Lili didn't know how long she walked.
The sun was just rising when she limped away from the Redfield estate, the hammer dragging behind her in the dirt. She crossed the gravel roads, the treeline swallowing her one slow step at a time, her body screaming with every movement.
Her side still burned from the kick. Her knees were scraped raw. Her mouth was dry again.
She didn't cry.
There was no one to hear it, and nothing left to say.
---
By the time she reached the other side of Lake Mansfield, the sun was high in the sky. The lake shimmered quietly—cold and calm, the wind whispering across its surface.
She dropped beside it, her knees splashing into the shallows. For a moment, she just stared at her reflection: a filthy, rag-covered girl with wild, silver-blonde hair and bruises down her arms.
> "Not me."
The words escaped her in a whisper.
But the face didn't change.
---
She drank from the lake, water cold enough to sting her teeth. She cupped her hands and splashed her face. The bruises didn't wash off. The pain stayed.
She spent that whole day by the water. Laying in the grass. Wading in to clean herself. Nibbling at crushed berries and dandelion leaves. Her body needed time.
Her soul needed silence.
---
That night, she curled beneath a pine tree by the shore. A pile of pine needles became her bed. A discarded tarp—stolen weeks earlier from a trash pile near a hunting shack—was her blanket.
She slept, and didn't dream.
---
On the second day, she climbed higher.
There, on a ridge above the lake, she found a mossy boulder with a clear view of the mansion.
The Redfield estate.
It looked peaceful. Warm. Alive. Firelight danced behind tall windows. Shadows moved within.
She could see a boy running in the backyard. Fast, graceful. Strong.
Lili narrowed her eyes.
He looked familiar—not by face, but in the way he moved. Confident. Focused. His stride reminded her of someone.
But not Frank.
> "Frank wasn't that tall. Or that clean."
> "Frank didn't move like he owned the world."
Still... something about him pulled at her. Like a smell you recognize but can't place. Like a face in a dream.
She didn't understand it.
She didn't try to.
She was here for Frank.
Not some golden boy in a mansion.
---
Each day after that, she came to the same ridge.
Watched the house from afar.
Waited.
The boy—Chad—was out there often. Running, climbing trees, sometimes sitting alone in the yard. She'd tilt her head, wondering. He felt… off somehow. Important, maybe. But not Frank.
And that was the point.
She wasn't looking for a stranger.
She was looking for her best friend.
The boy who saved her life.
The man who died beside her in fire and pain.
Frank.
And when he came back—because she believed he would—he'd come back here.
Just like he always said he would.
So she would wait.
As long as it took.
The rain didn't arrive with thunder.
It came quietly—seeping into the forest like breath held too long. The sky turned gray and heavy, and the wind lost its warmth.
By the time Lili noticed the shift, it was already too late.
---
She had no shelter on the ridge. No real fire, no tent, nothing but the tarp she used as a blanket and the hollow beneath the pine tree where she curled up each night. When the first drops hit her cheek, she didn't move. She just blinked, letting the cold drizzle soak into her hair.
By nightfall, it was pouring.
---
Her body gave up its warmth quickly. The bruises on her ribs ached deeper with every drop that hit them. Her clothes—what rags remained—clung to her like ice, no longer fabric, just weight.
She huddled under her tree, gripping her hammer, her back to the trunk, shivering so hard her teeth clacked together.
She tried to sleep.
She couldn't.
---
Hours passed.
The wind howled down from the ridge. The rain grew sharper, colder, relentless. Her fingers were so numb she couldn't feel the dirt beneath them. Her breath fogged in the air.
Then, slowly, she stopped shivering.
That was the moment she knew.
> "This is how it ends. Again."
Her body remembered the last time. The car. The heat. The moment when it all shut down and she stopped being Lili.
Or Bruce.
Or anyone.
> "Not again."
---
She sat up, her arms trembling with effort. Her knees were too stiff to straighten at first. But she pushed. One movement at a time. She pulled her tarp around her like a cape and started to walk.
No direction.
Just away from the cold. Away from the lake. Away from failure.
She didn't even think at first. She just moved.
Then a memory came—not a face or a voice, but a detail.
Frank, years ago, talking about old survival stories.
> "Vermont's full of abandoned mines and old logging caves," he had said once. "Back in the 1800s they'd dig everywhere for copper and coal. Most are gone now. Forgotten."
Not to her.
Not now.
---
The mountain.
It had to have something.
---
She followed the stream up.
