Boro didn't react the way I expected.
There was no anger or tension.
If anything, there was only a brief pause, like he was processing the words, not the meaning behind them. It told me everything I needed to know—Zarah hadn't told him, or if she had, it hadn't mattered enough for him to hold onto it.
"Mother, Father died because weak," he said simply. "Father thought to eat me because I was weak. Mother agreed… but they died before that happened. So you saved me."
I blinked.
That wasn't what I had assumed back then.
If anything, I thought there had been grief—something worth noting in the moment—but hearing this now, it painted a completely different picture. A harsher one. One where what I had seen was only the surface, and what waited underneath would have been far worse for him.
And the fact that he understood it—even at that age—
Told me he had already accepted what the world was like, accepted where he stood in it, and, more importantly, he had chosen to survive in it.
