His name was Nikolai.
It had been years since anyone had spoken it out loud. Out here, names were dead weight--things to be stolen,
used, or forgotten. But in the silence, in those cold hours when hunger gnawed and the wind whispered, he
remembered.
He was seven when the wild took his parents.
Not in some dramatic ambush or mutant attack--just hunger, cold, and the merciless emptiness of the world.
The kind of death that came slow, quiet, and cruel. The kind that didn't let you scream.
They had found shelter in a shattered greenhouse outside the City's reach. Thought they could make it work.
But the seeds never sprouted. The rats stayed away. And the winter came early that year.
He buried them with bare hands, frostbitten fingers trembling as he pushed soil over bones. Then he kept
walking.
He never stopped walking.
The plan was simple--keep breathing. Until the day he heard the myth.
It happened months ago, on a day bleached dry by a high, pitiless sun. Heat shimmered off the broken road,
and the light made everything feel brittle and exposed. He had crossed paths with a group of five--skeletal
figures dressed in patchwork gear, their faces hidden beneath cracked goggles, scarred masks, and strips of
scavenged cloth. Skin pale and blotched. Eyes wide and twitchy from hunger or worse. You could smell the
rot on them before they even spoke.
One of them, a tall man with a lopsided jaw and peeling cheeks, stepped forward, holding up a rusted tin can.
"Pulled this from an old cache east of the Sinkholes," he said. "Dried apples. Real ones." He gave a crooked
smile, revealing blackened teeth. "You look like you could use a bite."
Another figure, short and wiry with a pitted blade strapped to his thigh, let out a high-pitched chuckle. "We
don't bite. Much."
The others hung back, silent but circling like buzzards.
They laughed--sharp and sudden like broken glass.
Nikolai didn't.
He stood still, shoulders rising and falling with slow, careful breath. Eyes scanning, pretending to weigh the
offer. Inside, he was already watching their hands, their stances. None of them carried food. Just knives. Just
hunger.
He knew what they were the moment he saw their eyes: too wide, too bright. Laughing too easily. Too hungry
to be human.
"I got scraps to trade," he muttered, voice rough with dust.
The tall man grinned wider, stepping closer. "Then you're in luck. We got a warm fire and no trouble--just sit,
eat, swap stories. We don't leave folks starving out here." He gestured toward a crumbling overpass in the
distance, where smoke curled faintly into the sky.
"Few others already settling in," he added. "You bring scraps, we bring heat--it's how it works out here.
Everyone gives a little."
His tone was too smooth. Too practiced. The kind of voice that had lured people before.
Nikolai said nothing. Just let the silence stretch, pretending to consider. Inside, his grip had already tightened
slightly on the worn strap of his pack. If this was how they fished, they were expecting someone more
desperate. Someone slower.
He saw it in their eyes. The way their hands stayed too close to their blades. The way they kept glancing at
each other like wolves sizing up a wounded deer.
Still, Nikolai played along. Kept his eyes low, face slack, like just another desperate stray.
But the moment the tall one turned his back, Nikolai moved.
He pivoted fast, driving his shoulder into the nearest figure--a lean one with twitchy fingers already reaching
for a blade. They hit the ground hard, and before the others could react, Nikolai rolled away, pulling his own
knife.
The short one lunged first, screaming. Nikolai ducked, felt the blade slice across his upper arm--hot pain
blooming, but not deep. He countered fast, ramming the hilt of his knife into the attacker's throat, then slashing
upward.
Two down.
The tall one was already charging, rusted pipe in hand, eyes wide with surprise and fury. He swung wild.
Nikolai took the hit on his side, felt ribs protest, but stayed on his feet. He ducked low, swept the man's legs
from under him, then drove the blade home.
The last two hesitated. Just a flicker. But hesitation in the wilds was fatal.
Nikolai shifted his stance and faked a throw with a rock--no sound, just the motion. It was a bluff, a twitch of
muscle and movement designed to draw attention. As the nearest one flinched and shifted his weight
instinctively, Nikolai was already moving. He closed the gap in a breath, grabbed the man by the back of the
neck, and slammed him headfirst into a broken post. Blood sprayed. The fifth tried to run.
Didn't get far.
The scuffle was fast. Ugly. Loud.
And when it ended, the clearing was silent again.
Nikolai stood over the bodies, chest heaving, blood dripping from his fingers and his arm burning like it was
on fire. The only sounds were the wind brushing over cracked concrete and the slow, shallow rhythm of his
own breath. He wiped the blade clean on one of their coats, not even sure which.
Then came the sound--scraping metal, a choked cry, something dragging.
It was the first. The one Nikolai had dropped at the very beginning--the one whose fall had been sudden, but
not final. Somehow, he'd clawed his way through the chaos, slipping free while others bled out around him.
Somehow, he'd crawled out of the chaos, clinging to survival like a weed in cracked stone. He'd slipped away
during the fight, crawling through the wreckage. Now he was limping toward a rusted pipe, trying to lift it
with trembling hands.
Nikolai approached slowly, blood still trickling from his arm. The man raised the pipe and swung
once--clumsily. Nikolai caught it with his forearm, gritted his teeth against the pain, then wrenched it free and
drove the end into the man's knee. The crack was wet and sharp.
The man screamed, fell, then tried to crawl. Nikolai kicked him onto his back. The pipe lifted again, this time
above the man's head.
"Wait!" he gasped, eyes wide with panic. "I--I got something. Not food. Better."
Nikolai didn't speak. He held the pipe steady.
"A story," the man coughed, voice thick with desperation. "A real one. About a Witch."
His words tumbled out fast, slurred with fear. "She grants anything. Anything you want. If you find her. It's
not just a myth. People say she lives beyond the wilds. Past the frozen rivers." He hesitated, breathing ragged.
"I heard it once. Didn't care then. But out here... maybe it means something."
Nikolai didn't blink.
"Where?" he asked quietly.
The man sobbed. "I don't know. Just rumors. Just stories. But I thought--maybe--it could save me."
It didn't.
The silence after was long.
He hadn't believed it. Not really. But in the wilds, belief wasn't the point.
Out here, you needed something to follow. A direction. A reason.
Even if it was madness.
So now he walked. Not toward hope. Not toward safety.
Toward the Witch.