The man sat up too fast.
For a moment, it was like time cracked open. His breath hitched, his head swayed. The room tilted around him, and he slumped back, limbs heavy, like a puppet with its strings cut. A stroke of luck. A stupid, random thing.
It meant I had a chance.
The knife felt like it had fused with my palm, sweat-slick and ice cold. Every heartbeat was a countdown. I could hear my breath, too loud, too uneven. Could hear Sofia shift behind me, just a whisper of sound, but I felt her watching.
I stepped forward.
One step.
Then another.
He lay there, breath shallow, arms limp. But his eyes—his eyes were open.
I didn't give myself time to think. Thinking would kill me.
The knife plunged in deep. A sharp, wet sound. His body seized up, muscles locking. His mouth opened—
A noise, something between a gasp and a growl, scraped from his throat. His hand shot out, fingers clawing at my wrist, but I pulled back and drove the knife in again.
And again.
The bedframe rattled. The sheets darkened. The scent of iron filled the room, thick and suffocating.
Again.
For the first bite of meat.
Again.
For the people strung up like cattle.
Again.
For the jars of blood lining the walls.
He lurched, tried to roll away, his hand pressing against the wounds, slick and desperate. But it didn't matter. He was dead the moment I started. He just hadn't caught up to it yet.
I followed him down, knees digging into the mattress, and kept going. The blade hit ribs, slid against bone. His hands scrambled weakly at me, but there was no real strength left. His body was a machine shutting down, twitching, slowing, breaking.
The sounds stopped first. Then the movement. Then—
Nothing.
I froze. My chest was heaving. My arms burned. My fingers ached from gripping the knife so hard.
And then—
A breath.
Not mine.
Sofia's.
I turned.
She was standing there, her hands pressed against her mouth, eyes huge.
I saw it immediately.
The fear.
She was afraid of me.
I had seen that look before. On the faces of people staring at monsters.
I looked down at my hands.
Red. Red. Red.
It was under my nails, in the creases of my skin, seeping into my clothes. The knife slipped from my fingers, landing in a pool of dark.
He had deserved it. I knew that. He had done worse. So much worse.
But that didn't change what I had done.
The air felt too thick. My pulse pounded in my skull.
I wasn't better than him. I wasn't better at all.
I had become what I hated.
My throat tightened. My stomach churned.
And then—
Sofia moved.
For a second, I thought she was going to run. That she couldn't stand to look at me. That she would leave, and I'd be alone with this, with the body cooling on the bed and the blood still hot on my skin.
But she didn't.
She stepped forward.
Hesitated.
Then wrapped her arms around me.
I flinched. My body locked up.
She didn't let go.
"Thank you," she whispered.
My throat burned. "Why?"
She squeezed tighter. "Because it's what they would have wanted to say."
I couldn't breathe.
I hadn't cried in years. Not when my father was taken. Not when my mother died. Not when the war turned everything to dust. And so I forgot how to cry.
So she cried for me.
And I let her.
—
We stayed until morning.
When the sun rose, we burned everything.
The meat. The blood-filled jars. The scraps of flesh hidden in the dark corners of the house.
The smell was unbearable, thick and choking, curling into our lungs. We stood there, watching, until the last ember faded into ash.
We stepped away from the ruins of our temporary home, our footprints trailing behind us in the dust. We walked.
Aimlessly.
Nowhere to go, nothing to chase. Just forward.
Sofia, as always, was the first to speak.
"Did I ever tell you about my mother?"
I glanced at her. Her face was unreadable, but her voice was lighter than it had been in days.
"No," I said.
She sighed, tucking her hands into her pockets. "She loved music. Couldn't sing to save her life, but she didn't care. She used to hum all the time—when she cooked, when she sewed, when she read. She used to hum this song—"
She hummed a few notes, but the sound was lost in the wind.
"I forgot the rest," she admitted.
I didn't respond.
"My father hated it," she continued. "Said it was annoying. But she kept doing it. I think, in some weird way, that's why I talk so much."
I raised an eyebrow.
She grinned, nudging me lightly. "Because if I don't, the silence gets too loud."
I looked ahead. The horizon stretched endlessly, the same lifeless grey as always.
But Sofia kept talking. Filling the air with words, stories, memories.
And I realized—without her, I wouldn't have made it this far. Not just because she kept me alive, but because she made me remember what it was to be human. She carried something I thought had died long ago: hope. Not the naive kind, not the foolish kind, but the kind that keeps you standing when you have every reason to fall. The kind that turns a ruined world into something you can still walk through.
And for the first time, I felt something close to gratitude. Not just for her presence, but for the fact that, somehow, despite everything, she was still here. And so was I.