Chapter 417: Chapter 417: Forgotten Children

Snow drifted through the air like falling ash, burying what was left of the village in a pale silence. The houses were hollow—wood eaten by rot, windows black with soot. There was no firelight anymore, only the endless white.

The girl moved through it quietly, her small frame wrapped in torn cloth. Her breath came out in sharp, uneven clouds. On her back, a boy clung to her shoulders, his face half-hidden in the crook of her neck. He was light—too light.

“Are you cold?” she asked softly.

He shook his head, but his hands trembled against her chest. His lips were blue.

They crossed the empty street, boots crunching through snow and glass. She pushed open the door of a ruined bakery and searched the shelves with shaking fingers. Nothing but dust. She sighed, shoulders slumping, before brushing off a corner of the counter where the two could sit.

The boy stared at her silently, eyes wide and tired. “There’s nothing again?”

She smiled faintly, forcing warmth into her voice. “Not today. But tomorrow will be better.”

He didn’t answer. He’d stopped believing that weeks ago.

The girl tore a small strip from her sleeve and wrapped it around his fingers, rubbing them to keep the blood flowing. “We’ll move south tomorrow,” she murmured. “Maybe there’s food there. Maybe people.”

The wind howled through the cracked windows, carrying the distant sound of crows.

When night came, she lit a few scraps of wood with a sparkstone she’d stolen months before. The fire barely caught, but it was enough to paint their faces orange for a while.

The boy fell asleep first, curled against her chest. His breathing was shallow, uneven. She brushed the hair from his forehead and pressed her lips to it.

“No one’s coming for us,” she whispered into the dark. “So we’ll take care of each other. Always.”

Outside, the snow kept falling, covering the streets, the roofs, and every forgotten name buried beneath.

By morning, their footprints would already be gone.

The days blurred together after that. Morning, night—there wasn’t much difference anymore. The sun was pale and distant, too weak to melt the snow, too tired to offer warmth.

The sister’s hair had turned brittle, colorless at the ends. She had stopped counting the days, but her brother hadn’t. On the wall of the collapsed stable where they slept, he’d drawn dozens of lines with a charred stick — one for each sunrise they survived. The marks looked like scars carved into the stone.

“Eighty-three,” he whispered one night, tracing them with his finger. “That means we’re winning, right?”

She smiled faintly, though her lips were cracked. “Yes. We’re still here.”

He nodded, as if that was enough to keep them warm.

When food ran out, she learned to steal. At first it was fruit from carts, then bread from travelers. Once, she tried to take a soldier’s ration bag and paid for it in blood. They beat her until her vision went white, until all she could hear was her brother screaming her name.

He dragged her away, stumbling through alleys until they reached their shelter again. Her face was swollen, her body trembling. He cried into her arm all night, whispering that he was sorry.

“Don’t cry,” she murmured, forcing her voice to stay steady. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”

He shook his head, choking on the words. “Why do you keep doing this?”

“Because you shouldn’t have to.”

Outside, a cold wind howled, pushing snow through the cracks of the stable. She tightened her grip on him, keeping his head against her shoulder.

“We’ll make it through the winter,” she said softly, as if saying it could make it true. “You’ll see.”

He wanted to believe her. He really did. But that night, when she finally fell asleep from exhaustion, he pressed his hand against hers — small, cold, calloused — and whispered what she’d always said before him.

“We’ll take care of each other. Always.”

The storm broke after weeks of silence.

When the snow finally stopped, the village was nothing but bones — crooked beams, shattered glass, and half-buried carts frozen in place. For the first time in months, sunlight slipped through the clouds, painting the ruins in a fragile gold.

The siblings woke to the sound of voices.

Real voices — deep, strong, alive.

The boy ran to the doorway of their shelter and squinted through the light. Soldiers and caravans were crossing the valley below, hauling banners and wagons full of supplies. Smoke from their campfires curled upward like a sign from the heavens.

“Look!” he shouted, smiling for the first time in weeks. “They came back! Someone finally came back!”

His sister’s heart lurched. She stood, dizzy, her legs stiff from cold, and followed him out. The sunlight stung her eyes. It felt almost unreal after so long in shadow.

They ran.

Down the hill, through the snow, slipping and laughing — their voices trembling between hope and disbelief. The closer they got, the stronger the scent of food became: baked bread, roasted meat, something warm and alive.

When they reached the camp, a soldier stopped them with a hand on his spear.

“Where are your papers?” he asked.

The boy blinked, confused. “Papers?”

“Ration cards, family seal, anything.”

The sister stepped forward, clutching her brother’s arm. “Please. We’ve been out here since the last raid. We don’t have papers — just give us something small, anything, and we’ll leave.”

The soldier frowned, eyes hard. “Rations are for citizens. Move along.”

