A lot changed since then. The house, once filled with life, had grown quieter, colder. Despite Agatha’s best efforts, it felt like the warmth we once shared was slipping away, like the air itself had frozen over.

Calista and I had turned seven — though sometimes it felt like she had already grown beyond that. She wasn’t the same bubbly girl she used to be.

Since my tantrum, things between us had shifted.

Erik tried to fix it by enrolling Calista in my place at school. Somehow, despite whatever mess the White Legion was — some part of Erik’s past I didn’t really understand — they managed to get the money refunded and signed her up for the next year.

But it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t just school that was changing her; it was like something inside her had quieted. She didn’t ask me to play anymore. Instead, she’d ask for help with her homework. I didn’t mind helping her, but it stung. There was a distance between us now, a silence that hadn’t been there before.

It was my fault, I ruined it.

Since I didn’t go to school, I started helping Erik and Agatha around the house. Dusting furniture. Washing clothes. Sewing patches into worn-out sleeves. Sweeping beside Agatha, her hums the only music in our cold little world. Housewife tasks, I guess. Quiet work. Repetitive.

Erik handled the rest—the heavy stuff. Chopping wood, carving spoons and ladles, hauling bundles to the village market miles away. That was his job. Providing. Making things from nothing.

Our house sat alone, tucked behind the hills, far from the village. Isolated. Quiet. In all the years I’d lived here, I hadn’t seen another child. Not one. Just Calista.

Sometimes I wondered if we were the only ones in the world.

But then—one day, while collecting wood with Erik—everything changed.

Trudging through the snow, I followed Erik toward a scraggly patch of trees. Hardly a forest—but out here, on the frozen plains, even a dozen bare trunks looked like something vast.

I shoved my hands deeper into the coat Agatha had mended last winter, then gave up and pulled them out, dragging down my scarf to breathe warmth into my palms. My fingers were already pink. Numb.

Erik glanced back over his shoulder, not slowing. His axe swung on one shoulder, and tools clinked at his belt—hammer, knife, rope.

“Oh, Kam,” he sighed. “I told you to bring your gloves today.”

“Calista has them.”

“You need them more than she does. Get them from her when she gets home, okay?”

“…Okay.”

That was all we said. It’s all we ever say now.

We used to be closer. Back when I still believed I could belong here. Back when pretending to be their son didn’t fill me with shame.

Now the guilt clings to me like frost. For existing.

But I’m sure I would feel worse if I died.

After nearly an hour of slogging through the snow, we reached what Erik liked to call “the woods.” Really, it was just a blot of green smeared across the white landscape—like someone had sneezed into the world’s cleanest notebook.

I tugged my scarf higher as Erik dropped his axe beside a few old stumps. This was one of his usual spots—thin trees, cut low, scarred earth showing through the frost. He pulled a tarp off a rack of logs, his breath clouding around him.

“Kam?” he called, a little winded. “Go find some firewood, will you?”

“Okay.”

I wandered off toward the edges of the grove, crunching through frostbitten leaves. I kept my eyes low, searching for dry branches. We’d need a lot of wood—more than usual. Winter was coming, fast and cruel.

In the dead of it, even schools and markets shut down. Only lunatics went out in that weather.

Erik would be one of them.

Not because he wanted to be. But because he had to. He had to provide for his family, all year round.

The job of a father isn’t seasonal.

I reached the edge of the woods, arms full of sticks. They weren’t heavy, but the cold had made my fingers numb. The sun broke through the clouds, blinding against the snow—and that’s when I saw it.

A building.

Fenced off, tucked at the bottom of a shallow valley like a secret someone forgot to hide.

I froze. My chest tightened, and not from the cold.

It was the first new thing I’d seen in years. Not a tree. Not a stump. Not Erik.

Just… something else.

My arms ached to drop the wood. My legs wanted to run.

Erik would notice, wouldn’t he?

...Maybe not.

It couldn’t be more than a ten-minute walk.

I set the sticks gently against the base of a tree, then turned downhill, heart pounding harder than it should’ve. The snow crunched beneath my boots as I moved toward the unknown, chasing a flicker of something I hadn’t felt in years.

Excitement.