His lungs were no longer organs; they were pockets of jagged glass.
He ran. Not with the grace of an athlete, but with the frantic, staggering gait of a creature being hunted.
It felt as though he had been running for a lifetime, his twig-thin limbs pushing through a world that had turned into a blinding shroud of white.
Something
some shadow,
some memory,
some terror, eas at his heels, and it did not tire as he did.
With one final, shuddering gasp, his legs betrayed him.
He went down hard. The snow, deep and deceptively soft, rose up to claim him. It was a mercy at first (a cold pillow for his spent body) until the frost began to bite, turning his blood to slush. As the world dimmed, he saw a movement in the haze.
A shape.
A shadow.
He wanted to scream. Not a plea for rescue, but a roar of pure, venomous spite.
He had fought so hard, only to fail in the silence of a storm.
Then, the world went black.
He didn't wake to the cold. He woke to a golden, flickering glow that felt like a fever dream. Bricked walls stood sentinel around him, and the air carried the scent of resin and ash. A fire roared in a nearby furnace, a dancing, orange beast he had never seen before.
The Afterlife, he thought. It had to be. In his world, there was no such thing as a home.
He tried to surge upward, driven by a lifetime of survival instincts, but his body was a cage of lead. A floorboard groaned. Through the haze of his blurred vision, a silhouette appeared in the doorway. It drifted closer, a phantom in the firelight.
"Stay... back..."
The words were a dry rattle, a ghost of a command.
"Peace, little boy," a voice answered. It wasn't the voice of a soldier or a hunter. It was weathered and soft, like old parchment.
As his eyes finally cleared, the monster became a woman. She was ancient, her face a map of a thousand winters. "I found you in the heart of the gale," she said softly. "The storm almost had you."
The boy didn't know mercy; he only knew traps. He threw himself from the bed, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
But the moment his feet hit the wood, the world tilted. He crashed to the floor, his strength utterly spent.
The old woman was there in an instant, her shadow stretching long across the bricks. She didn't reach for a blade; she reached for him with a look of profound, aching pity.
"Hush, now," she whispered. "I am no reaper. But tell me... what kind of world breaks a child so completely?"
The boy tried to summon a scream, but his throat was a desert. As he looked up from the floor, he saw the woman's face, not twisted in anger, but breaking. She was weeping. He watched, paralyzed by confusion; he had seen blood and ice and shadows, but he had never seen tears shed for him. This strange, liquid sympathy was more terrifying than the cold.
Before he could understand it, the darkness claimed him again.
When he finally resurfaced, time felt like a blurred memory. He felt a flicker of strength, enough to pull himself from the bed and onto trembling legs. He moved through the house like a ghost, his small, careful steps echoing on the wood.
The house was a sanctuary of wonders. He traced the rough edges of the brick furnace, where the coals still glowed like dying stars. He stared at the dining table, marveling at the silver utensils and the intricate patterns on the plates. Even the ceiling, sturdy and dry, felt like a miracle. To anyone else, it was a humble cottage; to him, it was a palace of impossible safety.
Through a window, he saw her. The woman was at the well, her back hunched as she hauled water to wash clothes. He watched her for a long time, caught between the instinct to flee and a new, fragile curiosity.
The woman turned. Her eyes caught his through the glass, and she immediately dropped her work to rush inside.
He instinctively tried to bolt, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, but his legs remained heavy. He was a prisoner of his own exhaustion.
"Shh, peace," she breathed, reaching out. She pressed a hand to his forehead, her skin feeling like warm parchment. "The fever has broken. Thank the Heavens... you've been adrift for three days. I feared I was hosting a corpse, but you are a fighter, aren't you?"
She began to cry again, not out of sadness, but relief.
"You must be hollow with hunger," she said, wiping her eyes. She hurried to the kitchen, returnig with a bowl of soup that sent ribbons of savory steam into the air.
The boy stared at the bowl, his jaw locked. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He had learned long ago that nothing in this world was free,
especially not kindness. Sensing his terror, the woman took a small sip from the spoon herself.
"See? It is only warmth and strength. You need it, child."
At the sound of his stomach's low growl, his resolve shattered. He took one cautious spoonful. Then another. Within seconds, he was devouring it, the heat of the broth blooming in his chest.
The woman sat beside him, offering a mug of thick, dark chocolate. As the sweetness touched his tongue, she leaned in, her voice dropping to a gentle murmur.
"Do you know your name, little one? Do you know where you wandered from?"
The boy didn't look up. He only stared into his mug.
"Were you running from someone?" she asked softly. "Did they... did they hurt you?"
The boy flinched. It was a small movement, a sharp jerk of the shoulders, but it told the woman everything. The silence that followed was heavier than the snow outside. He wasn't just a lost child; he was a survivor of a war she could only begin to imagine.