The girl sat alone in a musty old room. Her fingers were wrapped around her knees, chin resting on top. Eyes too wide and too green for someone who should have been worrying about dolls instead of survival.

She had been here for hours, and hunger was beginning to ache in her belly. But hunger was familiar now. She was used to it.

Thirst was the real enemy. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton, her throat scraped raw by air that tasted of dust and abandonment. Soon she would have to leave this shelter and search for water. She knew that. But she didn’t want to.

He had told her to stay put, that help was coming, that she would be safe if she just waited. She believed him, mostly. But belief didn’t quench thirst and her body was starting to make demands her faith couldn’t answer.

The room around her breathed with the slow rhythm of decay. Cobwebs hung like funeral shrouds in corners that spiders had long-since abandoned. Dust motes drifted through gaps in the ceiling, each speck catching random light before vanishing back into shadow. The floorboards beneath her boots groaned with rot, worn thin by years of rain seeping through holes no one would ever fix.

Her boots were too big for her feet, probably scavenged from someone older, someone gone. The leather was peeling, the soles worn. She had tied the frayed laces twice just to keep them on. Her jeans were threadbare at the knees, stained with mud and time. The oversized t-shirt hung on her small frame like a flag of surrender, its faded logo unreadable and meaningless.

She looked like every other refugee child in the wasteland. Hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed, marked by the lessons she learned through pain. But there was a look in her face that didn’t belong to desperation or defeat. A stillness that felt older than her years. A quality of attention that suggested she was listening to conversations no one else could hear.

A breeze whistled through broken windows, stirring the dust and adding to the feeling of desolation. This place had been beautiful once, maybe. Someone had chosen paint colors and arranged furniture, had hung pictures and swept floors with the kind of care that came from calling a place home. Now it was just bones. Another casualty in a war that measured victory by the number of things it hadn’t destroyed yet.

But it was quiet here, and quiet was safety. Quiet was the closest thing to peace she had known in longer than she could remember.

The sun had shifted enough to send a single thread of golden light through a hole in the wall, illuminating her face. She didn’t turn away from it. Warmth was a luxury she couldn’t afford to waste.

Her eyes were the color of deep forest pools, green with flecks of copper that caught the light like sparks. They held too much knowledge for someone her age, the kind of understanding that came from watching the world eat itself while hiding in shadows. But they weren’t bitter. Unlike other children who survived by becoming small and hard, she had learned not to judge life by what had been lost.

In her lap, a charm spun slowly on a frayed cord. It was bronze, shaped like a teardrop, and covered in etchings that looked like they meant something to someone. At its center, a green stone that matched her eyes perfectly, as if it had been made for her or she for it. When it caught the light, it threw tiny rainbows across the walls, dancing patterns that felt like hope trying to remember how to breathe.

It was just a trinket, worthless to anyone else. But to her, it was all she had left. The last thing in the world that still mattered.

It reminded her of angels.

And that reminded her — she didn’t believe in angels.

She didn’t blame her people for leaving her behind. They had wanted to take her with them, had argued about it in hushed voices while they thought she was sleeping. But they all knew the truth, even if they couldn’t bring themselves to say it out loud. She was a beacon, attracting the worst things the world had to offer. And if they were going to survive, she had to be left behind.

It was the kind of impossible, yet practical choice that kept small groups alive in a world that specialized in finding new ways to kill them.

That didn’t make it hurt any less. Loneliness pressed against her like the weight of deep water, constant and heavy. But she had learned to breathe underwater, had found ways to move through the pressure without letting it crush her completely. She was stronger than she looked. Stronger than she felt. Strong enough to keep going when it might be easier to just lie down and die.

The charm spun in her fingers, casting its colorful patterns across the walls. Its presence was a reminder that every once in a while, beauty could survive ugliness. That small things could endure when everything else fell apart. The colors made her feel calm, because it reminded her of her mother.

Her mother had worn a bright, wool shawl whenever the cold came in. It was purple, orange, and yellow, all blended in a way that made her think of a sunset.

She remembered the way it smelled. Faintly of smoke and crushed hibiscus flowers. She would never forget that smell.

There had been a time, just once, when her mother had wrapped the shawl around both of them. When she had been held so close, she could hear the rhythm of her mother’s heart.

