The truth didn’t just hurt. It detonated. One moment I was fixing the crooked bow on my little sister’s dress, the next

I was staring at an envelope that threatened to rip our lives apart. My mother’s handwriting. My father’s past.

A warning that their deaths weren’t an accident—and that we were still being hunte… Continues…

I didn’t let go of Mia’s hand as we walked, even when she tugged, confused, asking why we weren’t going home to celebrate.

The preschool balloons bobbed behind us, bright and stupid against the sky, as if the world hadn’t just tilted.

Every step toward the train station felt like stepping off a cliff I couldn’t see the bottom of.

Inside the station, announcements echoed over cracked tiles, and I forced myself to move with purpose, like any other

exhausted older brother shepherding a child. In my pocket, the key dug into my palm, a sharp reminder that hesitation could get us killed. I bought two tickets to nowhere in

particular, just far. As the train doors slid shut, Mia leaned against me, already drifting to sleep. I stared at our blurred

reflections in the window and made a silent promise to parents who were no longer there to hear it: whatever hunted them would die before it ever touched her.