ Blood in them, they can’t manifest anything—at least, not in a way they can control. I think it’s because they don’t truly believe in all of this. And when the blood doesn’t react the way it should… well, they die.”

  A cold weight settled in my stomach.

  “This is the only way I know to make it work. And it’s the only method I’m going to use.”

  Her voice was steady. Certain.

  “You see, for us to find out what you can do, you need to understand one thing: if you don’t use the stars in your blood, you will die.”

  She took another step forward.

  “I’m going to give you five minutes. Then I’m going to try to kill you. And you need to know—I won’t stop.”

  My breath fastened.

  “If you truly want to save yourself, you’re going to have to embrace what you’ve become. Because if you don’t—if you show no ability at all—then you’re useless to me anyway.”