That sound had made her feel safe.

Now, when she closed her eyes, she sometimes listened for it in the wind. It was her favorite memory.

Even though she knew it wasn’t really her memory at all.

She didn’t know whose it was, and it didn’t matter. She liked it. So she kept it. And pretended it had always belonged to her.

But not all her memories were like that. There was one in particular that she could never push away.

It was the sound of boots. Heavy ones. Slamming against stone. Too many to count. She remembered the way the air had smelled then, too. Not flowers or smoke, but hot metal and blood. She had been hiding behind an empty water basin, pressed so tight into the corner that her bones ached. Someone had whispered for her to stay quiet.

She did. She remained motionless even after the shouting started. Even after the fire. Even after the floor shook.

She never saw who screamed. But she remembered the silence that came after.

Sadly, this one was her own memory.

Outside, the wind began to pick up, rattling the loose boards and sending whispers through the empty room. She listened to it carefully, the way someone might listen to a language they were still learning. Wind carried information if you knew how to hear it. It could tell you about weather coming, about movement in the distance, about whether you were alone or if you were being hunted.

This wind felt clean, empty of threat. Just air moving through abandoned spaces, carrying nothing more dangerous than dust and the hint of rain. She relaxed slightly, letting her shoulders drop from the defensive posture that had become her default. For now, she was safe, even if it didn’t last long.

Her throat ached with increasing urgency, demanding attention she couldn’t ignore much longer. Food was a want, but water was a need. And need had a way of overriding warnings. She had tried to wait, had counted the hours and measured her endurance against her faith. But bodies had their own logic, their own demands that couldn’t be negotiated with good intentions.

Soon she would have to choose between his instructions and her survival. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She had hoped he had been right about help coming, about safety being just a matter of patience. But hope needed to be balanced with preparation, with the willingness to act when action became necessary.

She stood slowly, testing her legs after hours of stillness. They held her weight, though they trembled slightly from hunger and dehydration. Her vision swam for a moment as blood remembered how to flow, but she steadied herself against the wall and waited for the dizziness to pass. She was weaker than she wanted to admit, but not weak enough to give up. Not yet.

At the door, she paused with her hand on the frame. Beyond this threshold was a hostile world, a landscape of casual cruelty. But that’s where water hid, and sometimes survival waited for those brave enough, or desperate enough, to claim it.

She had been brave before. She could be brave again.

The door opened with a groan of rust and resignation, scraping against its warped frame. She peered out into the fading light of the day, where nature was slowly reclaiming its jurisdiction. Somewhere beyond the tangle of overgrown weeds was water. Somewhere in that danger was the thing she needed to keep living. And, despite everything, living was still important.

So, she stepped outside, small and determined, carrying her charm and her hope into a world that specialized in breaking people. Behind her, the house settled deeper into its decay, already forgetting she had ever been there at all.

The Withered Glade stretched around her like a graveyard. Once, this had been a place worth protecting. The stories told of days when it had belonged to the Skyguard, had been a place where warriors trained and children played and people believed in tomorrow. But tomorrow had brought only horror, and now the Skyguard were just another myth in a world that collected them like trophies.

She walked carefully through the ruins, stepping over debris that had once been someone’s life. A child’s toy, weathered beyond recognition. A garden gate hanging from one hinge, leading nowhere. The skeleton of a swing set, its chains rusted, its seats missing.

Each step was a choice between caution and necessity. She needed water, but she also needed to stay alive long enough to drink it. The balance between those needs was delicate, requiring the kind of attention that came from understanding that the world was always looking for opportunities to kill you.

Her eyes scanned the ruins carefully, and fell upon a dilapidated chain-link fence overgrown with aggressive weeds. Beyond it, an old hand-pump, rusted and leaning. Its iron spine was flaked with age. It looked like a relic, a memory of a forgotten time. But in the well beneath it, there would be water.

The fence had a gap near the bottom, torn wide enough that she could crawl through. She dropped to her hands and knees, ignoring the way the sharp edges tried to catch her clothes and skin. Thorns grabbed at her sleeves and dust filled her nostrils, but she pushed through. Discomfort was temporary. Dehydration was final.

