Dawn arrived without warmth.
A pale, bruised sky slowly bled over the ruins as Lucas, Elizabeth, Ana, and her father emerged from the basement. The morning air stabbed their lungs cold, damp, yet still carrying the stinging smell of smoke that felt impossible to escape.
Collapsed buildings stood like frozen shadows, their blackened frames etched against the dim skyline. Fine dust drifted through the air, falling slowly as if hesitant to touch the earth.
Lucas scanned the dull horizon. "We have to move before the patrol returns."
Ana clung tightly to her father's hand, her small face pale with fear.
Elizabeth knelt to meet her eyes. "You're strong, Ana. We'll get through this together."
The child nodded, though her trembling betrayed her fear.
Lucas watched Elizabeth. There was something in her voice calm without being cold, soft without being fragile. In a world swallowed by war, she was the only thing that remained unbroken.
They moved cautiously through streets lined with cracked pavement, stepping over shards of glass and twisted metal. Sometimes Lucas paused to listen: Were their footsteps too loud? Was something following?
Nothing.
Only the silence of a starving world.
Elizabeth kept Ana close, their hands clasped. Ana's father walked with a slight limp, his injury still bleeding beneath the bandage.
"We need another shelter," Lucas said. "The place where we found Ana isn't safe anymore."
"Where do we go?" Ana's father asked.
"East side of the city," Lucas replied. "The buildings there are newer. Less damaged."
Elizabeth's eyes softened. "There's a small chapel on the east side. It's been abandoned for years, but it might still stand."
Lucas nodded. "Then we try for that."
Their journey took them past the charred remains of the marketplace, a collapsed government hall, and statues shattered in half. Elizabeth stopped occasionally to lay a hand on a fallen body or close the eyes of someone who never received a burial.
Lucas tugged her sleeve.
"You can't carry every sorrow alone."
"I know," she whispered. "But someone needs to tend to it."
A distant gunshot echoed from the east.
Lucas stiffened. "They're sweeping this district."
He quickened his pace. "We don't have time. Move."
They hurried on.
Buildings grew more unstable, beams cracked from within, dust shaking loose with every distant rumble. At one corner, a house still burned slowly, the flames flickering like the last candle at a dying feast.
Elizabeth stopped abruptly frozen.
"Eliz?"
Her gaze locked onto a body lying at the doorway of that burning house. Half-covered in soot. Limbs curled as if reaching for something that never came.
"I have to check," she whispered.
Lucas clenched his jaw. "We don't"
"Lucas, please."
She ran forward.
The house groaned under the strain of the fire. Lucas rushed after her, grabbing her arm before she stepped too close to the heat.
"He's gone," Lucas said quietly. "Elizabeth, we need to"
"He needs a prayer," she whispered, pulling away. Her voice trembled, but her resolve did not. "He deserves to be remembered."
Lucas exhaled sharply. The soldier in him wanted to drag her away. The human in him could not.
Elizabeth knelt beside the body.
"I could not save you," she murmured, "but I can send you onward."
And there, in the middle of a world unraveling, she began to pray.
Lucas watched her her voice delicate in the roar of distant explosions, her trembling hands resting over the dead, her courage glowing faintly like a relic refusing extinction.
Ana watched too, wide-eyed with awe.
When Elizabeth finally rose, her face was streaked with soot, her eyes red not from tears but from smoke. Yet her gaze held something steady. Something fierce in its gentleness.
Lucas touched her shoulder. "Let's go."
She nodded.
An hour later, they reached a half-collapsed stone bridge. Beneath it, the river had turned into sludge mixed with ash.
"Do we cross?" Ana's father asked.
"Yes," Lucas replied. "Safer on the other side."
But as they approached, a metallic sound echoed heavy footsteps.
Elizabeth froze.
Two soldiers emerged from behind the rubble, rifles in hand.
"Hide!" Lucas hissed, pulling Elizabeth behind a broken wall. Ana's father held the girl tightly, covering her mouth.
The soldiers approached the bridge, boots steady, disciplined.
Ana trembled. "Papa…"
"Quiet, sweetheart," her father whispered.