Her feet were numb. Her legs bled from bramble scratches. She slipped more than once and caught herself on roots, her hands raw and muddy.
Every step felt like a dare.
> "One more. Just one more."
---
Then she saw it.
The pool.
It looked black under the rain—muddy and still, like a mirror covered in ash. On the far side, partially obscured by vines and brush, was a stone wall, arched and low.
There was a darkness behind it.
A hole.
Not a big one. Just wide enough for a child to crawl through.
---
She fell to her knees in front of it. Crawled forward.
Pushed the vines aside. The rain beat down behind her.
And she slipped inside.
---
Inside the Cave
The air was different—still. Cold, but not biting. No wind. No water. Just stone and silence.
She dragged herself in further, collapsing onto the dry dirt.
Her breathing was ragged. Her heart slow.
She didn't move for a long time.
She didn't know if she would wake up again.
But the cave didn't let her go.
Not that night.
She should've turned back.
Every instinct, every bone, every cold shiver in her chest whispered the same thing: "This is enough. You're too weak. Just lie down and sleep."
But the mountain kept calling.
And Lili—small, starved, broken—kept climbing.
---
It wasn't a trail anymore.
Just earth, stone, and slippery roots.
The stream she'd been following trickled beside her, cutting a path through the moss and fallen needles. It was thin—barely a whisper of water—but it went up. And that meant it came from somewhere.
Somewhere higher. Somewhere hidden.
---
The rain had lessened, but not stopped.
It fell in curtains through the trees, filtering down like mist. Her clothes clung to her like a second skin, her skin ice cold. Her hair, soaked and tangled, slapped against her cheeks with every movement.
Her knees buckled twice on the slope. The second time, she didn't get up right away.
She lay there, her face pressed to the dirt, and whispered to herself:
> "One more."
> "One more step."
> "Just one more."
It was the same thing she used to say during drills. During training. During the missions Frank dragged her through when he thought she wouldn't make it.
She missed his voice.
She missed his hand grabbing her collar and yanking her back to her feet.
Now, all she had was memory.
But it was enough.
---
The stream curved around a rock outcropping, and Lili followed it, pulling herself up with her hands. Her nails were broken. Her skin torn. She didn't notice anymore.
The forest thinned.
The wind changed.
And then she saw it.
---
A pool.
Still, black, and sunken into a natural bowl of stone. Mud and leaves ringed its edges, and behind it—barely visible through a curtain of overgrowth—was a wall of stone.
And in that wall, a shadow.
A hole.
It was small. Almost nothing. Hidden under a curtain of vines and moss.
But it was dry. And it was dark.
Lili crawled to the edge of the pool, dipped her cracked hands in, and drank without thinking. The water tasted like earth and rain. It burned her throat.
She didn't care.
She turned toward the wall. Pulled herself through the vines.
And there it was.
---
A cave.
The stone was rough, shaped by time and water. The floor was uneven, but dry. The air was still. No light reached further than a few feet.
But she could feel it.
> "This is it."
> "This is where I stop running."
She didn't explore.
Not yet.
She crawled into the first chamber, curled in the driest corner, and lay there shivering.
And for the first time in days, she didn't feel the wind.
She didn't feel the world.
She just felt… still.
When she woke, she wasn't sure she had.
The darkness inside the cave was so complete it felt like a second skin. There was no color. No sound. Just the damp cold of stone and the distant, steady drip of water echoing somewhere deeper within.
Lili's breath came slow and shallow. Her entire body ached—not in sharp pain, but in a deep, gnawing way, like her bones had been hollowed out. Her fingers twitched against the dirt floor, searching for something, anything.
She found the hammer.
Still there. Still hers.
And then she knew: she had survived the night.
---
A soft light touched the entrance. Faint and gray. Morning.
She crawled to it, dragging herself forward until her head emerged from the cave mouth, like a creature being reborn.
The sun hadn't fully risen yet, but the sky was painted in pale blue and fading pink. Mist clung to the trees below. Birds were already singing.
She sat there in the mouth of the cave, wrapped in her torn tarp, hugging her knees to her chest. The wind kissed her cheeks, dry now, clean from the rain.
She could see the lake below. The forest that had nearly killed her. The world she had escaped.
And further in the distance—just barely visible through a break in the trees—the mansion.
The Redfield estate.
The place she had once believed might hold Frank.
---
Her throat tightened, but she didn't cry.
She had cried enough.
> "Frank always said I needed to survive."
