https://youtu.be/_nrpxowbIYY

         CRICKETS CHIRPED through the half-open window, their song weaving with the first sleepy birds beginning to greet the gray blush of morning. The forest that cradled District Seven was still mostly asleep—mist settled low over the pine-thick hills, and dew painted silver onto every leaf and shingle. It was the kind of peace that came only in those fragile minutes before dawn fully claimed the world.

          Inside a modest cabin at the edge of the district's inner ring, Clementine Friggan slept deeply. Her breathing was soft, even, the sort a person has when they trust the world not to fall apart in their sleep.

         Her bedroom was simple, built from hand-hewn wood and smelling faintly of pine sap and smoke. A threadbare quilt—patchworked from flannel scraps and old district uniforms—was tangled around her legs. One foot peeked out. The floor was uneven in places, the way old forest homes always were, and dust caught the early light in soft beams.

         Books were stacked in careless towers beside her bed, most of them warped at the corners or borrowed without promise of return. A dented enamel mug still held the ghost of last night's tea, and a cracked mirror leaned against the wall, reflecting a faded drawing of a tree she'd made as a child.

         Clementine herself lay curled toward the window, a mop of coppery curls splayed across her pillow. Her hair—wild and alive even in sleep—caught the dim light like coals in the hearth. Freckles scattered across her cheeks, nose, and shoulders like pollen. She was not yet seventeen, but there was something older carved gently into the way her brow stayed slightly furrowed, even now.

        At five-foot-five, Clementine had the look of a girl grown from the forest itself—weather-tough, freckle-dusted, and quietly strong. There was a healing cut along her arm from the last tree she'd helped fell, and the faint scent of cedar still lingered in her curls from the lumber yard.

        Everything, for now, was still.

        She didn't know the Capitol had already lit the match.

        She didn't know that, miles away, screens were being turned on and soldiers were putting on their gloves.

        She didn't know the Victor's Purge had begun, and in a matter of time, she will be yanked out of the peaceful sleep. And it'll be the last peaceful sleep she will have before heaven sent chaos straight to the heart of District Seven and ripped her away forever from her unbothered slumber.

       "Clem! Wake up—wake up, wake the fuck up!"

        The voice shattered the morning silence like an axe through greenwood. Clementine jolted, blinking as if the world had torn itself open. Her brother's hands were on her shoulders, shaking her so hard the headboard groaned against the wall.

       "Quick, QUICK!" Thatcher's voice cracked on the last word, raw and panicked. "Get up—get up, Clem, you hear me? They're coming—they're coming. They're already in the Square—MOVE!"

        Her mind, thick with sleep, clung to the last warmth of the bed like it was still a dream. She felt the quilt falling from her body in clumsy folds. Her eyes—glassy and slow—fluttered open just enough to meet the shape of Thatcher: tall, breathless, his chest rising like a bellows, his hair all wild and sticking to the sweat on his brow.

       "Thatch?" she mumbled, squinting as dawn bled pale light through the window. "What the fuck's goin' on—what—?" Her voice was a gravelly tangle. She yawned reflexively, her lips cracking, and scrubbed her freckled face with both hands as if she could force her vision into focus. Her curls were a coppery mess around her head, half-plastered to her cheek.

         Thatcher didn't answer her question. He didn't slow down. His hands were on her arms again, pulling her from bed. "We gotta go, Clementine Friggan! You don't understand. Snow's lost his damn mind—he's raging. They're takin' 'em. The victors. All of 'em. Peacekeepers are shootin'. It's not a warning this time—it's a f-fuckin' slaughter!"

         Outside, chaos was already clawing at their doorstep. Footsteps thundered through the dirt roads like a herd had been loosed from the lumberyards. Shouts rose, half-barked orders, half-screams. Somewhere farther off, glass shattered, then a single gunshot cracked the air. It didn't echo. It punched and vanished.

      "Thatch—what?!" Clementine tried to shake her head clear, but her body hadn't caught up yet. Her muscles ached from sleep, her mouth tasted like iron and mint from the tea last night. She pulled on a flannel shirt—didn't know if it was hers or Thatcher's—and stumbled as her bare feet hit the cold floorboards.

