The boy's name was Derrick. Once, it had been shouted across the river when he had played in the field with his friends, called sharp and scolding when he came home late from fishing, and spoken softly when his mother tucked him in at night. Now it was only an echo, hollow in his own mind, a name without a home to belong to.
His village was gone. What had been hearths and laughter and walls of timber was now a blackened scar on the land. Ash drifted in the wind where smoke had once choked the sky. Beams lay snapped like brittle bones, huts flattened as if by a giant's hand. The smell lingered even days later: scorched wood, burned
hide, the acrid tang of death. Derrick didn't look back anymore. The ruins burned behind his eyes no matter where he walked.
He remembered the night in fragments. He had been startled awake by something. The ground had trembled at first, clay and wooden dishes rattling from shelves. Then the cry, a monstrous sound so vast it seemed to come from the sky itself, and so deep he felt it in his bones. His father had grabbed him, shouting words he couldn't hear over the roar. Flames had painted the world red as the beast tore through the houses, its limbs like falling trees, its massive antlers shattering walls. It stood taller than the tallest house in the village, fire billowing out seemingly from the antlers themselves. He remembered his mother's scream, and how quickly it was cut short. He remembered running, being dragged by his father's strong hand. He remembered the heat searing
his back as though the night itself had turned to fire. And then, the silence that followed when he realized he was alone. Now he walked on instinct. His lips cracked, his feet blistered, his stomach a hollow knot. He didn't know if he was walking toward something or simply away from the nothing behind him. His father's words, the last he remembered, whispered in his mind: Run. Don't look back.
Hours or days passed. He couldn't tell anymore. The sun rose, the sun fell, and still he put one foot in front of the other. It was smell that broke him from his haze. Smoke. His chest clenched at first, fire, ruin, death. But no. This was different. Wood smoke, yes, but rich and layered with fat and broth. The smell of cooking. Of life.
Derrick's head lifted, his vision swimming. He staggered up a small rise, and there beyond the trees, rooftops of straw and timber clustered behind a rough palisade. Voices carried over to him, high, bright, alive.
Children. It meant safety, something Derrick knew was all too rare.
His breath hitched. His knees nearly gave. For the first time since the world had ended, Derrick felt something other than fear. He felt hope, fragile, sharp as glass, but enough to drive him forward.
He whispered, voice breaking in the empty air, "A village… there's still a village."
Children gathered at the well were the first to see him. A little girl leaned over the rim with both hands on the rope, tugging at a bucket that sloshed with water. She spotted the figure stumbling from the trees, his face streaked with soot, his clothes ragged. Her breath caught, and the bucket slipped from her fingers, crashing back into the well with a splash. She let out a cry and darted behind her older brother, clutching his
sleeve.
"What is it?" he whispered, though his eyes were already wide.
Derrick swayed on his feet, his chest heaving. He tried to raise a hand, to show he was no threat, but his arm trembled too much.
The boy at the well shouted, "There's someone! Someone's here!" His voice cracked halfway, torn between fear and excitement.
The call carried. Doors opened. Men and women spilled into the lane, some clutching hoes, others with axes, one with a spear so worn its shaft looked ready to splinter. Faces hardened. Voices overlapped.
"Who is he?"
"Where did he come from?"
"Look at him, he's burned black."
They spread out, forming a wary ring around the stranger who staggered forward, hollow-eyed, his steps uneven. A few children peeked from behind their mothers' skirts, their gazes round with both curiosity and fear. The older men stood with jaws clenched, ready to strike if he so much as twitched wrong.
Derrick's throat was dry, his lips cracked, but he forced words out, his voice breaking. "My home… it's gone.
A Leyoki destroyed it. I... I'm all that's left."
A ripple went through the crowd. Whispers rose, sharp as buzzing flies.
"Another village, lost?"
"By the spirits, how close?"
"He'll bring the curse with him."
"Quiet, he's only a boy."
An old man stepped forward, leaning on a staff carved smooth from years of use. His hair was white, his face drawn into deep lines, and yet his gaze burned steady. He studied Derrick in silence long enough that
the whispers faltered. Then, his voice carried, rough as gravel but unshaken.
"We've all lost," he said. "But you breathe, boy. That means your hands still work. Stay, if you'll use them."
