The thaw came unexpectedly.After ten days of howling wind and ghost-white skies, the clouds cracked open and let in a sliver of sun. It wasn’t warm, but it was golden. The kind of light that made snow glisten instead of blind. The kind that reminded you the world wasn’t always smoke and blood.Kabri stood at the edge of the frozen lake with a pair of binoculars, scanning the ridge. Amir was inside the cabin, practicing his handwriting by the fireplace, tracing the alphabet as if each letter was a wound he wanted to heal.Kabri lowered the binoculars and breathed deeply. The mountain air felt sharp, clean. His lungs, used to fire and dust, almost didn’t know what to do with it.But peace always had a limit.And the past had teeth.He took the snowmobile out that afternoon.The same one he’d hidden in the rear shed, covered with a tarp and buried beneath logs. It hummed like a beast reawakened, and as he pushed it through the shallow pass between peaks, Kabri’s mind returned to the man

It started on the twelfth morning.No "good morning."No cough.Not even the sound of a book opening.Amir sat by the frosted window with a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders, his eyes fixed on the ridge beyond the pines. Kabri made breakfast—soft eggs, toasted bread, tea with sugar—but the boy didn’t touch a thing.“Amir,” Kabri said gently, placing the plate down. “Eat.”Amir didn’t nod.Didn’t shake his head.Didn’t blink.Just stared into the pale light as if something out there was whispering louder than any voice could reach him.---At first, Kabri thought it was grief.Then trauma.Then maybe even stubbornness—a child’s protest without the vocabulary to explain it.But as the days passed, and the silence deepened, it became something else.A fortress.A refusal.An exile.---The cabin became a library of unsaid things.Each room held the ghost of a conversation that never happened. Kabri found himself talking to fill the void, reading aloud from old war memoirs or p

The knock was soft.Not thunderous, not urgent—just a rhythm Kabri recognized like a half-remembered lullaby. Three taps. Pause. Two more.He stood from the kitchen table, his knife still buried in half-peeled apples, Amir asleep near the fire again. Outside, a dusting of snow covered the steps, and the trees whispered secrets to the wind. There shouldn’t be anyone here. Not this far into the mountains. Not after all this time.He reached for the pistol beneath the floorboard.His fingers hesitated.He already knew.The door creaked open before he could unlock it.And there he was.Jamil.Not a ghost.Not a hallucination.Not a memory.Flesh and blood.Wearing black.Snow on his shoulders.His hair longer. His beard sharper. But the eyes? The eyes were exactly the same—burning with that unreadable blend of hatred and love, of fire and frost.“Hello, brother.”Kabri didn’t raise the gun.He couldn’t.Jamil stepped inside like he owned the place. His boots left no prints on the wooden f

The storm rolled in fast.Snow lashed against the cabin windows like clawed fingers from the sky. Amir sat curled under his blanket, drawing shapes in the fogged glass while Kabri tended the fire in silence. Outside, the mountains were draped in white sorrow. Inside, memory crackled louder than the flames.It had been ten days since Kabri rejected Jamil’s offer.Ten days of peace that felt like a held breath.Ten days of wondering if Evelyn’s voice would ever fade from his mind.But she returned that night—through a whisper, not from the grave, but from a box.A black recorder.Unmarked.Left in Kabri’s satchel.---He found it while rearranging supplies, buried beneath old clothes and a knife he hadn’t used since Morocco.The device was cheap. Scuffed. Obsolete.But familiar.It was hers.The one Evelyn used to document Fred’s threats. The one she once used to sing lullabies to Amir in the old safehouse. She’d carried it with her always. Even into fire.He sat by the firelight, stare

The cold bit harder now.Kabri’s coat was soaked through from melted snow and smoke. His body ached from the shrapnel in his back and the long sprint through the forest. Amir’s breathing was shallow beside him, a boy wrapped in both fear and exhaustion.They had run for hours.The fire had turned night into an orange nightmare behind them. The forest had swallowed their footprints by morning.And now—shelter.A hunting shed.No larger than a prison cell, nestled between ancient oaks.Unmarked. Forgotten.And just strong enough to buy time.Kabri bolted the rusted door behind them and scanned the single room. A crate of old tools. A steel pipe. Dusty bottles of water. A cracked window too small to crawl through.No radio.No help.No escape.He looked down at his final weapon.A pistol.One clip.Seven rounds.His shotgun had been lost in the fire. His knife was bent from an earlier fight. His body was failing.But the pistol... the pistol was clean.Loaded.He looked at Amir.The boy