        The house—their house—wasn't built for panic. It was quiet and humble, filled with the scent of dried herbs and sawdust. There were patched curtains and old photographs tacked crooked on the walls. Clementine had grown up brushing her teeth in a cracked porcelain sink and reading poetry by lantern-light. But now, it all seemed like a dollhouse set for fire. Fragile. Breakable.

       "I don't—fuck, Thatch, where's Mama?" she gasped, clutching Thatcher's arm as the pounding from outside grew louder.

       "I don't know!" he barked, his eyes glassy with panic. "She went to help the Brandle twins with somethin' last night. I thought she was back, I thought—Clem, we don't have time! We have to run, now! They're takin' people who helped the victors—families. They're goin' house to house. If they find us here—"

         More shouting outside. A woman crying out. A child's voice, distant. Footsteps. So many of them. Boots slapping dirt. Close now. Too close.

         Clementine's heart thudded like a lumber saw trying to rip through wet bark. Her breath was catching up with her body—finally, finally. She felt the cold air on her skin. She felt the weight of her name in Thatcher's voice. They're going to kill us.

       "Seriously, Thatch, we have to find Mama," she whispered.

       "Oh yes, we will," he promised, but he was already pulling her toward the door, toward the back, toward anywhere but here. "But first we survive, Clem. First, we run."

         Another bang. This time at someone's door.

      "Mama!" Thatcher screeched, half in relief, half in panic.

        Their mother—Mrs. Tess Friggan—stood in the doorway, face flushed, hands scraped, gray strands falling from her braid. She was still wearing her wool shawl, bits of pine bark stuck to the hem, as if she'd run straight through the underbrush.

       "Get your boots. Get your packs. Move. JUST MOVE." Her voice was a whip. She wasn't out of breath, but her chest rose and fell with the force of everything she wasn't saying yet.

     "Mama, what's happening?" Clementine's voice cracked at the edges. "Why's everyone screaming, why... why, what happened—?"

     "They're calling it a Purge," Mama hissed, slamming the door shut behind her and throwing the bolt. Her hands were already yanking open a drawer, pulling out the battered canvas packs they kept for lumber shifts. "Snow ordered the deaths of the victors. All of them. Starting now. Peacekeepers came in the night, no warning. They dragged Brandt from his porch, shot him in front of his wife."

      "Holy fucking shit," Thatcher whispered, his face pale as he staggered back a step. "Absolute what-the-helly."

        Clementine blinked hard, her lip trembling as she tried to understand. "What do you mean, a purge? Is it like... arrests?"

        And Mama looked at her daughter like she wished she could lie. "No, baby. Executions."

        The house shook again—this time from something heavier. An engine? No—wheels. Trucks. Peacekeeper trucks rolling through the streets like metal monsters. From outside came the rising din of it all—voices clashing, glass breaking, dogs barking, and under it all: footsteps. Footsteps. Footsteps. Dozens. Hundreds.

        The air was thick with panic and the smell of gunpowder—soaked with it, like blood in a burlap. The house that had been home for sixteen years suddenly felt like a coffin. The wood walls seemed thinner, hollower. The pictures on the wall seemed to tremble. The smell of burnt toast from yesterday morning still clung to the corners, but now it seemed impossibly far away, like a scent from another life.

      "Backpacks," Mama said. "Go, now. Both of you. Only what you can run with."

        They scattered. Clementine tripped on her own blanket as she staggered toward the wardrobe. Her hands trembled so violently she dropped the pack twice. It was old—her father's, from before. Leather faded, one strap slightly torn, the zipper stuttering. She shoved in a shirt, her grandfather's hunting knife, a tin of dried plums. Her hands flew on instinct. Matches. Socks. An old notebook.

        Thatcher was stuffing all kinds of things into his pack, a ragged green duffel covered in stitched-on patches—District Seven sigils, a carved tree, a pine cone. Mama had one too, thinner, navy blue, worn smooth at the seams. She tied her hair back, tight and fast, and grabbed the family canteen from the kitchen wall.

