Their footsteps thundered against marble corridors as they fled the palace's heart. Behind them, Queen Athena prepared for a confrontation that would likely cost her everything. Ahead lay only uncertainty and the growing weight of Adam's unwanted destiny.
They burst from the palace doors into blinding sunlight. For a moment, the ordinary world felt unfamiliar, market sounds, children's laughter, the scent of fresh bread from nearby stalls.
Adam stopped abruptly, his hands shook as he touched his mouth, the iron taste now so strong it made him want to retch.
"I couldn't think straight," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "When I saw that apple... it was like my hands weren't my own anymore. Like something else was making the choice." He looked at his friends with growing desperation. "If I'd realized what it meant, if I'd been more careful, "
"Stop." Evelyn's voice carried gentle firmness. "The cursed apple bends the will of whoever sees it. That's what the old stories say, no mortal can resist its call once they lay eyes on it. You couldn't have fought it any more than you could have chosen to stop breathing."
Before anyone could respond, a familiar cart pulled up beside them, its driver's face was tense, Mathias, the man who had brought them books and treats at the orphanage for years, whose gentle hands always remembered to save the ripest fruit for Zoe, looked at them with an urgency they'd never seen before.
"Get on," he said without preamble. "Queen's orders. I'm to see you safely out of the capital before..." He paused, his expression growing haunted. "Before whatever's coming arrives."
They climbed into the cart without question. Mathias had been a constant in their lives since childhood, a steady presence of unconditional kindness in an often-uncertain world. If Queen Athena trusted him with their safety, that trust needed no explanation.
The wheels found their familiar rhythm. Around them, the City of Light hummed with oblivious normalcy, vendors calling out prices, temple bells marking the passage of ordinary time, children darting between market stalls.
Adam watched a street performer juggle fire while a small crowd cheered and tossed coins, and the normalcy felt surreal.
Zoe was the first to break the heavy silence that had settled over their group. "The ones coming for us, they're from Utopia, aren't they? The immortal realm the queen mentioned. But how could they know so quickly? I heard the general say two to three days, but that was the General talking about how long we had, not how long before they found out."
Noah had been calculating since they left the palace. "Think about the timing," he said quietly. "Adam bit the apple this morning, then slept for hours under the oak. We found him around midday, walked four hours to reach the palace through the city. That's roughly seven hours since the epoch began."
Adam felt his stomach clench with understanding. "Seven hours. More than enough time for, "
"For the first curses to be granted," Noah finished grimly. "And they probably have spies and agents everywhere, they will instantly report the information the moment they notice a man getting cursed."
The implication hung between them like a blade. Somewhere in the world, people were already being cursed, already becoming something different.
Noah's voice took on the distant quality it carried when he recited historical knowledge, though now that knowledge felt urgent rather than academic. "The old texts describe this world as never meant for humans alone. There were beasts, called the eldritch, rare today, but still present, creatures with hearts of stone that no mortal weapon could pierce, no fire could consume. When people ate those hearts, they gained immortality and the beast's power. The only thing that could destroy them was to be a human who gets cursed..." He stopped, interrupted by Zoe’s sudden scream
"Wait," Zoe suddenly said, but her voice cracked. They were passing the orphanage where they'd all grown up, and she could see children playing in the courtyard. Her throat tightened with sudden understanding. "Are we leaving them here?".
Evelyn frowned. "They should be safe though, right? Adam's the target, "
But Zoe was already moving. Whatever she'd realized made her face go pale with horror. Without a warning, she leaped from the moving cart.
The others shouted her name, but understanding was already crashing over them like a cold wave. They knew that expression on her face, the same look she got when she realized a younger child was in danger, when her protective instincts overrode everything else, including self-preservation.
Their legs followed before their minds could process the decision. All four abandoned Mathias's cart and ran toward the orphanage, Adam and Noah driven by the same grim understanding that had motivated Zoe's desperate leap, while Evelyn followed despite the confusion clouding her features.
A small boy with a carved wooden toy and some papers stumbled directly into Adam's path. In his frantic rush to follow his friends, Adam knocked the child over without stopping. His toy and papers he was carrying scattered over on the ground. The kid stood up and started collecting carefully all of his papers as if they meant a lot to him.
"Sorry!" he called back, but couldn't afford to help the boy to his feet.
Behind them, Mathias stood up in his cart, his voice carrying across the growing distance. "Princess Evelyn! Please, this isn't safe, you can't, "
His last words.
BOOM!!
