Morning came late.
The sun was a cold, dull smear across the sky, casting long, pitiless shadows.
Fred forced his eyes open, every muscle screaming in protest.
The world smelled of blood and iron and rot.
The bodies of the hunters lay stiff and frozen outside the shattered tower.
Buzzards circled overhead — black specks against the gray sky.
> "We have to move," Fred said, voice hoarse.
Nia stirred weakly.
Torin, pale as a corpse, managed a nod.
They had no supplies.
No food.
No fire.
Only knives scavenged from the dead.
Fred scavenged what he could — torn cloaks, broken boots, a half-full water flask with a cracked cap.
It wasn't enough.
But it would have to be.
The tower wasn't safe anymore.
Too much death here.
Too much blood to attract worse things.
Much worse.
They left without a backward glance, stumbling into the dead woods like ghosts themselves.
Each step a battle.
Each breath a fight against the cold.
---
The road they found wasn't really a road.
Just a scar through the trees — the faint memory of a trail that once carried caravans and wagons.
Now it was abandoned.
Dead.
Like everything else beyond the Hollow.
Fred led the way, knife gripped tightly, eyes scanning the forest.
Nia followed, her broken arm bound tightly against her chest, her good hand clenching and unclenching nervously.
Torin shuffled behind them, leaning heavily on a scavenged spear.
The silence was unbearable.
Every snapped twig sounded like a gunshot.
Every gust of wind like a whisper of death.
No one spoke.
There was nothing left to say.
Just walk.
Just survive
Hours dragged by.
Maybe days.
Fred couldn't tell anymore.
The world blurred into endless gray and white.
Blisters tore open on his feet.
The skin on his fingers cracked and bled.
Torin stumbled often, sometimes collapsing into the snow, forcing Fred and Nia to drag him back to his feet.
Each time, Fred caught the look in Nia's eyes.
Fear.
Not just of Kael.
Not just of the hunters.
But of him.
Of Fred.
Of what he was becoming.
A man made of sharp edges and bloodstained hands.
A man who didn't hesitate to kill.
A man who would do anything to survive.
Anything.
> "We have to keep moving," Fred said each time they faltered.
Each time, the words sounded less like encouragement.
And more like a command.
Like an order from someone who was no longer fully human.
---
That night, they found shelter in the burned-out remains of a cabin.
Charred wood.
Blackened bones.
The smell of old fire still lingering after all these years.
Fred scouted the perimeter.
Nothing but emptiness.
No signs of life.
Good.
He built a small fire inside the collapsed hearth, using bits of broken furniture.
Nia huddled close, her lips blue from the cold.
Torin didn't even move.
He just lay there, wrapped in the bloodied cloak of one of the hunters they had killed.
Breathing shallowly.
Barely alive.
Fred stared at him for a long time.
Longer than he should have.
Because a thought crept into his mind then.
A dark, poisonous thought.
He's slowing us down.
He's going to die anyway.
He's dead weight.
Fred shook his head violently.
Ashamed.
Horrified.
But the thought remained.
Curling around his heart like a snake.
Whispering.
Tempting.
How much longer could they survive carrying a man who couldn't even walk?
How much blood would be spilled because they refused to make the hard choice?
> "No," Fred muttered to himself.
> "No, no, no."
Nia watched him from across the fire.
Her eyes sharp.
Suspicious.
She knew.
She could see it.
The rot setting in.
The choices twisting him inside.
And maybe — just maybe — she was wondering if she would be next.
If Fred would eventually decide she wasn't worth saving either.
---
That night, Fred couldn't sleep.
The fire burned low, casting flickering shadows against the blackened walls.
Fred sat awake, knife resting across his knees, staring into the flames.
And in the crackle of the fire, he heard it.
A voice.
Low.
Mocking.
> "They'll betray you first," it whispered.
> "Before you even have the chance."
Fred's grip tightened on the knife.
He looked at Nia — curled into herself, asleep but restless, twitching as if fighting some nightmare.
He looked at Torin — pale, unmoving, half-dead already.
The fire hissed.
The wind moaned.
The voice laughed.
Fred closed his eyes.
Breathed in.
Breathed out.
This was the cost of freedom.
Not just the blood.
Not just the pain.
But the rot inside.
The slow death of everything that had once made him good.
Human.
---
When morning came, Fred made the decision.
He stood over Torin's sleeping form.
Knife in hand.
Heart hammering.
One stroke.
Quick.
Clean.
No more dead weight.
No more slowing them down.
Survival demanded sacrifice.
The cold demanded sacrifice.
> "Fred," Nia's voice broke through the haze.
Soft.
Broken.
> "Don't."
He looked at her.
Saw the tears streaming down her dirt-streaked face.
Saw the horror.
The sorrow.
The plea.
Fred's hand shook.
For a long moment, he didn't move.
Then he dropped the knife.
It clattered against the blackened wood.
The sound was deafening.
Fred sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands.
Nia crossed the room slowly.
Wrapped her good arm around him.
Held him while he shook with silent, ugly sobs.
Torin never woke.
Maybe he had known.
Maybe he hadn't.
It didn't matter.
Fred had crossed a line just by thinking it.
There was no going back now.
-
They left the cabin at dawn.
Carrying Torin between them.
One broken, bleeding step at a time.
The road stretched ahead, endless and merciless.
No promise of salvation.
No guarantee of survival.
Only the cold.
Only the hunger.
Only the slow, grinding death that stalked their every move.
But they moved anyway.
Because there was no choice.
Because freedom wasn't a blessing.
It was a curse.
And Fred knew, deep in his bones, that before this road ended, he would lose even more.
More blood.
More friends.
More pieces of himself.
Maybe all of it.
And maybe that was what the world demanded.
Maybe survival was just another kind of death.
A slower, crueler one.
The fire inside him burned low.
But it burned still.
For now.
---