The wind howled like an animal outside the cave.
Snow had built up in jagged mounds around the entrance, narrowing the opening to a crawlspace. Cold air seeped in anyway, creeping over the stone floor like fog. Lili lay curled beneath layers of moss, fur, and the scrap tarp she still clung to from her earliest days.
She hadn't eaten in days.
Her last fire had gone out two nights ago.
Now she was drifting—not asleep, not awake. Just fading.
---
Her breath was shallow. Her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. Her body trembled in slow, irregular pulses, like a clock winding down. Her fingers were stiff. Her legs were numb. Her heartbeat was quiet and small.
The cave was black—so dark she no longer saw the walls even when her eyes were open.
There was no pain anymore.
Only cold.
Only stillness.
And then… the dreams came.
---
The first was soft.
Not hers.
A little girl sat alone in the back seat of a car. Windows fogged. Summer sunlight baked the roof. Her dress clung to her. Her lips were cracked.
No one came.
Outside, a woman screamed at a man. Doors slammed. Bottles clinked.
Inside, the girl did not cry.
She waited.
And then… stopped waiting.
---
Lili stirred in the cave.
Her fingers curled tighter, but she could not remember doing it.
---
Then came another vision.
A room. Faded carpet. A blinking CRT television playing old Pokémon reruns. Bruce—her—sprawled on the couch, legs crossed, eyes wide. Ash Ketchum shouted something brave and childish through the TV speakers.
Frank sat nearby, arms crossed, unimpressed.
> "You're such a dork."
> "He keeps going," Bruce answered. "No matter what."
> "He's a cartoon character. You know that, right?"
> "He never quits."
> "Yeah, well, he never had to pay rent."
They both laughed.
The picture faded.
---
Another scene. Later.
Frank standing at a broken window, blood dried on Bruce's hands. A mission gone wrong. Another failure.
> "You've got to stop chasing ghosts," Frank said.
> "It's the only thing I'm good at."
Frank exhaled.
> "Then get good at something else."
Bruce didn't answer.
Frank continued, softer now.
> "Live first. Fix the world later."
> "You think I can?"
> "No," Frank said, walking away. "I think you will. You just have to stop dying long enough to try."
---
Lili gasped and opened her eyes.
The cave greeted her with silence.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths.
She was still here.
---
She didn't cry.
The tears were frozen somewhere inside her. But her thoughts came clear for the first time in days.
She wasn't Lili.
Not that girl in the car.
And she wasn't Bruce either—not the man with blood on his hands, chasing ghosts through a world that didn't care.
She was just... someone still breathing.
Still here.
> Live first. Fix the world later.
The words echoed like a heartbeat.
Slow.
Steady.
And for the first time since she died, since she was reborn into this small, forgotten body—
Lili listened.
She closed her eyes again, and drifted—not into death, but into something else.
Waiting.
She awoke to pain.
Not the sharp kind that screams through nerves—this was the dull, deep ache of a body being reminded it still exists. Her muscles hurt. Her joints cracked when she moved. But she was alive.
Barely.
The snow had quieted. Only a soft drip echoed through the cave from melting ice higher in the stone. Outside, the wind had dulled to a low whimper.
Lili shifted and felt something under her hand.
A stone. Round, smooth, and cold.
She didn't remember placing it there.
She gripped it absently, as if her fingers needed something to cling to. It fit neatly in her palm, warmed slightly by her skin. She stared at it in the half-dark.
> "Just a rock."
She squeezed it tighter.
Her lips moved, cracked and dry.
> "I don't want to die."
The stone pulsed.
A faint light.
She blinked.
For a moment, she thought it was her vision blurring. But no—it was real.
The stone in her hand emitted a soft white glow, gentle and pulsing, like the distant heartbeat of a sleeping bird.
---
She sat up with effort, cradling it between her palms.
The light didn't grow stronger. But it didn't stop, either.
She brought it close to her chest and could feel—not warmth exactly—but resistance to the cold. A buffer. The biting air around her seemed to ease, just slightly.
> "This… is me?"