> "He said no matter what—no matter how bad it got—I had to live. Not because I deserved to."
> "But because someone had to."
She thought of the explosion. The last thing she saw was his back shielding her. His arms wrapped around her as the world burned.
And now she was here.
Alive.
And he wasn't.
---
But maybe…
> "Maybe he's coming."
Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday.
He had promised he'd build a house in the mountains.
Somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe.
And that mansion—that place—was close enough.
> "Maybe… if I wait… he'll come back. Just like I did."
She looked down at her hands. Small. Dirty. Not hers, but… hers now.
> "I messed everything up last time."
> "I charged in. I got us both killed."
> "This time, I'll wait."
> "I'll be patient."
She stood slowly, bare feet pressed to stone. Her legs shook, but they held.
The forest below her was dangerous. Cold. Starving.
But she had a roof.
She had water.
She had a place to wait.
And she had time.
---
> "I'll survive."
> "For him."
> "For as long as it takes."
Survival wasn't heroic.
It was quiet. Grim. Repetitive.
It wasn't fighting monsters or winning battles.
It was waking up every day with no food, no fire, and no one…
…and choosing not to die anyway.
---
Lili started by clearing the entrance.
She pulled away the vines and shifted the moss to make it easier to slip in and out—then repositioned everything perfectly so that from ten feet away, it still looked like nothing more than a patch of overgrowth.
She stacked small stones near the entrance as a windbreak. Not enough to block sightlines, but enough to cut the chill that crept in after sunset.
Inside, she swept the dirt floor with a pine bough. She used the branches to cover the worst of the cracks, making a bed she could at least curl up on without shivering straight through to morning.
It wasn't comfort.
It was stability.
And that was the beginning.
---
She explored the cave more slowly now.
When she slipped through the narrow crack into the second chamber, she did so on her stomach, dragging her thin frame forward like a snake. The space on the other side was bigger—darker. But dry.
> "Storage."
She didn't need much space to sleep. But this room? She could hide things here.
Stones she liked the shape of. Bits of string and cloth. Broken cans or bones she might fashion into tools. Pinecones. Anything useful.
She even found a bird skull once. Clean. Light. She didn't know why, but she kept it.
It sat on a rock like a silent watchman, facing the cave mouth.
---
The water source outside—the muddy pool—was steady, but not clean.
Still, she used it to wash. It kept the worst of the dirt and blood away. And more importantly, a stream ran from it downhill, toward Lake Mansfield.
She followed it once, marking the trees with small cuts from her hammer so she wouldn't get lost. It took hours, but it led all the way down—a lifeline to the wider world.
But she only visited when she had to.
That house—that man—still lived down there.
And she knew better than to get too close.
---
Food was harder.
She dug a pit trap near the ridge where the rabbits came at dawn. It took three tries to get it right. On the fourth day, she caught one.
She cried after she killed it.
Not because of guilt—but because it worked.
> "I can do this."
She cooked the meat over a fire she made by striking a flint against her hammer. Just sparks, then dry grass, then smoke, then flame.
She used a flat stone as a pan, a sharpened stick as a spit.
It was the first hot meal she'd had in days.
She barely chewed. She just ate. Silently. Slowly. Crying again.
---
She collected berries. Dug roots. Ate bugs when she had to. Crunched on dried bark when her stomach wouldn't stop screaming.
She made her clothes from bark strips, moss, and old fabric. Her dress became a tunic. Her tarp, a cloak. She wrapped her feet in dried grass and pine sap to hold it together.
She looked like a myth, a forest ghost.
But she was alive.
And she was watching.
---
Every few days, she returned to her lookout above the Redfield estate.
She watched the mansion from her perch. Watched Chad training. Running. Laughing with the Wilson boys. Sitting alone sometimes.
Sometimes she wanted to scream at him.
To run down and shout:
> "I'm here! You promised you'd find me!"
But she didn't.
Because he didn't know.
Because he wasn't Frank—not yet.
And because she had promised herself:
> "This time, I wait."
She never got close again.
Not to the porch. Not to the gate.
Not to the path that led up to the Redfield estate.
But from the high ridge where the moss grew thick and the pines stood tall, she watched.
Every day.
Every single day.
---
Lili lay flat on her stomach atop a mossy ledge, hidden between two thick tree trunks. A pair of hollowed pinecones served as makeshift binoculars—she didn't need them to see, not really, but they helped her focus.
