Chapter Four:

  “A Mother's Grace”

  Wind prowled Winston-Salem's empty streets, a predator testing barriers, tasting despair. Rain followed in its wake, each drop a memory refusing to fade. Together, they haunted the ruins of the old tobacco district, where skeletal warehouses stood sentinel over broken dreams.

  Heavenlei pulled her hood lower, fabric heavy with water against her skin. The knife in her pocket burned cold, its engraving a name carved deeper in her heart than metal. Seren. Each letter a wound that wouldn't heal.

  The district's bones rose around her, abandoned processing plants and empty auction houses. Wind whipped around their corners, keening a child's laughter that twisted into screams. Rain drummed against metal roofs, the rhythm matching her daughter's last heartbeats.

  A neon sign sputtered overhead, some forgotten shop's final gasp. Its light painted wet pavement in shades of accusation. Through the gleam, a spinning wheel emerged from shadow, paint peeling like dead skin. Heavenlei stopped. The wind caught her breath, held it hostage. That night rushed back—the crowd's roar, her perfect throw, the moment everything shattered.

  Her fingers found the knife's handle, traced letters that branded her soul. The wind rose, a banshee's wail through broken windows. Rain hammered harder, drowning her daughter's eternal echo. But no storm could wash this blood from her hands.

  Old Vineyard Behavioral Health Clinic loomed behind her, a monument to broken minds. Its windows gaped, dark sockets in a skull of brick and mortar. Wind whispered through its empty halls, carrying echoes of those who'd fled their own imaginations. Rain painted patterns on its walls, abstract art from nature that matched the chaos once contained within. A perfect backdrop for her nightly penance, one madness watching another.

  The bipolar patients who'd escaped during the collapse had found no peace in these streets. Their manic dreams proved tame compared to the world's descent into nightmare. But they'd left their mark before vanishing into the dying city. Artwork spiraled across the clinic's walls, fractured visions in spray paint and blood. Their troubled minds had seen this coming: stick figures drowning in digital seas, binary code raining from broken skies, prophecies of salvation through silicon dreams. Wind stripped flakes of paint from their warnings, while rain wept down the prophecies' faces.

  Heavenlei moved through streets that lived between sanity and madness. The district's skeleton swallowed her, abandoned warehouses exhaling memories of tobacco and trade. Wind cut between buildings, blade-sharp and hungry. Rain followed, washing away everything except guilt.

  The spinning wheel emerged from shadow, propped against a loading dock's rusted gate. Its paint curled away from rotting wood, but the target rings remained. Perfect circles, each one smaller than the last, leading to that single point of no return. Her fingers traced the knife's engraving. Seren.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  She'd been the best. They'd called her the Angel of Steel, praised her precision, her grace. Every throw a masterpiece, until that one perfect arc became tragedy. The knife remembered, its edge forever stained with choices that couldn't be unmade. Wind howled through empty warehouses, harmonizing with memories of applause turned to screams.

  A generator coughed somewhere distant, a mechanical death rattle echoing off brick and steel. Wind caught the sound, twisted it into childish giggles that stabbed deeper than any blade. Rain drummed harder, as if trying to drown the memory of a final heartbeat that still echoed in every storm.

  She walked without purpose, each step carrying her deeper into the tobacco district's graveyard. The old auction houses stood silent, their broken windows reflecting fragments of neon and starless sky. Rain traced patterns down their walls, tears from a city that had forgotten how to weep.

  "Some wounds refuse to heal."

  The voice emerged from nowhere, yet filled everything. Wind and rain parted around a figure standing where an empty street had been moments before. A woman cloaked in shadow, untouched by the storm's fury.

  Heavenlei's hand found the knife. "Who are you?"

  The woman stood motionless, a void in the storm. Wind died around her, while rain curved away from her form. "Someone who knows the weight of a perfect throw gone wrong."

  The knife's engraving burned against Heavenlei's palm. Her throat closed. The wind held its breath.

  "You watch the wheel every night," the woman continued. "Counting rings, measuring distance, calculating the exact moment everything changed." She stepped forward. Rain retreated from her path. "But you never throw anymore."

  "Stop." Heavenlei's voice cracked.

  "A mother's grace." The woman's words cut through the storm. "That's what they called it, the way you made steel dance. Until steel took everything."

  Thunder growled overhead. Wind whipped around them, angry at the stranger's intrusion. But the woman remained unmoved, untouched.

  "What do you want?"

  The woman reached into darkness, drew out something that gleamed. It caught neon light, reflecting fractured images of a dying city. "A chance."

  Heavenlei's breath stopped. The Gamepass pulsed with possibility, heavier than it looked, colder than the rain. As she took it, letters appeared beneath her fingers, 'The Ultimate Dive.'

  "I can't." The words tasted bitter. "I'm not..."

  "A mother?" Wind carried the woman's whisper. "A guardian? That's exactly what you are. What you've always been. One mistake doesn't change that truth."

  Rain painted tears down Heavenlei's face. Or perhaps they were real. "I couldn't protect her."

  "No." The woman's voice softened, wind through autumn leaves. "But you can protect others. The Dive needs people like you, those who understand the price of failure. Those who won't let it happen again."

  Heavenlei stared at the Gamepass, its surface reflecting ghosts and secrets. The knife at her hip whispered her daughter's name.

  "Redemption isn't about forgetting." The woman was already fading, becoming one with the storm. "It's about what you choose to remember. And why."

  Then she was gone. Wind rushed into the space she'd occupied, while rain reclaimed its territory. The Gamepass remained solid, real, promising.

  Heavenlei stood alone in the dying city. Above, thunder spoke of choices. Around her, wind and rain resumed their eternal dance. She slipped the Gamepass into her pocket, next to the knife that carried her daughter's name.

  Tomorrow would come. Tomorrow would demand choices. But for now, she let the storm wash over her, a baptism of rain and wind, of memory and possibility.

  Behind her, Old Vineyard's prophetic walls wept in the darkness. Before her, neon light painted promises across wet streets. And somewhere between madness and grace, between guilt and purpose, a mother's heartbeat in time with the rain.