The fires had stopped screaming.
Not because they were out—just quieter. Just tired.
Smoke hung thick over the city like a shroud, curling through broken alleys and collapsed ceilings.
Heat rose in pulses from below—things still burning under the stone.
Casamir moved through it all with hands scraped raw and lungs full of someone else's ash.
Every part of him ached.
Muscles he hadn't known he had were pulled tight. His knees stung. His knuckles had split open where skin gave way to stone.
His coat clung to his back like damp paper.
He didn't know how long it had been since the toll.
Since the light in the sky.
Since the first scream.
There were no more answers.
Only rubble.
Only heat.
He passed a wrecked hover-cart wedged beneath a collapsed support beam.
Someone had tried to pull it free—blood on the handles, soot-black footprints leading away.
He followed them, slow.
Down a crumbling stairwell.
Into what had once been a market shelter.
The roof was half-caved. The walls bowed inward. Heat still shimmered off the tile.
A sound rose—a breath. Too fast. Too shallow.
He stepped around a burned stall.
And found her.
A child—no older than ten. Buried to the waist beneath steel slats and broken mesh.
Eyes wide. Mottled with blood and dust.
Still breathing.
Still blinking.
"Hey," Casamir whispered, crouching low.
She didn't speak. Just stared. One hand opened and closed at her side. The other was pinned beneath the wreckage.
He pulled at the top panel.
It didn't move.
He braced. Pulled again. Nothing.
He found a steel rod. Wedged it under. Tried to pry it loose.
The metal shrieked in protest—but only bent.
Beneath it, the girl whimpered.
"I've got you," he said.
More for himself.
Another heave.
A crack.
The top plate shifted slightly.
He reached in, tried to lift her again—
—but something gave.
The beam above slipped.
The whole pile lurched. Metal screamed downward.
He yanked his hands back just in time.
She cried out once.
Then silence.
He didn't move.
The air hissed as the metal cooled.
He reached forward. Touched her neck.
Nothing.
His arms dropped.
His knees gave.
He sat back slowly, hands trembling, palms streaked with grease and blood.
The rod beside him rattled faintly where he dropped it.
No toll followed.
No sky cracked open.
No voice spoke.
Only silence.
⸻
After the beam crushed her, he sat for a long time.
The heat rose in soft hisses. The wreckage clicked and cooled. Somewhere distant, a pipe burst in a wheeze of steam.
He stared at the girl's hand, the one that had been reaching. It still curled faintly, fingers like glass, caught in the motion of hope.
"I almost had you," he whispered.
His voice cracked.
He wiped his palms on his coat, smearing blood and soot into the fabric. Then he pulled something from his pocket—a fragment of cloth, torn from the arm of an old uniform.
He laid it beside her.
No prayer. No name.
Just the offering of someone who should have tried harder.
——
He didn't know how long he sat there.
But eventually the air trembled—mechanical, unnatural.
A low pulse.
Then another.
A searchlight swept the walls in slow arcs.
Casamir moved before he could think.
He ducked, slipped through a jagged hole in the side wall, crawling through bent piping and melted wire.
The light passed behind him.
He crawled deeper.
Found a corridor—once a sewer line, now half-collapsed and slick with fungal glow.
The air was wet. Chemical. Sharp.
The drone passed again—closer this time.
He pressed himself against the wall, eyes shut.
He wasn't brave.
He was hiding.
Before he found the girl, Casamir had passed three other bodies.
One was a child, curled beside a burned-out lamp. Another, a man in uniform—one of the tower guards. His chest was crushed inward like paper. The last was a woman clutching a datapad that still glowed faintly, caught in a boot loop.
He hadn't stopped.
Not because he didn't care.
Because he didn't know what to do with caring anymore.
The city didn't need grief. It needed survivors.
But even that—he was beginning to doubt.
---
The drone that returned wasn't large.
But it was loud. Mechanical. Invasive.
Its light pulsed in careful beats—designed to disorient. Its hum echoed in the bones.
Casamir ducked before instinct caught up with thought. The hole in the shelter wall offered no elegance, just escape.
He crawled into the dark, the sound of circuits trailing him like whispers. Bent piping scraped his back. Melted wire hissed against his leg.
Then he was inside the old corridor—what had once been a sewer line.
The glow here came from fungal threads—bioluminescent and sickly green. They pulsed faintly when he brushed past them. One clump seemed to twitch as if breathing.
