The fire in the hearth gave only a weak hiss, as though it too had heard the story before and knew how it ended. Jack sat hunched on the broken stool, elbows on knees, the pendant swaying between his scarred fingers like a noose that had forgotten its purpose. Its faint pulse answered the slow, wounded drum inside his chest. Elisa and Aurora kept to the edges of the room, breathing shallow, afraid that any sudden move might shatter him completely.
Jack's voice, when it finally came, was barely louder than the fire, yet it filled the cabin like smoke.
The Past
"That day my great‑grandfather and grandfather died screaming in the timeless void. They bled so we could keep our crests, so humans could live free. The gods laughed once—cold, proud thunder—and spoke a single word. Every crest went dark."
He rubbed the pendant with his thumb, chasing warmth that had died the moment his mother did.
"Then came the cleansing. Nobles torn from their beds. Children cut down while they reached for mothers already cooling on the floor. Newborns crushed under mailed boots like soft fruit. I still taste the iron. I still hear the wet sounds when the wind dies."
A tear slid down his cheek, scalding, then froze in the draft.
"My mother held me against her heart. Her crest flared one last time—sunrise in a dying world—and she poured her life into this stone so the seal would pass me by. Her blood hit my face warm, like summer rain. Then the sword opened her throat and the rain turned cold."
His whole body shook now, small, violent tremors.
"She kissed me once, lips already blue, whispered 'Live, my heart,' and threw me through the portal. I landed alone. Everything I loved stayed behind, burning."
He pressed the pendant to his mouth, breathing her in.
"Some nights the silence is worse than the screaming. I'm still that boy, running, carrying her last heartbeat against my ribs. Every breath I take is borrowed from her grave."
The fire cracked. A coal died.
The Street
The portal spat me out a nine‑year‑old corpse that still moved.
I hit the street naked, skin blue in the wind's teeth, the pendant slapping my chest slick with my mother's blood. For one heartbeat it was still warm. Then the city stole it. Hunger sank claws into my stomach and twisted. The air stank of piss, coal smoke, and people who looked straight through me.
Humans. My people. They stepped over me like trash.
Something inside me snapped clean in half.
You let them kill us. You watched her die and did nothing. I hate you. I hope the gods come back and finish every last one of you.
The hate tasted sweet. It kept the cold out.
Two nights later the thugs found me. Boots, fists, cigarette burns. I stopped screaming; screams were for children who still believed in rescue. I only whispered the hate, letting it coat my tongue like armor.
Then a shadow fell across the boots.
Steve
A boy stepped into the circle of fists—ten, maybe eleven—moonlight in his wild brown hair, a crooked smile sharp enough to cut night itself.
"Close your eyes, kid," he said, soft as a lullaby. "This isn't for you."
I closed them.
The next fifteen minutes the alley sang: bone snapping, men begging, bodies hitting wet stone like dropped meat. When silence returned, it felt sacred.
A warm hand cupped my ruined face.
"Hey," the boy whispered, voice shaking with something fierce and gentle. "I'm Steve. From this second on, you're my little brother. Forever. No take‑backs."
I opened my eyes. His were bright with love that asked for nothing.
The hate cracked—just a hairline fracture—but light slipped through.
I cried then, ugly, choking, terrified that this too would be taken. Steve pulled me against his chest, arms locked like iron gates against every darkness that had ever touched me.
"I've got you, Jack," he breathed into my hair. "I've got you."
From the mouth of the alley, an old man with kind eyes and a pipe nodded once.
"Bring the stray home, little Steve," he said. "Family just got bigger."
Steve lifted me as though I weighed nothing. I buried my face in his neck—warm skin, rain and bread and safety—and cried until the tears ran dry, until the only sound left was the steady, stubborn drum of his heartbeat promising that the world was not finished being kind.
The Cabin
Back in the cabin, Jack fell silent. The pendant rested against his lips, quiet now. Elisa's hand settled on his shoulder. Aurora wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. Outside, the wind moaned like it remembered everything.
Jack's voice finally broke, thin as cracked ice. The cabin was silent except for the fire's last, dying breath.
He lifted the pendant to his lips one more time, pressing it there like a kiss he would never be allowed to return. "I still feel her cooling on my skin," he whispered. "Every morning I wake up expecting her arms. Every night I reach for them and find only cold air."
A sob tore out of him, raw and animal, the sound of something small being ripped in half. Elisa's hand tightened on his shoulder; Aurora's tears fell without shame.
"I thought the hate would keep me alive," Jack said, voice trembling. "But it only kept me breathing. Steve… Steve gave me a reason to want tomorrow."
He looked at them then, eyes red, shining, ancient in a young man's face. "I'm terrified," he confessed, so softly the flames almost swallowed it. "Because for the first time since that day, I have something to lose again."
The pendant slipped from his fingers and hung against his chest, warm now, not from magic, but from the heat of his own breaking heart.
Outside, snow began to fall, soft as forgiveness no one had earned. Inside, three people sat in the dark and let the boy who had once been a prince cry himself empty.