The ruins of the city sprawled endlessly beneath a sky that had long forgotten the warmth of sunlight. Gray clouds hung heavy, thick with ash and dust, swirling in the cold wind that cut like a blade through Kael's tattered clothes. Around him, crumbled buildings loomed like the ghosts of a world that had been violently ripped apart—silent witnesses to the chaos and destruction that had swallowed everything whole.
Kael sat perched on a broken slab of concrete, knees drawn close to his chest, eyes distant and unfocused. The faint sound of Emily's voice reached him, gentle yet persistent, stirring something inside that he tried to suppress.
"Why did you flinch when you heard that name?" Emily's question was soft, careful not to break him.
He didn't look at her. His fingers clenched around a rusted shard of metal, cold and sharp, grounding him like a lifeline. For a moment, the words stuck in his throat. His voice came out flat, guarded. "It's nothing."
But it wasn't nothing. The name echoed in his mind, slicing through the numbness like a jagged blade. It was the name of his father.
Emily's gaze stayed on him, patient, sensing the tension coiled beneath his skin, the invisible wall he had built to keep the world out.
Later, when the others had settled down and the campfire flickered weakly against the darkness, the silence grew too thick to hold. Emily waited, giving him the space but silently urging him to speak. The fire cast trembling shadows across their faces—hers open and curious, his wary and shut tight.
Kael finally exhaled, a breath heavy with years of unspoken pain. "That name…" he began, voice raw, "it was my dad's."
His eyes locked on the flames, as if the dancing light could burn away the memories he was about to unleash.
"My dad… he had another son. My brother."
The word tasted foreign on his tongue, as if saying it aloud made the past more real, more painful. His fingers unclenched, trembling slightly as if the act of remembering threatened to undo him.
Before everything fell apart—the collapse, the monsters, the endless nights filled with fear—there had been a life, a family. But even that was broken, fractured beyond repair.
"My mom and dad… they got divorced."
Kael's voice was barely more than a whisper, carrying the weight of shattered childhood. "It was before the world ended, but it felt like the world was already over for me."
He looked away, jaw tight, eyes flickering with a storm of memories he tried hard to keep locked inside.
"They separated us. Mom took me. Dad took my brother."
The words were simple, but they carried a crushing finality. Two children torn apart by adults' decisions they had no power to change.
"We were both so unhappy. Angry. Confused." He swallowed hard, voice cracking. "But what could we do? We were just kids, stuck in the middle of something that wasn't ours to fix."
Kael's fingers brushed absently against the cold metal in his hand, tracing its rough edges as if grounding himself to the present could keep the past from swallowing him whole.
"I hated it," he admitted quietly. "Leaving him behind. I wanted to fight it. To be with him. But no one asked what we wanted."
The bitterness seeped into his words, but beneath it was something even darker—an aching loneliness he rarely let surface.
Emily's hand found his arm, warm and steady in the cold night. "That sounds unbearable," she said softly. "I can't imagine how hard that must have been."
Kael nodded slowly, lips pressed into a thin line. "Sometimes… when everything is too quiet, when the monsters aren't snarling at the edge of the dark, I think about him."
His eyes were distant, haunted. "Wonder if he's alive. If he remembers me. Or if I'm just a ghost to him."
He swallowed, fighting a lump in his throat that threatened to break through the walls of silence he'd built.
"I never talked about it before," he confessed, voice barely steady. "Not to anyone. Not even myself. Because if I let it out… if I let anyone see that part of me—the scared kid still inside—then I'd have to admit I'm not as strong as I pretend to be."
Emily squeezed his arm gently, understanding without judgment. "It's not weakness, Kael. It's what makes you human. It's what keeps you connected… to who you really are."
Kael's mouth twitched into a half-smile, but the shadows under his eyes betrayed the fatigue beneath the surface. "Maybe," he murmured.
He gazed back at the fire, watching the flames dance and falter, fragile and fleeting—like the memories he tried so hard to hold onto.
"I just… I wish things had been different," he said, voice cracking with the weight of regrets and lost innocence.
The world outside remained silent except for the occasional rustle of wind and distant echoes of a broken city. Yet between them, in the flickering light and shared vulnerability, something fragile stirred—a moment of connection amid the chaos.
Emily didn't say anything more. Sometimes words weren't needed. Her presence alone was a promise: that Kael didn't have to carry the pain alone.
He closed his eyes briefly, the cold night air brushing against his skin like a ghost's touch. In this moment, beneath a shattered sky, surrounded by ruins and memories, Kael allowed himself to feel—just a little—something like hope