The truck rumbled over broken roads, its tires thudding over cracks like a pulse—alive, just barely.
The mist hadn't thickened yet, but it drifted low and slow along the ground, curling like pale fingers reaching for something just out of sight. In the silence inside the truck, the faint growls from somewhere distant felt sharper, more personal, as if the mist remembered them.
Zara didn't speak.
She stared out the cracked window, one arm protectively around Leo, who lay curled up and sleeping in her lap, his small fingers loosely gripping the fabric of her coat. Winter sat beside her, his hand wrapped around hers, the calloused edge of his thumb occasionally grazing her skin as if to remind her they were still here. Still alive.