Below, the mansion spread out like a painting. Clean. Symmetrical. Unreachable.
A place of warmth she was not allowed to touch.
---
She always came in the afternoon, when the shadows were long and the house came alive.
And that's when she saw him.
The boy.
He ran laps around the estate with perfect form—graceful and controlled, faster than any boy she'd ever seen. Sometimes he trained with a stick like it was a sword. Sometimes he practiced handstands in the grass.
Sometimes he just sat on the porch, staring out at the woods like he was looking for something.
Lili never understood why, but every time she saw him, her chest felt… strange.
Like a memory without form. A dream just out of reach.
---
She didn't know him.
Not really.
He wasn't Frank.
Frank had been taller, leaner. Scarred. Quiet.
This boy—Chad—was strong in a way that seemed effortless. His hair was golden. His eyes sharp. His face noble.
But every once in a while, she'd see him stop in the yard, freeze mid-step, and glance toward the ridge—toward her.
He never saw her.
But he looked.
Like a part of him sensed something.
And that was enough.
---
Lili kept notes. Etched marks in a flat stone beside her cave.
One scratch for every time she saw him.
Three scratches if he looked her way.
Five if he sat alone.
She never missed a day.
---
Sometimes she whispered from the trees:
> "I'm here."
> "I waited like I said I would."
> "You'll remember me. One day."
But she never let him hear.
Because she wasn't ready.
Because maybe… he wasn't either.
---
Other children played near the house.
The Wilson twins—the loud one with the messy hair and the sharp one with the judging stare. They sparred with Chad. Laughed with him.
A girl too, with silver braids and cold eyes. She seemed to watch everything, like she was always calculating something.
Lili didn't hate them.
But she envied them.
They were in the world.
She was in the woods.
---
One night, after a heavy rain, she sat beneath the pine tree by the cliff, soaking wet, teeth chattering.
She looked down at the mansion and whispered:
> "He's still in there."
> "He's still alive."
> "So I'll keep going. Just one more day."
And she marked another line in her stone.
The snow came without warning.
One night, she fell asleep to the sound of rustling pine needles and distant owls.
By morning, the forest was silent.
When Lili crawled from her cave, wrapped in her tarp and moss-laced cloak, the world had turned white.
The pool outside was rimmed with ice. The trees stood still, coated in powder. Her footprints vanished the moment she stepped away.
She stood in it barefoot for a moment, blinking into the bright morning light, breath fogging in front of her.
Her first thought wasn't fear.
It was awe.
---
Then the cold settled in—real cold.
No more thin breezes or chilly rain. This was bone-deep, air-burning, Vermont winter cold.
Her body wasn't ready.
But she was.
---
She moved fast—methodical. Every lesson, every scrap of survival knowledge she had buried in her mind from childhood documentaries, Frank's rambling stories, and desperation-fueled Google searches in her old life came clawing back to the surface.
---
She lined the inner walls of the cave with bark and pine branches.
She insulated her sleeping area with layered moss, dry leaves, and stones to trap body heat.
She blocked the narrow entrance with stacked stones and wove grass mats to hang over it like a curtain.
She scavenged firewood daily. Dragged it up the slope until her hands bled.
Tied it together with string made from twisted bark.
At night, she sat huddled beside a shallow fire pit—flames flickering weakly, barely enough to warm her hands.
But it was fire.
And it was hers.
---
Food became more difficult.
The rabbits vanished.
Berries were long gone.
Tree bark and dried grass became the new staples.
She chewed on softened pine twigs. Dug up frozen roots. Ate snow to stay hydrated.
Sometimes, when her body couldn't stop shaking, she curled up in the second cave chamber and whispered to herself:
> "Frank said survive."
> "That's what I'm doing."
---
And still, she watched.
Even in snow, she climbed to her lookout when she could.
Wrapped in her makeshift furs and hidden beneath a pine branch awning, she'd stare down at the mansion—now crowned in white, smoke curling from the chimney.
She saw Chad less often now.
But when she did, she etched another mark in the stone beside her.
Some days, just seeing him walk across the yard was enough to keep her going.
Other days, she lay still in her cave and whispered:
> "Please be safe. Please stay there."
---
One evening, the sky turned orange as the sun dipped below the snowy trees.
She stepped out of the cave and looked at the horizon, her breath steaming in the air.
And she said aloud:
> "Winter's here."
> "But so am I."
> "Let it come."
Then she turned, stepped back into the dark, and pulled the stone curtain closed behind her.