The morning was pale, cold, and quiet.
Snow tapped gently against the frosted windowpane above Ilya's head, whispering reminders that the world had moved on. The fire in the cabin's hearth had burned low, just soft orange coals now, crackling faintly under a layer of ash.
He opened his eyes slowly.
The blanket was rough. His arms ached. There was a pressure against his side, small, warm, and trembling.
Anna was curled against him in her sleep, knees tucked toward her chest, one arm thrown across his coat. Her face was turned toward him, half-buried in a pillow, and even in her dreaming, it was strained.
Her brow furrowed, lips parted like she wanted to speak but couldn't. Her legs twitched once, and a whimper escaped her throat.
He didn't move.
For the first time since waking, he realized what silence really meant. No distant voices from the orphanage courtyard. No clanging dishes from the kitchen. No chime from the garden bell.
Just the wind.
And Anna's breathing.
He sat up carefully, shifting her hand from his chest to the blanket without waking her. His ribs ached from the explosion, nothing broken, but the pain was there. Familiar. Grounding.
He stood, pulled his cloak around his shoulders, and stepped toward the window.
Outside, the forest was gray.
The sky had not fully committed to morning, and the trees stood motionless beneath the weight of ash and frost. A few prints trailed through the snow near the clearing, boot marks, light and deliberate. Arvid's, probably.
Ilya let his hand rest against the windowframe.
The wood was cold beneath his fingertips.
And beneath that, everything was different.
Ilya walked to the door. His hand gripped the handle, and he opened it carefully so it wouldn't make any noise.
The door creaked softly as Ilya stepped outside, pulling his cloak tighter against the morning chill.
The clearing was half-lit by winter light, pale, colorless, and stretched thin across the snow. The ashes from the night before had settled, scattered among the trees like dust from an old book no one wanted to reopen.
Arvid stood near the cabin wall, arms folded, coat drawn up against his neck. His rifle was slung across his back, the barrel wrapped in a ragged strip of cloth, burnt, maybe from the shot that ended the wolf. His eyes were tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep could fix.
Lilya leaned against the old fence post near the edge of the clearing, one leg bent, coat stained with soot. Her Astra hovered idly behind her, silent for once. She didn't say anything when Ilya emerged. Just tilted her head slightly, acknowledging him without words.
Arvid was the first to speak.
"You're up."
Ilya nodded once.
There was a long pause as Ilya looked between them, then past them, toward the distant trees, where thin trails of black smoke still curled faintly into the sky.
"Were there any others?" he asked.
The silence answered for them.
Arvid didn't move.
Lilya looked away.
The wind brushed through the clearing again, gentler than before, as if the forest was trying to apologize for what it let happen.
Ilya exhaled through his nose, not a sigh, not quite.
"So... it's really begun," he said. "I didn't expect it would come this fast."
Arvid nodded. "Demon Year doesn't wait."
"The woods aren't safe anymore," Lilya added quietly. "Even the lower ridges are starting to shift."
Ilya's fingers twitched slightly at his side.
Arvid turned toward the tree line. His expression blank, but his voice steadier than before.
"You and Anna can't stay here."
His words weren't a surprise, but hearing them out loud still hit harder than Ilya expected.
"She's young," Arvid added. "The forest will only get worse. The deeper things are waking. You've seen what that means."
Ilya looked down at his boots, jaw tightening.
He had known it.
The moment he saw the smoke and ash, the shattered remains of everything they once called home.
Still, part of him had hoped, stupidly, maybe, that someone would say otherwise.
He asked, more quietly, "Will you come with us?"
That made Arvid pause.
He stared past Ilya, into the woods, at something only he could see.
"No," he said. "I can't."
"Why?"
"There's something I need to do."
Ilya waited, but no explanation came.
Behind them, Lilya turned without a word and began walking toward the treeline, her Astra gliding silently behind her. She didn't look back.
"She doesn't agree?" Ilya asked, watching her go.
Arvid shook his head. "She knows better than to try and stop me. And you shouldn't either."
Ilya swallowed hard.
Arvid finally looked back at him. His expression didn't change, but his voice softened.
"That rifle. Can you control it?"
Ilya didn't answer right away.
"I don't know," he said.
Arvid nodded. "Then don't rush it. You already did well."
That caught him off guard more than any order would have.
"Compared to you, I was a mess when I first lifted mine," Arvid continued. "Couldn't even hold the aim steady without vomiting."
He gave the faintest hint of a grin.
Arvid turned to leave, footsteps slow and steady.
But before he vanished into the trees, he added over his shoulder.
"And don't mind her. She doesn't know yet."
The clearing was silent again.
The sound of Arvid's boots faded into the trees, and Lilya's Astra whispered into the sky, taking her with it.
Ilya stayed still for a moment longer, eyes locked on the snow where Arvid had stood, trying to make sense of the empty space he left behind.
The cabin door creaked again.
He turned.
Anna stepped out, barefoot in the snow, wrapped in a too-large blanket, her breath clouding in the air. Her eyes were swollen, but dry. Her hair stuck in uneven clumps, and she looked like she hadn't slept.
"I was looking for you," she said.
Her voice didn't blame him.
She wasn't crying.
That almost made it worse.
"I didn't know where you went," she added, stepping down into the clearing. "I woke up, and no one was inside."
Ilya met her halfway, silently pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
Anna looked at him. "We're going to leave, are we?"
"...Yes."
"Okay."
That was all.
No argument. No panic.
Just the kind of quiet that children learned too young.
Ilya looked at her again.
Small. Tired. Wrapped in a blanket like it could protect her from what had happened.
Ilya thought about Arvid's footsteps fading into the woods.
About the twisted tree that had grown from the beast's corpse.
About the names he still remembered from the orphanage.
He didn't cry.
But something inside him shifted.
He reached out and pulled Anna close, not because she needed it, but because he did. Her head rested quietly against his shoulder.
She shouldn't have to say anything else.
She shouldn't be the one to make it easier.
***
The four of them worked in silence.
Lilya dug with a broken shovel they'd salvaged from behind the cabin, sleeves rolled up, hands blistered but steady. Arvid used his bayonet to carve markers into rough planks of wood. Ilya carried what they could find. Shoes, bracelets, scorched bits of cloth that still held the shape of someone once alive.
There were no full bodies.
Only fragments.
Some too small to name.
Anna stood a few paces away, clutching a candle stub. The same one she had given to Mrs. Yara for New Year's. She hadn't let it go since the fire. Not even now.
Each time a grave was filled, Arvid said the name softly, sometimes both names, sometimes just a first. For the ones they couldn't recognize, they left a blank marker. But even those got a moment of silence.
When they finished, the garden had become a field of uneven mounds and crooked wood.
Ilya stood at the edge, his breath fogging in the cold.
He didn't speak.
He couldn't.
Anna knelt and placed the melted candle at the center of the row. Her lips moved in silence, no prayer, just the shape of one. Then she stood.
Ilya saw her trying to keep her chin up. Her eyes didn't tear. But her shoulders trembled once before she locked them straight.
He wanted to say something.
But he didn't.
Instead, he gripped his own arm, tight enough that his fingers ached. He couldn't let them see it. Not now.
Not when Anna was trying so hard to stay strong.
He let the silence settle around him.
And in it, he felt the weight of names.
Not just of the dead.
But of the living, too.