Screams tore through the night.
Arya ran barefoot across the blood-slick street, smoke choking her lungs. The marketplace once alive with laughter and the smell of roasted corn was a graveyard now. Stalls burned, flames snapping at the sky. Bodies littered the ground.
The killers moved like shadows, machetes flashing, rifles spitting fire. They wore black scarves over their faces, their eyes colder than the steel they carried. Old men, women clutching babies, even those who begged on their knees none were spared.
Arya didn't dare look back. She had lost sight of her friends, her neighbors, everyone she knew. The only thought that kept her feet moving was survival.
Her chest ached. Her legs trembled. And then she remembered the ocean.
It stretched beyond the last row of houses, dark and endless. People feared it at night, but fear no longer mattered. Only escape did.
Arya wasn't the only one who thought of it. A handful of villagers broke away from the crowd and sprinted toward the shore. Gunfire cracked behind them. Someone screamed and fell. Arya pushed harder, her heart battering her ribs as she dashed across the frozen sand.
The first touch of seawater was a knife to her skin. Winter had turned the ocean into a grave, but Arya dove in anyway, salt burning her eyes, waves clawing at her body. The cold stole her breath, but she kept kicking, forcing her limbs to move. Anything was better than dying on land.
That was when she saw him.
A figure swam beside her, strong and unrelenting. Panic seized her chest. One of them? Had the killers followed?
But then he turned his head. Even through the blur of water, she saw it the same fear that lived in her own eyes. Human fear.
They swam until the shoreline behind them disappeared into shadows. When they finally surfaced, both gasped desperately, lungs on fire. The night air cut sharper than the sea, but it carried no gunshots. No screams. Only silence.
Arya dragged herself onto jagged rocks, teeth chattering violently. The stranger followed, water dripping from his dark hair. His gaze was steady, guarded, as though he expected death to rise from the waves themselves.
"Are you… one of them?" Arya whispered, her voice raw.
He shook his head, breath steaming in the cold. "No. My name is Ivy. I was running same as you."
Arya hesitated, then nodded. "Arya." Her name trembled from her lips like the last thing she owned.
For a moment, neither spoke. Only the wind howled across the frozen shore.
Then Ivy's eyes shifted to the snow-blanketed woods. "We need shelter," he said quietly. "Before the cold kills us too."
Together, they staggered into the darkness. Each step was heavier than the last. Arya wrapped her arms around her soaked body, her heart aching with loss but she couldn't break down. Not yet.
At last, they found it: a cabin, half-buried in snow, walls cracked but standing. The door groaned as Ivy pushed it open. Inside smelled of dust and ash, but it was shelter.
Arya sank to the floor, trembling. Ivy rummaged through the wreckage and returned with a moth-eaten blanket and faded clothes. He handed them to her, his fingers brushing hers warmth sparking in the frozen dark.
For the first time since the massacre began, Arya's heart beat for something other than fear.
But the silence didn't last.
Just as her eyes began to close, a sound shattered the stillness
A footstep.
Soft. Careful.
Right outside the cabin door.