The circle loosened, though not with warmth. Suspicion lingered, but the threat of violence eased. A woman stepped forward and pressed a waterskin into Derrick's shaking hands. "Drink," she said, softer than the
others. "You look ready to fall."
He raised it clumsily, spilling some down his chin as he drank. The water was cool, plain, but it tasted like salvation. His shoulders shook as the first swallow hit his stomach. For a heartbeat he thought he might
collapse from relief.
A boy's voice piped up from the back of the ring: "He looks like he's seen death itself."
"Maybe he has," came the grim reply of a woman beside him.
Derrick lowered the skin and whispered hoarsely, "Thank you." His eyes flicked around the circle of strangers. He didn't know yet if he had found refuge or simply a slower death, but for the first time since the fire, he was not utterly alone.
The days that followed unfolded in rhythm unfamiliar yet strangely steady. Derrick rose with the gray light of dawn, his body aching from hard mats and harder dreams, but each morning he pushed himself into the work. He knew he owed them something for letting him stay.
He joined the villagers in their labors. In the fields, he bent low to tug stubborn weeds from rows of thin, struggling grain. The soil was rocky, poor, and yet every stalk was treated as precious. He carried water in
sloshing buckets, rope handles biting into his shoulders until they burned. He learned the feel of coarse fiber rope scraping against his palms as he helped mend fences with men twice his age. Life here was not easy, but it was alive, and that mattered.
At the pens, he began to understand the fragile balance of their survival.
Closest to the fields, he saw the Tuftest. Small, feathered creatures with a single spindly leg, they hopped nervously in clusters, feathers quivering at every sudden sound. Their calls were shrill, sharp as flutes, and
when one panicked, the whole flock followed, scattering in frantic, bounding hops. A woman moved among them with a basket, stooping to collect pale, speckled eggs from nests hidden in straw. "If they frighten too
often, they'll stop laying," she muttered, clutching the eggs carefully as if they were jewels. "And then we'll all go hungry." Derrick could see it in her eyes, the way her lips pressed tight, that this wasn't just superstition. These fragile little birds were lifelines.
Further back, a reinforced corral held two Fedall. Massive, hippo-like Leyoki with thick gray hides, their
shoulders were bound with heavy harnesses fastened to beams sunk deep into the earth. Their birdlike beaks crunched lazily on reeds that villagers had soaked overnight in troughs of water. Every time one shifted, the ground trembled faintly, sending a shiver up Derrick's legs. He swallowed hard. "They look… dangerous," he whispered.
"They are," came the Elder's voice beside him. The old man's staff tapped the earth as he watched the beasts chew. "If one spooks, the walls won't hold. But they give hide, milk, and the strength to pull our plows.
Without them, the soil would never be turned. We keep few, because too many would kill us faster than hunger." His words carried both reverence and dread, like a prayer offered to fire.
By the longhouses, Derrick often glimpsed a Braynex. The slender, dark-scaled lizardlike creature perched on rooftops, its body lean and graceful, eyes glinting like polished stone. Children tossed scraps of meat toward it, giggling when it flicked its narrow tongue to snatch the food. "It comes and goes," one boy
whispered conspiratorially to Derrick, "but if you feed it, sometimes it curls up and stays." Derrick watched it tilt its head, studying him with uncanny stillness, and felt a flicker of unease. It wasn't tame, not really, but it tolerated them.
Finally, near the storage huts, he saw cages of Coustel. Small, furred rodent-like creatures with slender beaks that twitched constantly, they scrabbled in the straw, squeaking to one another. They bred quickly, Derrick overheard villagers say as much, and were kept for meat. He was familiar with Coustel, as his village also had kept a small corral of them. That night, when stew was ladled into his bowl, he realized what he was eating. The taste was stringy, gamey, but familiar, it filled his belly, and hunger made it taste like heaven.
The sounds of the village layered together each day: the Tuftest shrieking, the Fedall rumbling low, the Braynex clicking its tongue softly from the roofs, the Coustel squeaking from their cages. It was a fragile symphony, but it was life.
At dusk, Derrick sat by the fire outside the longhouse, steam rising from his bowl. He listened as villagers laughed in tired voices, children chasing one another in circles before being called inside. For the first time
since the destruction, he felt a warmth that wasn't from fire alone. A fragile sense of belonging flickered in him, hope, sharp and fleeting, but real enough to make his chest ache.