At the pump, she gripped the long iron handle with both hands and pulled. The handle barely budged. She tried again, throwing her whole body against it. This time, the screech of grinding metal tore the air and the handle shifted with stiff resistance.

But nothing came out. No water. Not even a gasp of air.

She kept trying, desperation giving her strength she didn’t know she had. Up and down, up and down, pulling and pushing against machinery that had been designed for better days. Her arms burned with effort, her breath came in sharp gasps, but she didn’t stop.

Still nothing. The pump was bone dry. Unprimed and absolutely useless. She had gambled her safety on the possibility of water, and lost.

She sank to her knees beside the pump with an exhale of exhaustion. Her head bowed with disappointment, and for a moment she let herself feel the full measure of her situation. Alone, thirsty, and vulnerable.

That was when she heard it. A sound that didn’t belong to wind or settling debris. Footsteps, maybe, or the drag of something heavy across the ground. She looked up, attentively scanning the area.

At first she saw nothing but the usual catalog of abandonment. Then movement caught her eye, a shape that might have once been human, but now was not.

It stood just beyond the fence line, half-shrouded in shadows that seemed to cling to it like drapes. What remained of its skin was stretched over jutting bones, its tattered clothing hanging in strips that moved with each labored breath. Its left side looked almost normal, if you didn’t look too closely. The right side was a mess of exposed metal and failing circuits, an arm that ended in claws instead of fingers.

One eye glowed with the steady orange light of a machine that hadn’t learned it was supposed to be dead. The other socket was an empty hole, dark with decay.

This was a Hollowframe, one of the Dominion’s experiments in recycling the dead. Human corpses stripped of identity and refitted with mechanical parts, turned into soldiers that didn’t need to be paid or motivated or cared about. They were supposed to have shut down when the war ended, supposed to have fallen silent when their masters stopped sending signals. But in this new world, there were things harder to kill than their creators had anticipated.

This one had been wandering for years, probably, driven by programming that had outlived its purpose. It moved like a puppet with half its strings cut, lurching through the world in search of prey it couldn’t remember. But also, couldn’t forget.

And now it was looking at her with its single orange eye, processing her presence through circuits that had been designed to recognize targets and eliminate threats. She was small, unarmed, and alone. She was either prey or practice.

She didn’t scream. Screaming was for people who thought the world might still care about their fear. Instead, she grabbed the iron handle of the pump and pulled herself to her feet, her eyes never leaving that thing.

It took a step toward her, servos whining with the effort of movement. Then another, dragging its damaged leg behind it like an anchor. She could hear the mechanical parts grinding against each other, could smell the corruption of flesh that was beyond its expiration date.

She took a deep breath to calm her mind, and then she ran.

Her legs felt weak, but terror made up for what exhaustion had stolen. She stumbled through the gap in the fence, tearing her shirt on the sharp edges, not caring about anything except distance. The house was close, just another quarter mile.

Behind her, the Hollowframe began to move with more purpose, its programming finally recognizing the situation required action. She could hear it crashing through the fence, could hear the whine of motors as it shifted into predator mode.

She made it halfway to the house before her body betrayed her completely. Her legs gave out without warning, sending her sprawling face-first into gravel and debris. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs and filled her mouth with the taste of dust and blood. Pain flared through her hands and knees where the rocks had bitten deep, but she barely noticed. All her attention was focused on the sound of mechanical death getting closer.

She tried to push herself up, but her arms had nothing left to give. Her vision blurred as dehydration finally won. She realized with terrible clarity that she had reached the end of her strength. There was nowhere left to run, nothing left to fight with.

So she closed her eyes and thought about her mother’s scarf, the one that smelled like firewood and crushed hibiscus. She imagined it wrapped around her, warm and safe, as the end came rushing forward.

It wasn’t her memory, but it would have to do.

Her small body trembled, bracing for the moment the Hollowframe’s claws would slam into her back and end everything.

But the pain never came.

The sound of the Hollowframe stopped abruptly. She opened her eyes just in time to see the mechanical corpse crash backwards into an old brick wall, screaming as it slumped into a heap of twisted metal and rotting flesh.

Standing between her and the wreckage was something… no, someone.

For a brief moment, she thought she had been wrong about angels.

But then he turned to face her.

And everything changed.