Night had painted the world in deep blues and ink-blotted shadows. The forest stretched endlessly, thick with the scent of damp bark. Moonlight filtered in slivers between leaf and branch, ghosting over the sleeping trees like breath on cold glass.
Ash sat motionless against the trunk of a gnarled oak, knees drawn to his chest. His eyes, empty yet alert, stared through the flickering fire that barely warmed the clearing. The embers hissed softly, as if whispering secrets only they could understand.
Across from him, the elf didn't blink. She hadn't in hours. Her silver eyes, sharp as knives beneath her hood, remained trained on him—on his wrists, his hands, the shift of his breathing. She held her dagger loosely at her side, but the tension in her muscles said she was ready to move, to stop him if he so much as twitched the wrong way.
She hadn't slept, since the sky dimmed into dusk and certainly after his failed suicide attempt earlier. She had a lot on her mind and his current state did not make it any but easier than it needed to be.
The night stretched, taut and quiet, until Ash finally broke the silence.
"Why do you care?"
His voice was coarse, fragile. It cracked more from shame than disuse.
The elf tilted her head slightly, her white hair shifting in the breeze. She didn't answer immediately, and when she did, it was with a slow, steady tone.
"I don't."
He blinked, confused.
"I care about what's inside you," she said, gaze unflinching. "You're a vessel, Ash. I need that vessel alive long enough to reach Solspire. That's all."
Ash's mouth twitched—not quite a frown, not quite a smile. He looked down at the dirt near his boots.
"I can't go on," he murmured. "I'm sorry."
Her lips thinned. She exhaled quietly, the wind catching on her cloak and tugging it gently to the side.
There was a moment of silence between the two, before she broke it.
"For people like us," she said, "who've lost everything… the only thing we have left is to keep going. Or else everything that was lost—every name, every life, every breath—becomes meaningless. And they deserve more than that."
He flinched,like her words had landed where a blade might. But his shoulders stayed hunched, unmoving.
A beat passed. Then another.
The fire popped.
"Why did you try to kill yourself?" she asked.
Ash didn't answer right away. His hand trembled as he brought it to his mouth, fingers grazing his lips. The memories were too loud in his head.
"I hear them," he whispered. "Every time I close my eyes. Their voices... as they burned. Screaming for help, I see them every time I stare into the flame. And I—I didn't save them. I should have. But I— Somehow... it feels like it's my fault."
The elf's expression didn't soften, but there was a quiet shift in her eyes— something that wasn't pity, but perhaps recognition.
"Pain," she said, "doesn't play fair. It finds us, claws at us. Sometimes it cripples, sometimes it carves. But it comes for all of us, just in different ways."
Ash looked at her, eyes rimmed red, voice barely audible.
"Why are you telling me this?"
She paused. Then:
"Because sometimes, the vessel is just as important as what it carries."
A silence settled between them. Not a peaceful one, but a silence that felt earned—raw and unfiltered. The kind that stretched from the inside out.
The fire crackled softly.
Ash exhaled, shoulders loosening just slightly.
The elf curled up closer to the fire, trying to get more warmth from it. Slowly she spoke, "I used to thing it was a lie, saying the human lands were warm and sunny in the day. By night the world would freeze, some places becoming a frozen land."
Ash looked up at her, she was staring right back at him with strong, powerful eyes. "The eternal frost, when it's winter the nights become more unbearable to even live it. There's barely anything to eat, fires don't even keep the body warm. The world just freezes over, and if one falls sick there's almost never a remedy."
She rubbed her hands on her long pointy ears to warm them before pulling her hood over her them. "Ever since the dragon's death, winter never leaves. It clings to us like guilt— old, bitter and merciless."
Ash opened his mouth to speak. "A curse?"
Then—
Snap.
A sharp crack, faint but deliberate, echoed from the treeline.
Both of them froze.
The elf's was already on her feet, every muscle tense, her posture shifting into something primal and alert.
Ash's breath caught.
The forest no longer seemed so asleep.
And in the dark, something was moving.
Nothing humanity would be walking in the frostbitten world. Not unless it had forgotten what warmth was.