       "I saw the Square," she said breathlessly. "They dragged out Rooker. Rooker, Clem—he was just the mentor, and they shot him in the back of the head. Like he was nothing."

        Clementine sobbed, not even sure when she had started. Her curls stuck to her wet cheeks. "Rooker, he trained Johanna... he... he wasn't even—"

       "I know," Mama said, her voice thick with something she wouldn't let break. "I know. He's limp, right? And he's old too. That's why we run. Right now."

        Clementine's hands were trembling as she tore open the closet by the back wall. She grabbed her boots—still streaked with mud from last week's logging—and shoved her feet into them, laces be damned. Thatcher threw in their water canteens, a tin of smoked venison, and some biscuit packs. Lastly, Mama stuffed flint, matches, dried lavender, her old knife from the rebellion years. Every movement was rushed but practiced. A family that had always feared this moment would come.

         The packs were mismatched and stained—Thatcher's still bore the patch from his logging crew. Clementine's had a broken zipper held shut by a strip of bark-twine. Mama's was older than either of them, canvas worn to the softness of paper, but sturdy. It still had a bloodstain from a boar hunt years ago. They flung them over their backs like lifelines.

       Clementine's curls were a wild halo, tangled and frizzed from sleep, sticking to her damp forehead. She hadn't even remembered to grab a coat. Her breath came fast and shallow.

       When the back door creaked open, the cold morning bit at them like teeth.

       And then—

       They stepped outside.

       District Seven was no longer District Seven. It looked like war. The street was alive with bodies. Neighbors—some screaming, some silent, some holding hands, some shoving carts and crates—ran in every direction. Crates of food had been upended. A Peacekeeper dragged a screaming woman by her braid while others moved in tight lines, shoving people with the butts of their rifles. A child crouched behind a flower box, eyes huge and unblinking. The air stank of sweat, smoke, and panic.

       It looked like war.

       The sky had finally turned fully gray, like even the sun was too afraid to rise. Clementine grabbed Thatcher's hand as they pressed into the swarm.

      "They're absolutely everywhere," Thatcher muttered. "God, they're everywhere."

      "Mama—where do we—?"

      "The woods," Mama quickly answered. "Everyone's heading to the east tree line. It's the only place they won't dare chase us. Not yet."

        As they pushed through the crowd, Clementine stumbled on something—something soft. She didn't look. She didn't want to know. Her mind couldn't hold more horror.

       And then she whispered, a sound barely louder than the wind:

     "Thatch... what if they'll come for me?"

       He looked at her, panicked, confused.

      "Look, I'm friends with Johanna," Clementine said, voice cracking. "We—we grew up together. We climbed trees, we—Mama's fed her dinner a thousand times. If Snow's purging anyone close to the victors, I—shit. Something must've happened last night. In the Quell. I fell asleep before it ended but this, this isn't just control. This is rage. They're mad. Something went wrong."

       Thatcher didn't answer. He just pulled her tighter as they broke past the last house and into the edge of the forest, where the pine trees grew thick and the light began to break in shattered slats through the branches.

        The further they moved from the district, the more the noise faded, swallowed by the trees. Clementine's breath rattled in her chest. Her curls were matted against her skin, wild as bramble. Her face was wet and streaked with dirt and tears. She didn't remember the last time she'd breathed without it catching.

        She kept walking anyway. They could still hear the gunshots. And she knew, deep in her ribs, deep in her spine. They were only just beginning.

       The woods had never felt like this before.

       Clementine had grown up beneath these pines. She knew their crooked silhouettes the way other children might've known playgrounds or parlors. The trees were towering and ancient, draped in ivy and lichen, their branches like skeletal fingers clutching at the sky. Normally, she'd have found comfort in their shadows. Normally, this place meant safety. Solitude. The hush of the forest was supposed to be holy.

        But this morning—this wretched, broken morning—it felt like a graveyard.

