The snow was no longer white.It had soaked it in silence, as if the earth itself didn’t want to scream anymore.Blood ran like melted wine from the edge of the hunting shed, painting the forest floor in dull crimson ribbons. Kabri stood in the doorway, his pistol now just a cold piece of metal in his palm—empty, heavy, useless.He didn’t remember how long he had stood there. Minutes? Hours?Only the groaning of the dying men behind him told him the nightmare was still real.---One crawled toward the tree line, dragging half a body behind him. Kabri didn’t stop him. Let him bleed. Let the trees take him.Another, younger than the rest—no older than Kabri had been when he first joined Fred—lay crumpled against the firewood stack, eyes glassy, a hole through his throat. Still clutching a rosary. Still bleeding. Still warm.Kabri stepped out into the open air.Each footstep left a red imprint behind. His boots no longer crunched—they squelched.---“Uncle…” Amir’s voice from behind the

The cabin had become a court.A courtroom without laws.A witness stand with no truth.And a judge who no longer believed in justice.Each night, Kabri dragged the chair across the wooden floor, its legs screeching like a warning to the wind outside. Amir would disappear to the attic, headphones pressed to his ears, trying to block out the voices—one measured, one mocking, both fractured.Downstairs, the ritual began.The trial of Jamil.No jury.Only silence and snow as audience.---“Why Evelyn?” Kabri asked on the first night.Jamil blinked.His face was gaunt now, lips cracked from dehydration, but his eyes held their light. Always that gleam, as if a game was still being played.“I sent her to break you,” he said plainly.Kabri flinched.“I know that,” he said. “But why lie about the child?”Jamil leaned forward, the chains on his wrists clinking against the floor.“Because I knew you’d believe it. You were always desperate for a second chance.”Kabri’s voice turned cold. “With h

The fog came with the thaw.Not snow, not rain—just a heavy mist that crawled over the mountains like a second skin, blinding, muting, and swallowing all that dared move through it.Kabri awoke first. He always did now.He brewed weak tea from pine needles and boiled water, careful not to wake Amir. The boy had finally started to sleep through the night again, his breathing steady, the nightmares pushed further back into the corners of his memory.But Kabri knew better than to trust quiet.When he opened the cabin door, the world had disappeared.The fog was thick—unmoving, clinging to the pines like a burial cloth. No wind. No birds. Just stillness.And footprints.Just one set.Not coming toward the cabin.Leaving it.---The gun Amir had set on the table was gone.So was the spare coat.And one of the knives.Kabri closed his eyes, pressing his fingers against his temples. Not in surprise—but in the kind of slow, exhausted frustration reserved for a man who’d already fought too man

The wind came from the east that morning, dragging with it the scent of pine sap and thawing soil. It was the first sign that winter was retreating—and Kabri, standing beneath the gray light of early dawn, took it as a sign.He’d barely spoken since the night he reburied Evelyn’s remains. Her ghost had stopped singing. The hallucinations were quiet now, not gone, but sleeping.But with that silence came a dangerous clarity.A new voice.His own.Kabri stood in the middle of the cabin’s main room. Amir was asleep on the cot, curled under heavy blankets, one hand clutching the locket he now wore around his neck. It once belonged to Kabri. He had passed it to the boy without ceremony, only saying:“You remember for me.”Now Kabri’s eyes scanned the room—not with nostalgia, but with judgment.This place had served its purpose.But this chapter of his life had to die.He began gathering everything.Maps, weapons, coats soaked in blood, the cracked mirror where he’d seen Evelyn’s face behin

Kabri returned to the Alfama district in silence. The streets had not changed. Children still played barefoot in side alleys, the scent of sardines grilling on coal fires still curled through the air. But something in the wind had shifted.It carried a message.Something darker. Personal.The kind of wind that remembered everything you’d tried to bury.He pushed open the apartment door. Amir wasn’t there.But that wasn’t what made him freeze.It was the letter.A single envelope, placed carefully on the chipped wooden table, untouched by wind or time.His name was written on the front in bold strokes:KABRI.No one had written that name since before the betrayals, before Evelyn, before Amir’s birth.And the handwriting?Undeniable.He sat down slowly.The chair creaked under him.The envelope opened like a wound.“Brother,”I’ve decided to let you come to me. I won’t run this time. But know this—every step you take toward me, I’ve already taken three into your past. You left me in