The fire was dying.
It was no longer a genuine flame, but a remnant of faint light—red points of exhausted energy breathing heavily among the gray ash. No one spoke. The silence was not a pact, but a collective inability to generate any new idea, or to voice the crushing dread of the imminent, freezing night.
They sat in an irregular semicircle, their bodies instinctively hunched towards the minimal warmth, as if only primal instinct remained functional.
The woman with the sharply defined features—Laila's companion, though her name remained unrevealed—approached Jamal without asking permission. She did not look at his face immediately. She simply sat close, then her hand slid slowly to his thick arm, clasping his elbow. The gesture was not romantic; it was a pure exchange of thermal energy, a primitive attempt at preserving heat. Jamal did not resist. His large body was slow, resigned to anything that required no effort.
Moments passed in the heavy, strained quiet.
Then, a warm, slick drop landed on her forehead.
She lifted her head automatically, a slight confusion clouding her gaze, and touched the spot with her fingertips. She looked at her hand. Blood.
She spoke with a hushed, nervous calm, as if attempting not to disturb the lethal serenity of the night.
"What is this?"
Jamal lifted his head slowly. His face was unnaturally pale, whiter than before. He attempted a smile, but the muscles of his mouth failed to cooperate.
"I don't know…"
Then the blood flowed.
It wasn't a quick spurt, but a continuous, steady thread, emerging from his nose as if something internal had ruptured and decided never to seal again. He quickly raised his hand, pressing hard, but the blood instantly seeped through his fingers.
He said, his voice thick and choked, closer to surprise than fear:
"It won't stop."
The others drew closer. No one moved abruptly. Exhaustion had rendered their reactions slow, calculated, as if they feared that movement itself might trigger a fatal error.
Jamal finally registered true panic, but it was a panic devoid of energy. His breaths grew short; his shoulders slumped. He tried to shift his position, to sit up straighter, but his heavy body refused to cooperate.
The woman acted swiftly, tearing a piece of fabric from the hem of her simple tunic without hesitation.
"Press here. Hard. And lean your head back."
He obeyed, or tried to. He pressed the cloth to his nose and leaned his head back against a nearby tree trunk. The blood saturated the fabric within seconds, wetting the cloth, then his hand, then his wrist.
Samer, his own addiction still simmering beneath the surface, asked in a trembling voice:
"Is this… is this part of the circle?"
No one answered.
Elias watched in controlled silence. He kept his distance. This was not callousness. It was the cold realization of absolute futility. No water. No medical tools. Nothing to do but witness and wait.
The woman remained beside Jamal. She did not release his arm. She wiped the blood from his forehead with the back of her hand, a small, repetitive action, as if maintaining the ritual would somehow prevent the end.
After an indeterminate time, the flow of blood appeared to lessen. Or perhaps Jamal's breathing simply slowed. His eyes were half-closed.
He spoke in a faint voice, as if offering an apology:
"I'm… tired."
No one replied. There was no appropriate response left to give.
The night swallowed their last words.
In the morning, it wasn't the cold alone that woke them.
It was the smell.
They opened their eyes slowly, one by one, to the pale, gray light. The first thing they saw was Jamal.
He was in almost the same posture. His head was tilted slightly to the side. The cloth was still pressed against his nose, but it was dark, stiff, and utterly saturated.
The pool of blood beneath him was vast—larger than they could have imagined. It had soaked the earth until the patch looked like a deep, unnatural shadow.
He did not stir.
The woman with the sharp features approached first. She did not touch him. She only looked. Then she took a single step back.
She spoke with a broken quietness:
"It's over."
There was no screaming. There was no shock. Only the heavy, damning realization:
He died without leaving the circle.
Without committing an error.
Without tempting the boundary.
And worst of all…
He died among them.
His heavy corpse remained in the center of the circle.
They could not carry it away.
They could not bury it.
And they could not ignore it.
The Circle had done nothing.
But it had left them with the consequence.