       The people moved through the trees in ragged lines, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. All of them fleeing with the same blank-eyed horror. The villagers didn't speak. Or if they did, their voices were too soft to rise above the deadened silence. Their footfalls were hushed on the pine-needle carpet, bodies weaving between tree trunks in slow, haunted procession. Old men, mothers with babies clutched to their chests, children still barefoot, shivering in threadbare pajamas. Some carried packs. Some carried nothing. One woman stumbled forward in her nightdress, blood trailing down her shin, eyes wide and unfocused. Clementine thinks that they all looked like ghosts. Or worse... zombies.

      "Thatch..." Clementine's voice cracked. Her throat was raw from tears and the smoke they'd passed on the way out of the village. "Thatch, what the fuck are we gonna do? Where are we even going? We—we can't just walk forever, we need a plan!"

        She sounded angry, but it wasn't anger. It was panic disguised as sharpness, as sarcasm, as anything to keep herself from splintering into pieces. Her curls clung to her damp cheeks, tangled and knotted with burrs. Her breath fogged in the cold morning air. She clutched her backpack like a lifeline.

        Thatcher didn't look at her right away. His eyes were scanning the trees, the people, the trail ahead. He had the look of someone barely holding the pieces together, like he was trying to remember a plan he'd once read in a book but didn't believe in anymore. When he did speak, it came out hard and fast.

      "There's the old rebellion houses," he said, glancing behind them before tugging her gently by the elbow to keep moving. "You remember the stories, right? From the Second Rebellion? Back before they made the Games, when District Seven's folks helped smuggle rebels out, built hideaways in the cliffs and the hollows? They're still there, Clem. They've gotta be. My friend Cedric's cousin told me once that they were never all found. The Capitol didn't bother to raze the deeper ones. That's where we're goin'."

        She stared at him, stunned, still walking. "The rebellion houses? That's—that's a myth, Thatch! That's something old people talk about when they're drunk at Harvest Dinners...like, ghost stories!"

       "It's not a myth," he growled. "Papa knew about 'em. He said there's one tucked near Larchfall Stream, two hills down past the mill's old waterline. He used to talk about how his daddy hid there when Peacekeepers came knockin'. They stocked it with rice, beans, and salt. Wood stoves. Old rifles. Hell, that's where we're going. We don't have another choice, Clem."

        Clementine didn't argue. She couldn't. Not with the screams still echoing in her ears. Not with her boots squishing in blood-dark mud. Not when a man she recognized, Mr. Bonner, the sawmill's paymaster, stumbled by them, dazed and sobbing with only one boot on his feet.

        They kept walking. Mama was just ahead of them, one hand gripping the strap of her pack, the other steadying a toddler from the neighbor family who had clung to her without a word. She didn't speak either. She just nodded when Thatcher pointed east, past the steep rocks where wild apples grew in the fall.

        Behind them, somewhere beyond the treeline, another gunshot rang out.

        No one flinched anymore. Maybe that was the most terrifying part.

      "Do you think—" Clementine's voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. "Do you think they'll kill Johanna?"

        Thatcher didn't answer right away. His hand gripped hers tighter.

      "I don't know," he finally said. "If something went wrong in the Games... if they rebelled, or tried to run, or got help from someone outside the Arena... maybe."

       Clementine looked away. Her tears came again, silent and bitter. The kind that burns. "I should've watched the broadcast. I...I should've known."

      "You were tired. We all were. Don't blame yourself."

        But she did.

        Because, to her, Johanna Mason wasn't just a victor. She was her friend. Her sister in all but name. They'd climbed trees together until they bled. They'd played war with branches and carved their initials into the back of the lumberhouse door. Johanna had always been fierce, always defiant—but smart, too. She wouldn't have done something reckless unless she believed in it.

        And if she did... it must've been for a damn good reason. And now, the whole district was paying the price.

        As the crowd veered into a darker, more twisted part of the forest, Thatcher pointed up a slope.

      "There," he said, voice taut. "That rises over there—that's where we'll find the old stream. Past that, there's the gorge. One of the houses is supposed to be built into the side, hidden under thicket and root."

       Clementine didn't know whether to believe him. But she followed because it was either forward, or back. And there was nothing left behind them but fire.

        They broke from the crowd like a splinter from a fractured bone.