Elizabeth pressed her back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, calming her breath with sheer will.
Lucas gripped the metal rod he had taken earlier.
The soldiers drew closer.
They stopped right in front of the bridge.
A beam of light from one of their flashlights swept dangerously close to where Lucas crouched.
His muscles tensed.
If they stepped one more
A distant explosion thundered from the west.
The soldiers jolted.
"Unit Two, relocate!" a voice barked through their radio.
The men ran toward the sound.
Lucas sagged against the wall, breath shaking.
"Was that your prayer," Lucas asked softly, "or just luck?"
Elizabeth gave him a faint, tired smile. "Sometimes they are the same."
Crossing the bridge, they entered the eastern district.
Just like Elizabeth said, a small chapel stood at the edge of the street. The roof was torn, the door barely hanging on, but the structure remained.
Elizabeth stopped at the entrance, breath catching.
"This place…" She placed a trembling hand over her heart. "I prayed here once."
Lucas pushed the door gently; the hinges groaned.
Inside was dark, but not destroyed.
A few pews still stood.
The altar was cracked but recognizable.
A small statue remained, covered in soot yet eerily intact.
Elizabeth approached it slowly, almost reverently.
"We can rest here," Lucas told Ana's father. "Put her on the pew."
The man nodded, settling Ana onto the least damaged bench.
Then Lucas turned to Elizabeth and immediately sensed something was different.
She wasn't just remembering.
She was unraveling.
"This place…" she whispered. "I made my vow here."
Lucas's breath caught.
Not a simple statement.
A confession.
Elizabeth knelt before the altar, her hands shaking.
"In this chapel," she said quietly, "I promised not to abandon the world, even when the world abandoned me."
Lucas felt something twist inside him.
"Elizabeth… you don't have to carry all this alone."
"If not me," she whispered, "then who?"
Lucas knelt beside her.
"Sometimes strong people need saving too."
Elizabeth turned toward him, the light catching her eyes eyes filled with a thousand quiet storms.
"I'm not strong, Lucas," she whispered. "I'm just… enduring."
"That's what strength looks like to me."
She froze, breath catching, as if those words were too heavy.
Before she could speak, a rumbling sound echoed from outside deeper than footsteps, heavier than guns.
"What was that?" Ana's father asked anxiously.
Lucas rose quickly.
"That's not soldiers."
Fear flickered across Elizabeth's face.
"Is it fire again?"
Lucas peered through a crack in the door.
His blood turned to ice.
"No…" he whispered.
In the distance, a wave of fire surged explosions chaining one after another, a rolling inferno devouring block after block.
Elizabeth gasped, tears spilling.
"No… not the east too…"
Lucas spun to them, voice urgent.
"We have to go! NOW!"
But the fire moved faster.
Heat rolled through the streets.
Dust shook from the rafters.
The chapel roof groaned.
Elizabeth's shoulders slumped not in surrender, but in sorrow too deep to contain.
"We won't make it," she whispered.
Lucas grabbed her hand.
"Yes, we will. Come on!"
But Elizabeth looked at the altar, then at Ana, then at the fire swallowing the street.
She shook her head slowly.
"I can't leave them."
"Eliz"
If the world must burn, she thought,
then let my prayer be the last sound the sky remembers.
She stood tall, trembling, yet resolute.
"Lucas…" She squeezed his hand, voice breaking. "Take them. Go."
Lucas stared at her, face stricken.
"I'm not leaving without you."
She smiled a smile shattered and beautiful.
"Sometimes love stays… and sometimes love lets go."
The fire roared closer.
Ana cried.
Her father held her tightly.
Lucas clutched Elizabeth's shoulders.
"I will NOT"
Elizabeth touched her finger gently to his lips.
A soft hush meant for his survival, not her own.
"Listen," she whispered.
Her voice cracked
yet when she began to pray,
it did not break.
As flames consumed the world outside,
as heat pressed against the chapel walls,
as fear choked the air
Elizabeth's voice rose, trembling but unshaken,
the bravest sound Lucas had ever heard.
And it was a voice
he knew he would carry
for the rest of his life.