Dawn came thin and gray, a pallid wash of light creeping over the riverbank. Mist clung to the water, coiling low like smoke, so that even the current seemed reluctant to move.
The survivors rose in fragments, some silent, some muttering, some staring hollow-eyed into the fog as though it held answers. The night had stripped them bare. Their shoulders sagged, their faces sunken, and their steps, when they stirred the camp, were the dragging kind of the condemned.
For a moment, it almost looked like peace.
Children huddled close to the fire's embers, chewing dry scraps of bread. A woman braided her daughter's hair with trembling fingers, as if the act alone could pretend the world was still kind. Men filled flasks in silence, watching the river with wary eyes, as though daring it to betray them again.
But beneath the thin veneer of morning, unease throbbed like an infected wound.