Fire erupted without warning, a roar that swallowed cart, horse, and kind-hearted driver in an instant of devastating violence. The blast threw the small boy Adam had knocked down like a broken doll, his tiny body tumbling through smoke and flame while his wooden toy split apart beside him. Market stalls disintegrated, their vendors screaming as burning debris rained down like hellish snow. Windows shattered in expanding rings of destruction, glass shredding anyone caught in the open.
When the smoke began to clear, ash marked where Mathias had been, his cart was gone, his horse was gone.
Adam stared at the flames consuming what remained of the explosion site. The boy he had knocked down lay motionless in the wreckage, his wooden toy split in half beside small fingers that would never move again.
"I should have helped him up," Adam whispered, his voice breaking. "I should have taken just one second to make sure he was alright. If I had done that, he would have been somewhere else when the bomb, "
"It's not your fault," Evelyn screamed at him. "The bomb would have exploded no matter what you did. You couldn't have known."
But Adam barely heard her. The weight of consequence was settling on his, each death adding to a burden he was only beginning to understand. That child had died because Adam existed.
Noah was trying to make sense of what just happened, they barely escaped the explosion. They got out of the cart ten seconds before the explosion, they were that close to death. "A bomb. But the timing was perfect, they knew exactly where we would be, exactly when. The cart was supposed to get us out of the city safely." His voice grew hollow with realization. "Someone with inside knowledge planted this. Yes, it was planted, someone who knew the exact cart the queen prepared."
The truth hit them like a second explosion, the words falling from their lips in horrified unison:
"A Traitor."
Someone close to Queen Athena, someone with access to their escape plans, had betrayed them to their enemies. The palace, their sanctuary, their symbol of safet, had been compromised from within.
Chaos consumed the street around them. The City of Light, moments ago peaceful and prosperous, dissolved into screaming nightmare. It was no small bomb, it was huge, the four barely escaped its range by running at full speed for ten seconds, and they still got knocked down.
"The orphanage!" Noah shouted, his voice cutting through the cacophony of destruction and panic. "Inside, now!"
They crashed through familiar doors into a scene that broke their hearts. The main hall reeked of smoke and terror, thirty-two children huddled together in the center of the room, many sobbing, others staring in shocked silence at windows where glass fragments sparkled. Plaster dust hung in the air.
"The windows broke!" cried little Sara, clutching her doll tightly. "The whole building shook and everything fell down!"
Tommy, blood trickled from a small cut on his forehead where falling debris had found him. "Something terrible happened, didn't it? That wasn't just thunder".
"We heard the explosion," he said, his voice steady despite the fear in his eyes. "Then everything started shaking. Some of the little ones got hurt when things fell from the shelves."
Elena, thirteen with the kind of perceptiveness that made adults uncomfortable, stared at their ash-streaked clothes. "You were near it, weren't you? Near whatever exploded?"
Zoe was already moving, her maternal instincts overriding her own shock and grief. She knelt beside a crying six-year-old whose arm was bleeding from glass cuts, her hands gentle as she examined the wound. "Everyone listen to me!" she called out, her voice cutting through the frightened whimpers and confused questions. "You have to leave the city right now, all of you!"
"Why?" Sara asked. "What's happening?"
"Because dangerous people are coming," Zoe explained, kneeling to the girl's level while carefully checking for injuries. "People who want to hurt anyone connected to us. We need to get you somewhere safe, somewhere far from here. Take only what you can carry, food, water, warm clothes. Nothing else matters now."
Adam and Noah began stuffing supplies into every bag they could find. The explosion had rattled everything, dishes had fallen from shelves, books lay scattered across the floor.
"Where will we go?" Marcus asked, his voice steady despite the fear that lurked behind his eyes. "The capital isn't safe anymore, is it?"
"Away from here," Noah said, shouldering a pack while trying not to look at the bloodstained cloth someone had used to bandage a child's cut. "To the villages outside the city."
"But why attack everyone?" Evelyn asked, her voice tight with confusion and growing anger. "If they want Adam, why not just take him? Why kill innocent people like Mathias? Why terrorize children?"
Noah paused in his frantic packing, meeting her eyes with grim understanding. "Because they need your mother's cooperation, now that the traitor will inform them Adam was there. When she refuses to give him to them..." He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
Understanding flooded Evelyn's features like ice water. Her mother wasn't just being asked to surrender Adam, she was being given an ultimatum. Comply with their demands, or watch her people burn one by one until she broke.
The realization made her body go numb. Without another word, she turned and ran, swift as lightning, back toward the palace where her mother faced an impossible choice alone.
As Evelyn disappeared into the streets, her heart carried a single burning certainty: whatever was happening to their world, whatever forces were moving against them, she still had hope in her heart.