He crouched low.
The drone passed overhead.
Then again. Closer.
A recorded voice played from its emitter: "Please remain still. The Empire offers mercy to those who comply. Memory restoration is for your own safety."
Casamir closed his eyes.
Not because he believed them.
Because he knew what came after that voice.
⸻
Later—minutes or hours—he climbed back toward the surface.
The smoke was thicker now. The sun barely touched anything.
A second tower had buckled in the distance. Its collapse came slow, muffled.
Like the city no longer had the strength to scream.
Casamir slipped on loose concrete. Fell hard.
His elbow scraped along jagged stone.
He stared at the blood smeared across his sleeve.
Dully. Blankly.
And then—her voice.
"Don't fall like that," a voice said.
He spun, lifting a broken pipe like a weapon.
But it wasn't a soldier. Not a drone. Not a threat.
Just a girl.
About his age—maybe younger.
Covered in dust. Wrapped in scavenged cloth and synth-fiber.
Crouched on a ledge nearby, watching him with guarded eyes.
A cracked water flask in her lap.
"Could've broken something," she said.
Casamir didn't answer.
She held out the flask.
He hesitated.
Then took it.
It tasted like rust and minerals.
But it was wet.
"You from the mid-rings?" she asked.
"No." His voice was hoarse. "South tier."
"Didn't think anyone from there made it out."
"They didn't."
That settled something.
She nodded once.
They sat in silence for a while.
The wind returned—hot and slow.
It dragged the scent of melted plastic and burning circuitry through the ruined street.
Casamir handed the flask back.
"You going somewhere?" she asked.
"No."
"Then why're you walking like you've got a purpose?"
"I don't know how to stop."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then stood.
"Come on. There's a place a few blocks over. Walls are still standing. Might be a basement."
He didn't move.
"Suit yourself."
She turned.
But he stood.
Because she was right.
He didn't want to be alone anymore.
He followed.
---
The place wasn't much.
A corner shack propped up by a half-melted vending machine and a tree root.
Most of the roof was gone. But the basement hatch remained.
They crawled inside.
The room below was dim—lit by cracked screen panels and dying blue ambient light.
Old bedrolls.
Half a ration pack.
A melted child's toy fused to the floor.
He sat down hard on the concrete.
The girl didn't speak again.
She curled into the corner with her back to him and pulled a ragged blanket over her head.
Casamir just sat there.
Hands still. Eyes open. Breathing thin.
No one had screamed in a while.
That almost felt worse.
He drew his knees to his chest.
Closed his eyes.
And the tears came.
Slow. Quiet.
Not because he thought it would help.
But because it was the only thing left that hadn't burned.
——
She didn't give him her name.
Even after they reached the shack, after they crawled into the dim blue light and shared the silence of people who hadn't decided if trust was worth it.
She only said, "I used to live near the old textile halls. Before the synthwave riots."
Casamir didn't ask more. He didn't ask anything.
They split the ration bar in thirds—ate two pieces, left one in the corner.
She lit a salvaged signal node and tilted it just so, flooding the space with a dull glow.
"Signal still alive," she muttered.
Casamir glanced at the blinking light. "Alive doesn't mean true."
She shrugged. "Doesn't mean false either."
That shut them both up.
---
Later, when the air cooled slightly, she asked, "Did you lose someone?"
Casamir didn't answer.
He could have said yes. He could have said too many. He could have said a name—Narel, or the child under the beam, or the boy on the platform whose name he never learned.
But instead, he said, "Yes."
She nodded like she'd expected that.
"Me too," she said, turning away.
He didn't press.
---
The silence stretched between them again.
But this time, it didn't feel empty.
It felt like breathing space.
Like neither of them owed the other anything except the shared truth of still being here.
---
He watched her fall asleep, curled with one arm under her head and one hand resting lightly on a cracked canister.
A gesture of someone used to being ready to run.
Casamir stared at the ceiling.
No toll came.
No light.
No sound.
Just the hum of the node, and the quiet settling of a ruined city.
He let the tears come—not in sobs, but in slow, clean lines down the soot on his face.
He didn't wipe them away.
---
He wasn't special.
He wasn't chosen.
He was just still alive.
And tonight—somehow—that would have to be enough.
But deep in his bones, beneath the silence, beneath the ash, beneath the ache—
that heat still waited.
Low. Coiled. Patient.
It wasn't done.
And neither was he.