He shoved her backward. She stumbled and fell into the snow, scraping her hands. The boy froze, staring at her. The laughter from earlier died instantly.

Another guard laughed under his breath. “More strays. They keep coming.”

The boy helped his sister up, glaring at the soldiers. His fists clenched, but she stopped him before he could speak. Her hand was gentle on his wrist. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please.”

They walked away without another word. The sunlight that had seemed so warm moments ago now felt cruel.

That night, they sat beneath a broken archway, sharing the crust of old bread she had saved. The boy’s hands shook as he tore it in half. “They could’ve helped us.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t they?”

She looked at the sky — endless, grey, indifferent. “Because the world doesn’t owe us anything.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then, through gritted teeth, he said, “Then we’ll make it owe us.”

She smiled faintly, brushing a thumb across his cheek. “Maybe.”

The wind howled again, colder than before. She pulled her cloak tighter around them both, holding him close as the darkness crept in.

“We’ll take care of each other. Always.”

By the time the thaw came, the boy had stopped moving.

His body lay curled against his sister’s chest beneath a collapsed cart, the snow stained dark and crusted at the edges. She had wrapped every scrap of cloth around him, pressed her own body to his to share what little heat she had. She had hummed to him until her voice broke and the stars blurred. He had not woken.

Dawn leaked in pale through the gaps in the boards. She woke with his head in her lap, his breath gone and the world too loud in its silence. Her hands trembled as she searched his face for any small sign — a twitch, a breath — and found none. Everything inside her curled and emptied like a bell struck once, ringing and then gone.

She refused, for a while, to call it death. She told herself he was sleeping, that sleep had simply taken him deeper than before. She warmed his hands with her mouth and pressed her face to his hair until her tears froze. The village moved around her in slow, uncaring rhythms: a cart creaked, a distant hammer tapped stone, a dog barked and wandered off. Nobody noticed the two shapes huddled beneath the ruin. Nobody came.

A shadow paused at the edge of the square that afternoon. Someone had finally stopped — a figure wrapped in a dark cloak, face turned away from the sun. They moved with the quiet confidence of someone who had seen worse things than this and grown indifferent. The sister tightened her arms around the cold body and watched them approach without hope.

The stranger knelt beside them but did not look at the boy. Instead, they spoke softly to the sister, voice like old velvet: “You cared for him well.”

She spat a laugh that tasted of iron. “He’s cold.”

“We can change that,” the stranger said. They pulled a small thing from inside their cloak — a vial of something that shimmered like oil and moonlight mixed. They did not smile. “I can warm him. I can wake him.”

Her heart leapt and then stalled. “How?” Her voice was small. She was suddenly a child again, begging a god that had never answered.

The cloaked figure’s hand hovered over the vial, just out of reach. “There is a debt.” They spoke in a way that made the words sound like rope coiling itself. “He will live, but not for free. You will bind yourself to me — service, obedience. A chain of promise. You will be given work. You will be given place. You will not be alone.”

Her first thought was laughter — bitter and short — at the cruelty of it. Her second was that she would give the world, a thousand times over, to see his eyes open. She remembered his small hands tracing the notches on the wall, his laugh when she faked a story, the way he trusted her to fix everything when the world broke. The world had already taken everything else. What was one more bargain?

She flinched as if struck and then reached for the vial. “Do it.” Her voice cracked but did not break. “Bring him back.”

The stranger inclined their head. They did not look cruel in the way she had imagined — only empty, like winter-bare branches. They pressed the vial to his lips and let the liquid slip past cold skin. The sister held his hand and whispered what she had always whispered in the dark, the promise that had kept them both going through hunger and snow.

“We’ll take care of each other. Always.”

For a long while nothing happened. The sun sank low and the shadows lengthened; she rocked with his weight and watched the horizon like a hunger. Then, almost imperceptibly, his fingers twitched against her palm. His eyelids fluttered. He inhaled — one shallow, rattling sound that felt like a strike and a mercy at the same time.

He opened his eyes. For a single, ghastly second they were not the bright, blunt green she remembered but a glassy pool reflecting something older and colder. Then, as the light settled, the old spark returned — washed and fragile, but there. He coughed and blinked and looked up at her with the same small, stubborn trust.

She laughed then, half sob, half sobbing laugh, and held him so tight she felt her ribs ache. The stranger rose, silent as smoke. “The bargain will be called,” they said simply. “You will know the terms when the time comes.”

She did not ask. She did not care. She carried him on her back once more as dusk fell, his weight suddenly heavier and lighter at the same time. The world had been traded for him — a price she would pay without knowing how much it would cost.

Before they left the ruined square, she pressed her lips to his brow and whispered the vow she had said a thousand nights to keep them both from falling apart. It was a promise made in white cold and clinging fear, and she repeated it until it steadied her voice.

“We’ll take care of each other. Always.”

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