The refuge was full of misery. Almost everybody there had lost someone they cared about. Friends would never see each other again, siblings had been forever torn apart, and those still alive were scared out of their wits. What had started as a normal school day turned into the worst day of their lives when pink blobs with large fangs and spear-like tongues attacked during lunch, ripping out kids' souls and pulling themselves back together from any attack not strong enough to reduce them to liquid.

The emergency broadcast from the AMD a few hours later only made things worse. There were more blobs attacking people all over the city. In addition to their own safety, frightened and grieving children now had to worry about whether or not they still had parents to return to. To make matters even worse, there was an individual creature the blobs served that was behind it all. Their friends, their families, every human and monster was just food to these things and the beast they served.

Lily, now the sole student with a Soul of Kindness, had spent every waking second since the end of the attack mourning the death of her brother Cam. She was sitting in the corner with her knees bent as her face buried into her arms, completely shut off from everybody else and not speaking a single word or responding to any form of communication. When night finally came she couldn't sleep. Every time she tried a nightmare would wake her back up in only a few minutes.

By 11:45 she was sore from being in one position for so many hours and left the refuge to take a walk, loosen her joints, and have some time to be alone and think. Think about the chaos the city had been plunged into. Think about how to stop it.

Kindness won't solve this. I can't reason with a beast that wants to eat my soul. I can't soothe the others' pain when I'm almost being consumed by my own. I can't go on being kind without Cam. People are dying out there and I have the power to stop it.

The blobs wanted to kill me for the magic in my soul, right? I saw a few kids destroy blobs for good with their magical attacks. Cam and I had some of the strongest souls out of any of the students, if I actually fought back I could take blobs down by the dozen.

But if I do that. If I go out and fight. . . I have to shatter any soul a blob has taken before it can be devoured by the beast they serve. If I fight I have to be willing to commit spiritual slaughter. That. . . that would mean abandoning my trait and giving up on the life Cam died to save. I'll never be the same with blood on my hands.

If I even come back alive.

. . .

Be continued