Everything in the world was falling apart.
But once, it hadn't been like this.
Once, Ashen had known warmth.
---
The memory came not as a flood, but a drip.
The sound of water hitting the clay bowl in the corner. Rain on the roof, uneven and soft, like footsteps on hollow bone. Ashen sat cross-legged, watching his mother twist long threads of wild grass into a broom. She hummed a tune. He didn't know the words, but he knew the feeling — it meant the morning was safe.
His older brother, Ragan, was bent over a cracked wooden board, carving little dogs out of pale bone. One had four legs. One had only two. Ashen used to think they were real, that they'd come alive if he wished hard enough.
The house was made of pressed mud and broken tile. It creaked in the wind, and once a whole corner collapsed during a monsoon. But the center, where the fire pit lay cold and black, was where they lived — where they joked, worked, argued.
His grandfather coughed a lot. His father didn't talk much. Both of them smelled like smoke and salt and old blood. But when they weren't angry, they were silent, which was better.
One evening, Ragan smuggled in a fruit from the trader's road — a bruised guava. "Stole it," he whispered with pride. "Want half?"
Ashen nodded eagerly. They split it behind the house, hiding the smell from their grandfather. Ragan licked the juice off his fingers like it was gold. "Someday," he said, "I'll steal you a whole basket. From the capital. The king's own."
Ashen had laughed. "There's no king anymore."
"There will be," Ragan said. "People always make one. When things go bad. They want someone to blame or follow."
Ashen didn't understand then. But he remembered how Ragan looked — like a candle burning at both ends. Bright. Doomed.
---
One winter, their mother traded a cracked comb for a blanket. They slept under it all together, like a pile of cats. Ashen remembered the smell — wool, dust, his mother's hair. Her arms were always cold. Her voice, never.
She told him stories of before the Collapse. How the world had towers that touched the sky, metal birds that flew without wings, and machines that listened like servants. Ashen didn't believe her. She was always making things softer, prettier.
But he loved her for that.
His father only came home in shadows. Sometimes drunk. Sometimes bleeding. Sometimes with coins. On those nights, they ate saltfish and flatbread. Ashen never asked where the money came from. He didn't want to know.
Then came the sickness.
First, it took the neighbor's goat. Then the boy who used to throw stones at Ragan. Then the baker. Then the baker's wife. It came like mist — invisible, soft, everywhere.
When Ragan started coughing, their mother went pale. She wrapped him in three blankets and burned dried herbs. She prayed quietly, even though she didn't believe in gods anymore.
Ragan smiled through fevered lips. "Don't worry, Ma," he whispered. "I'll steal from death itself."
He died three days later.
Ashen didn't speak for a week.
---
Their mother aged in hours. Her hair thinned, her hands shook. She still hummed, but it was tuneless, broken. His father didn't return anymore. His grandfather wandered the village muttering to himself.
Ashen started to collect glass. Little pieces from the ruin outside. He shaped them into teeth for one of Ragan's old bone dogs. He didn't know why. It didn't help. But it kept his fingers from trembling.
There were no more traders. No more food. The sky stayed gray, and birds stopped singing. When Ashen asked his mother why, she only said, "It's the end of the story."
"But who tells it?" he asked.
She didn't answer.
---
Ashen stood now at the edge of memory, still holding the bread.
The man was gone. The wind was rising. Somewhere behind his eyes, pain pulsed like a second heart.
He didn't know why he was remembering now. Maybe because hunger opened old doors. Maybe because the man had spoken like someone who knew. Or maybe because the story had to be told, before it vanished.
Ashen turned back toward the alley, where shadows bled into each other. He sat by a crumbled wall, pulled the rest of the bread from his coat, and chewed in silence.
He let the memory continue.
Let it carry him where it always led — to the end of the warmth.
To the beginning of ash.