His steps dragged through the silent path, each one heavier than the last. Morning fog hung low like a spider's web, clinging to the air, cold enough to seep into bone. He hadn't eaten since yesterday. Hunger wasn't a scream anymore—it was a whisper. Soft, relentless. Murmuring against his ear: "Just a little more."
Then he saw it.
A building—half-collapsed, maybe once a granary. The walls were cracked, the roof torn open like old paper. But through the slight parting of its door, there was light. Firelight, and something rarer than food: a human voice.
He crept forward like a ghost, his body pressed to the wooden wall. He didn't want to speak, didn't want to hope. But curiosity thudded in his chest like a child's fist—weak, but persistent.
"You can come in if you want," a girl's voice called from inside.
He froze. One foot already over the threshold, his tongue felt heavy, but the door was open, and there was nowhere else to go.
Inside, a girl sat cross-legged by a small fire of twigs and broken planks. She looked about fourteen, maybe fifteen. Her hair was a tangled mess, but her eyes were sharp. Too alive for a place that smelled of death.
"I've got nothing worth stealing, so don't bother," she said, her voice light, her smile barely there.
The boy nodded. He sat across the fire, his body trembling slightly. Whether from cold or the unfamiliarity of company, even he didn't know.
She pulled a small potato from a cloth sack, split it in half.
"Here. Half's yours, don't thank me—I just hate eating alone."
The potato was raw. Tough, but sweet on the tongue. He didn't say thank you, but his eyes met hers for a second—and for the first time in longer than he could measure, something warm stirred faintly in his chest.
"They're all dead," she said, staring into the flames. "My family, the villagers. First the soldiers came, then the sickness. I was told to hide in the shed. And I... I never left."
"Why didn't you go?" the boy asked, his voice a dry rasp of dust and silence.
She looked at him.
"Because I was scared I wouldn't find anything. At least here, I know this place is mine."
He bit his lip. He didn't know what scared him more: staying in a place full of ghosts, or walking into a world with nothing at all.
That night, they slept on either side of the fire. They didn't touch. But the warmth—from another body, from breath that wasn't just his own—was enough to make the cold a little more bearable.
Morning came with a sky that was almost, almost brighter.
He woke first. She was still asleep, her face soft, like someone finally having a dream worth holding on to after nights of empty wakefulness.
But something was wrong.
No breath.
He moved closer. Her neck was cold, pale. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was slightly open—as if she had wanted to say something, and it got stuck in the space between sleep and death.
He didn't scream, didn't cry.
He just sat beside her body. Still. For a stretch of time that didn't exist.
Then he dug.
Behind the shed, with his bare hands. It took almost half a day. His fingers bled, nails cracked. But he didn't stop until the hole was deep enough.
He wrapped her in whatever cloth he could find, and laid her there.
As he buried her, one thought clung to his chest like frost:
Is this why people stop sharing warmth? Because warmth makes the cold of losing it feel that much sharper?
There was no answer.
He walked on.
With bleeding hands, an empty stomach. And one new memory that had already begun to rot into another scar.