Sera's POV
The child died on a Tuesday.
Sera knew it was Tuesday because Mira had been marking the days on a stone with a piece of charcoal. Six days in the cave and the markings looked like claw scratches, desperate and uneven. The child's name was Tam. She was maybe six years old and had stopped talking three days ago. She just sat near the fire and stared at her small hands like they belonged to a stranger.
That morning Tam wouldn't wake up.
Her mother screamed. Not the kind of scream that meant panic. The kind that meant a mother's entire world had ended. The sound echoed through the cave and bounced off stone and came back to Sera like an accusation. Everyone was watching. Thirty pairs of eyes fixed on a dead child and a mother's grief and the absolute certainty that they were all going to die here.
Sera knelt beside Tam's body. The girl was so thin that she barely made a shape under the blanket someone had covered her with. Her skin was cold and already stiffening. Sera checked for a pulse she knew wouldn't be there because being a healer's apprentice had taught her what death looked like and this was it.
She looked up at Mira across the fire.
Her friend was sitting with the other survivors, rationing the last of their bread into smaller and smaller pieces. There was almost no food left now. They'd been stretching what little they had across thirty mouths and it wasn't enough. It had never been enough.
Two days after they buried Tam in a shallow grave at the back of the cave, the old woman named Issa stopped eating altogether.
Mira tried to press bread into her hands. Issa just pushed it away. She'd been silent ever since they'd arrived in the cave but now she spoke for the first time in days. Her voice came out thin and cracked like dried leather.
"I'm tired," she said. "I want to stop being hungry. I want to stop being cold. I want to stop."
She turned her face toward the stone wall and refused to move. By morning she wasn't breathing anymore.
That's when Sera understood the truth that everyone had been avoiding saying out loud.
Nobody was coming to save them. No rescue. No miracle. No god descending from heaven to fix what mortals had broken. They were going to die here slowly. One by one. Watching each other fade. The survivors would become fewer. The fire would burn lower. Eventually the last person would sit alone in the darkness waiting for their own heart to stop.
That night Sera sat alone while Mira slept. She thought about her mother's voice telling stories when she was small. Tales of the sacred mountain where the mist never lifted. Where gods still walked among the peaks. Where desperate people climbed and some came back different. Most didn't come back at all.
Her mother had always whispered those stories like warnings. Like she was afraid Sera might actually believe them and do something foolish. But Sera was realizing that foolish was just another word for trying when everything told you to give up.
She waited until the fire was low and everyone was sleeping. Then she walked to where Mira was curled up on the cold stone floor. Her friend's face looked older than it should. The weight loss and the worry and the endless darkness had carved lines into her skin that hadn't been there a week ago.
Sera knelt down and shook her shoulder gently.
Mira woke immediately like she'd been waiting for something to happen. Her hand went to a rock beside her that she kept for protection before she recognized Sera.
"What is it," Mira whispered. "What's wrong."
"I'm going to the mountain," Sera said.
For a moment Mira didn't move. Then she sat up slowly, her eyes wide in the dark. "What."
"The sacred mountain," Sera said. "North. Three days' journey. I'm going to climb it."
Mira grabbed Sera's shoulders and pulled her close. Her whole body was shaking. "You're talking crazy. You're broken and tired and you're not thinking straight."
"I'm thinking straighter than I have in days," Sera said. She felt something crystallize inside her. Not hope exactly. Something sharper. Something that felt like purpose. "Look around. We're dying. Tam was six years old and she died because there's no food. Issa just gave up because staying alive hurt more than the thought of stopping. How many more days before everyone else decides it's easier to stop breathing."
"Sera no." Mira's grip tightened. "You'll die on that mountain. Everyone who climbs it dies."
"Then I'll die trying to save them instead of dying in a cave watching them suffer." Sera pulled back so she could see her friend's face. "I have to try. I know it sounds impossible. I know the stories say nobody comes back. But staying here is definitely death. Going to the mountain is just probably death and that's better than certain death."
Mira started crying. Not quiet tears. Real sobs that shook her whole body. Sera pulled her friend close and held her while she fell apart.
"If you die," Mira said into Sera's shoulder, "I'll have nothing. You're the only person who understands. You're the only reason I'm still fighting."
"Then I won't die," Sera said. She didn't believe it but she said it anyway because Mira needed to hear it. "I'll climb the mountain and I'll find a god and I'll make them give me power to save all of you."
Mira pulled back and grabbed Sera's face between her hands. "Promise me you'll come back."
Sera couldn't promise that. But she could promise to try. So she did.
They prepared in silence while the others slept. Mira found a borrowed cloak that was thicker than Sera's own ruined one. She packed some bread that she'd hidden away for herself. Water in a skin that had been meant for Tam.
As dawn light started seeping into the cave, Sera stood at the entrance.
The snow was falling thick and heavy outside. Everything beyond the cave mouth was white and cold and impossibly distant. The mountain was out there somewhere. North. Higher than the clouds. Where gods still breathed.
Mira walked her to the edge where the darkness met the snow.
"Come back," Mira whispered.
Sera stepped out into the cold and started walking. She didn't look back because if she looked back she would stop and she couldn't stop because thirty people were depending on her and she was the only choice they had.
She'd been walking for maybe an hour when she heard the voices behind her.
At first she thought it was the wind. Then she thought it was her imagination. But the voices kept getting closer and she realized they were real. Soldiers on horseback. Moving through the snow in a line. Hunting something.
Hunting her.
One of them saw her and pointed. The group changed direction. Their horses started moving faster.
Sera ran.
The snow was deep and her legs felt weak from days of not eating. She crashed through drifts that came up to her waist. Behind her the sound of hooves got closer. She could hear a voice shouting orders.
Then a voice she recognized. Scarred Face. The general who had wanted her at the village. The man who'd ordered his soldiers to hunt her specifically.
"There," he called out. "The girl from the village. Don't let her escape this time."
Sera pushed herself harder even though her body was screaming. The mountain was somewhere ahead but it felt impossibly far. The soldiers were getting closer.
She was going to die in the snow before she ever reached the mountain.
Then the ground disappeared beneath her feet.
She fell forward into white nothing, tumbling down a ravine so steep and sudden that she didn't have time to scream. Her body hit rocks and ice and pain exploded through her like lightning. The last thing she heard before darkness claimed her was a soldier's voice shouting her name.