SOUND OF WAR ✲ SHADE BARROW

prologue

P R O L O G U E
N O I S E
________

GLASS PEERED IN resentment at the man sat in front her. He was tall, with long limbs and a face that was entwined with a bloodthirsty snarl. He was what she would define as ugly, with sharp, irregular features, and tiny eyes that disappeared into the black sockets half way up his face.

Thin, bony fingers scraped over her family's oak dinner table. The wood was ancient, with numerous rings staining the dark material in an abstract display. The man winced as a splinter tore into his hand and wouldn't come out.

Glass didn't feel sorry for the man. The splinter was nothing compared to the numerous injuries she had endured in the factories of New Town. She couldn't feel sorry for him - after all, he was a Silver.

The colour of his blood was wrong. It was something he couldn't help, but it made Glass hate him all the more for it.

She wandered what he was. A telky: someone who could throw her against the wall; snap her neck in the bat of an eyelash? Or maybe a shiver, for his presence was chilling enough already?

"She didn't do anything wrong," a woman persistently urged as Glass felt her back hit the grey plaster behind her. The dwelling was squat and undecorated - her family was too poor to even afford a wooden table that wasn't already splintering. The oak squinted up at the blonde now, scrutinising her gaze like a bright star. The room was basked in an orange hue, the flickering light hanging by a single white cable above her. It would have to be replaced soon, if they could afford it.

The Silver bowed his head, arms held firmly on the table as they scraped at the surface. Glass wished that he would bleed. Bleed out until silver stained the ancient wood, in such volume she would be afraid that it would spread onto the dirty flooring.

"I'm afraid that what she did is very much so an infringement of the law," the man's gritty tone stated. It tore at Glass's eardrums. She was afraid that they would bleed from the disgusting noise - red and scarlet and ruby. "We have no choice but to arrest her."

The blonde's mother gazed up at Glass from the other side of the table, eyes studded with tears. They hardened as soon as they fixed on her daughter's gaze, for she knew exactly what Glass had done — and more specifically, why. The woman's chilling blue orbs made Glass shiver.

"I'm sorry," is all the blonde replied. Glass's dad wasn't home, and her brother hadn't entered the house for years. Her mother was a respected Red, having worked alongside Silvers for most of her life in the medical ward. It was clear to Glass that spending so much time with the monsters had made her mother a monster, too.

Glass still loved her mother, but the bond was different. The woman couldn't see what she had become, but Glass looked through her mother as though she was a window.

"You should be," the woman glared, before swooping her attention back to the Silver. "She didn't do anything!"

Oh, but I did. Glass told herself.

She didn't resist as the Silver gripped her arm, hold so strong she couldn't even move. Strongarm. The look on her mother's face would've shattered her heart, only if she wasn't the reason for her brother's death.

Glass resented Silvers. But she resented New Town more.

i'm so sorry it has taken so long to update! i'm currently working on ideas, but i hope you enjoyed this little intro.

love you all so much and thank you for reading! x

dedicated to nightgate