        The stream of villagers continued their slow, uncertain trudge through the forest, a line of lost souls staggering deeper into the unknown. None of them really knew where they were going—only that it had to be away. Away from the Peacekeepers, the gunfire, the smoke curling in black columns from the village rooftops. Away from the Capitol's wrath. Most of them had never stepped more than a few miles beyond the logging roads, and now they wandered blindly into the heart of the woods, hoping the pines would protect them.

        But Thatcher Friggan—he had a destination.

        He gripped Clementine's hand tighter and nodded once to their mother, then veered left, off the narrow animal trail and into thicker brush. Clementine stumbled after him, her breath short, heart jackhammering in her chest. Her legs ached, her calves burned from the steep climb, but her brother moved with grim determination.

      "Ma, Clem, this way," he said. "Trust me. I know where I'm going."

      "You better know," Clementine panted, brushing a fern's furry stalk from her face. "Because I swear to Panem if you're leading us into a goddamn bear cave—"

      "I'm not." Thatcher shot her a glance over his shoulder. "I've been here. Me and Cedric and Heathrow. We were maybe sixteen—we spent a summer tracking old trails, poking around the ridges past The Larchfall. By god, we found it totally by accident. The door was buried under a thicket of moss. You wouldn't even see it if you weren't looking. We thought it was some old root cellar—until we broke it open. By the way, isn't funny how my darling Clementine can still joke around about bear caves amidst all this one hell of a situationship?"

       He paused to look up the hill, scanning the slope like he was spotting landmarks only he could see. Then he pointed with one finger—straight up.

      "There," he said. "See that outcrop? The one with the crooked cedar growing out the side?"

        Clementine followed his gaze. The hill rose sharply, its face speckled with knotted roots and moss-slathered stone. That tree he pointed to—it leaned like it was bowing, its limbs long and warped. Below it, a ragged path of flat stone steps climbed unevenly into the slope, half-hidden by vines and years of undergrowth.

      "That's the path," Thatcher said. "We clear those steps, we're there."

        They climbed.

        It wasn't easy. The stone steps were slick with morning dew and thick moss, and Mama had to grab Clementine's shoulder more than once to keep from sliding. The forest thinned a little near the top, the trees giving way to boulders covered in pale lichen and fat green ferns curling up from crevices. Clementine's chest was burning by the time they reached the summit. Her backpack thumped against her spine with every step.

       Then, suddenly, they were there.

        Nestled into the rocky cliffside like a secret kept by time itself, the door waited. It was barely visible—just a warped square of old lumber wedged beneath a leaning outcrop, its edges smeared with dirt, bark, and creeping ivy. If Clementine hadn't been standing right in front of it, she'd have never guessed it was anything but a haphazard part of the rock.

       Thatcher stepped forward. His eyes were feverish. "This is it."

       He swung his backpack around and unzipped the side, pulling out an old bolt-action rifle wrapped in a canvas cloth. Clementine froze, her breath catching as he unwrapped it with reverence. The metal gleamed dull and dark. It was their father's. Long unused, but lovingly kept. Thatcher clicked the bolt open, checked the chamber, then slung it across his back like he was stepping into a war he'd known was coming all along.

      "Stay back," he said. "Let me go first."

      "Are you sure it's safe?" Mama whispered, her voice trembling.

       Thatcher placed a hand on the hidden door, his face strangely solemn. "If it's not, we'll make it safe."

        He pushed. The wood creaked. Dust shivered from the frame. The door opened inward with a reluctant groan, revealing only blackness beyond—a dense, cool dark, thick as velvet. A smell drifted out: old earth, rotting wood, something metallic and still.

        Clementine stepped back instinctively, but Thatcher only smiled. Wide, grim, victorious.

      "Welcome," he said, his voice echoing softly into the void, "to Second Home."

        The silence after his words was complete. No birds. No wind. Just the slow, distant murmurs of a district in exile below them.

        Clementine clutched the strap of her pack, her fingers trembling. Her heart pounded so hard it almost drowned out her thoughts. She glanced at her mother, then back at the gaping entrance.

         And then, because there was no other choice, they stepped inside.

         Welcome to The Chase.