The air, embroiders the ashes where the third, in the lower kingdom the alleys
Neva was running. The trembling, the eyes from the stars and hides
Like torn pages with clothes with stones, her small steps collide
Half of it, burned story with her weak hand and her mother not, with a hand holding
So that it does not slip. But to lead her,
The color of corpses, a gray color, was black… the sky did not
After death. What color of doubt,
The fires that ignited hours ago began to fade, the smoke
Did not leave… as if the city itself is ashamed to reveal what happened,
Its form. Upon it
Neva knew every angle of these streets…
The shop from which she used to buy candies, the garden that was
The window from which she used to watch, the violets in which she plucked flowers,
Orbon training with her father with the sword.
But everything disappeared now.
Nothing remained except ash, rubble, and the only sound that does not cease—
The sound of her mother's trembling steps: in her chest it beats
She was panting, climbing and descending with every breath, but she did not utter a word.
She did everything she could to continue running, pushed her daughter ahead of her as if she was trying to save the last light from this eternal night.
In the alley which Neva had passed twice before,
Now a corpse of a man was hanging on a burned wall.
She did not turn. She did not cry… she did not scream… but she saw it, many corpses.
(Where > my father and Ilios? Why do they not come? Why do they not die… likewise? Are they not all… stronger than them?)
The questions were pounding inside her chest, but she did not let them out.
The tongue was broken, the mind helpless, and childhood scattered… in a moment.
Suddenly she heard the sound of hooves, leaned with her body against the wall,
Pulled her mother towards a narrow corner covered in shadows.
A soldier from the fifth kingdom passed, dragging behind him his cart, three corpses, one of them looked no older than a child.
Neva trembled, but she did not scream.
She only clung to her mother's hand.
(If they saw us… they would hear our breaths… we would become corpses too… the next >)
"Come on, Neva, endure," her mother's voice came faint like a breeze in the storm.
Neva whispered not knowing what she said:
"Mother… I do not want to be strong. I only want father to return."
Her mother shook her head, pushed her forward, and said:
"My daughter… survival does not like words. Silence."
So Neva continued walking, the ash falling on her hair like a crown of death renewed.
At the end of the alley, they saw an old half-broken gate,
A stone stair leading to a tunnel.
"There," said her mother, and pointed with her head.
But before they could move, a woman came out from between the rubble,
Carrying a small child clinging to her torn dress.
She was breathing with difficulty, extending her trembling hand and with her heart hanging, with those eyes:
"Please… help us, he is sick, we cannot run more…"
Time stopped.
Neva stopped, looking to her mother with trembling eyes.
The child inside her screamed: "How do we leave them?"
But her mother's face was rigid.
Tired eyes, cracked lips, a look of one who saw many die.
For a moment she stared at the other mother, then said in a faint voice:
"If I were stronger… I would have saved all."
Then she looked at Neva, approached her, and put her hand on her shoulder, and whispered:
"If we stop… we will die with them."
But before she moved away, she tore a small piece from her dry food, threw it near the woman and child, and said nothing else.
She pulled Neva by her hand, whispering:
"I am sorry…"
And they continued walking towards the tunnel.
The woman remained standing, the child began to cry,
And with every step, their voices faded until they melted in the wind.
In Neva's eyes, a flash of sorrow would not disappear.
But in her eyes also, the first glimpse of hope.
She ran towards the tunnel, in her eyes a small spark… though perhaps this tunnel will not be the last refuge, at least it is not a battlefield.
And so, they entered the shadows,
They entered the tunnel.
Like two broken pieces swallowed by the shadows of time.
The walls were damp, the cracks letting shadows creep, as if the place itself was breathing the smell of death.
The ground slippery, covered with a layer of mud from stagnant water and rot.
A disgusting mixture—between decayed meat, old urine, dried blood. The smell of the place?
As if everyone who passed here left part of his torment.
Neva raised her trembling hand to cover her nose, but her hand was wet with a mix of ash and blood, increasing the suffocation.
Her mother whispered without turning:
"We are under the city… an emergency royal passage, old."
Then she fell silent, as if the words hurt her more than the walls.
Neva's steps slowed, the cold piercing her feet, her shoes soaked. Sometimes she saw the shadow of a rat running, another darting along the wall.
She could hear the drip of water falling from rusted iron above.
(The air here is not enough…)
(It was my father who hated closed places… he said: the place that does not fix the sky, you cannot see your face in it… where hope is preserved… Where are you now, father? I forgot… I have forgotten even your face…)
Suddenly her foot struck something, she fell on her knees.
She looked… a skeletal bone, perhaps of a child, stuck to the wall, maybe in its teeth.
Wrapped in a torn royal cloth.
She froze.
Her mother approached, put her hand quietly on Neva's shoulder, and said:
"This place witnessed many betrayals. Some killed to escape, some delayed a second and died, we are not the first to pass here."
She said it not with consolation, but with a tone carrying certainty, harsh like truth itself.
She knew every road has its price.
They continued walking.
But something inside Neva's heart changed.
She no longer saw in the darkness only an enemy, but also a mirror.
Every step she heard in her chest a new sound:
"I will not just be salvation… I will not just be a memory."
Coming out of the tunnel was not victory, but a slow removal from a grave.
To a wider city, to herself.
Her mother first bent down, pushing the stones with trembling hands, then crawled slowly through a small opening between the rubble. Neva followed, crawling, resisting the dust that attacked her lungs, the light rushing into her chest like a slap from an angry god.
When they emerged, the world was different.
The sky was not blue.
The city was not as it was.
The scene before Neva was a terrifying mixture of ash, rubble, smoke, and the remains of humanity.
The air heavy, like hot water poured into the chest.
The smell of burnt flesh mixed with the iron scent of ash and oblivion.
On the horizon, a leaning tower, a flag of black intersected with red threads fluttering above… as if declaring silently the death of a whole world.
Neva stood.
Her breaths were light, broken.
She looked around her—dead trees, cracked ground, children who had not returned were crying.
She said to herself:
(Where did the light go? Where is father…? Where am I?)
Her mother's hoarse voice cut this wandering:
"Continue walking, Neva… do not stop now."
But Neva stopped. She looked at her mother's face for the first time pale… more than necessary.
Her mother sat on a rock, smashed, placed her hand on her side.
There was a red spot there, growing.
Neva whispered, barely hearing herself:
"You are bleeding…"
Her mother smiled, that weak smile that meant nothing but did not want to stir fear, then said:
"An old wound… I will be fine."
But she was not fine.
The strength that had been pushing them forward collapsed in her eyes.
Her breath was grasping like a drowning man holding on to a muddy stone.
Neva felt it, but did not say it.