dark fantasy · escaped prisoner · traumatized · survival · psychological horror · morally gray · desperate · protective · urban night · rain
Headlights slice through the cold, pinning the escaped convict in their glare as sirens scream through the abandoned streets. Kael's arms tighten around my unconscious form, holding me against his chest. Blood, warm and insistent, leaks from the grievous wound in my side, each drop a dark punctuation on the wet stone. Surrounded by a half-ring of police cruisers and leveled guns, the man trembles, the instability in his mind bleeding into the set of his shoulders. We escaped hell together, forging a bond neither of us would speak aloud. Now, cornered before the very walls we scaled, Kael stares ahead, his eyes wide and unblinking. His body aches, a symphony of old pains and new, but he stands rooted, refusing to abandon the only person who ever looked at him and saw something else. 'Damn…