There was no explanation. No divine voice. No sudden understanding.
Just the stone, pulsing with her will.
---
It wasn't fire. It wasn't magic in the way stories told it.
It was something quieter. Something honest.
A reflection of survival.
---
She placed it beside her and watched as it softly illuminated the cave wall—revealing the rough curves of the stone, the puddle beyond, and her own silhouette: frail, hollow-cheeked, wrapped in layers of scavenged cloth.
She looked like a ghost.
But the light made her real.
---
She spent the next hour watching it.
Whispering to it.
Touching it with both palms and focusing—not on spells or mantras, but on living.
> "Please stay."
> "Please don't leave."
The light dimmed when her thoughts wandered toward fear.
It steadied when she focused.
She began to understand:
This wasn't a tool.
It was an extension of her.
---
She tried again the next day with a second stone.
Found one similar in size, held it in both hands, focused.
Whispered not for heat, but for hope.
This one took longer.
But after an hour—another light.
Faint, flickering, but there.
She named them in her mind: First and Second.
And placed them on either side of her sleeping spot.
---
That night, she slept without shivering.
And for the first time since dying in a parking lot, since waking in the dirt, since the cave became her grave—
Lili didn't dream of endings.
She dreamed of beginnings.
The days grew longer.
The snows hadn't stopped completely, but the light changed. It was no longer sharp and cold—it was golden, stretched out, lingering a little longer on the mountain each evening.
Lili—still calling herself that in her mind—spent most of her days near the cave mouth, the two light stones beside her, glowing faintly like sleeping stars.
She watched the slope below. The trees. The wind.
And, always, the mansion.
---
She hadn't gone down in weeks. The cold still made her cautious, and her stores were low. But she made the trek to her lookout ridge when the sun was strong. From there, she could see the edge of the Redfield estate.
Sometimes the boy was out there.
Chad.
He ran, climbed, trained. He moved like he belonged to the mountain—like the snow wasn't cold to him at all. His movements were sharp and fluid, too controlled for his age.
She didn't look at him the same way anymore.
The ache was gone. The hope.
It had drained out of her one night in the cave, when the light stones had flickered quietly beside her and she realized something simple and painful:
> Frank wasn't coming.
---
He might still be out there. Somewhere. Maybe.
But she wasn't waiting anymore.
Because Frank had always told her the truth. In those quiet moments, between missions, between fights, between failures:
> "Live first. Fix things later."
> "Build something. Not for the world. For you."
> "Don't get so obsessed with saving everyone that you forget you're still bleeding."
---
She looked at her hands.
Still small. Still weak.
But no longer useless.
They had built fires. Made tools. Made light.
They had caught rabbits. Gutted them. Skinned them. Eaten them.
They had dug through snow with bare fingers to survive.
She closed her eyes and whispered—not a prayer, not a goodbye, just a fact.
> "You're still in here, Frank. But I'm not going to die waiting for you."
> "I'm going to live."
> "Like you told me to."
---
And then she went back inside the cave.
Back to the stones.
Back to the still-dripping wall and the soft puddle in the second chamber.
The garden would need planting soon.
She had work to do.
She no longer feared the dark.
Not because the world had gotten safer, but because she had begun to light it herself.
---
Lili sat cross-legged in the main chamber of the cave. The two Light Stones—First and Second—glowed softly beside her, placed at opposite ends of her fire pit. Their warmth didn't burn like fire. It settled around her like a blanket just pulled from the sun.
She held a third stone in her hands.
Smooth. Palm-sized. River-worn. It had taken her hours to find it—weeks ago, near a stream before the snows returned. She'd saved it for when she felt ready.
And now… she was.
---
She cupped the stone gently. Closed her eyes.
Focused.
Not with anger. Not desperation. But intent.
She didn't say anything aloud. She didn't need to.
She just remembered the hunger. The wind. The cold.
And how, despite all of it, she was still here.
She breathed in, slowly.
And then felt it.
---
A warmth.
Not in her hands, but in her chest.
Low. Subtle. Faint—but alive.
A throb, like a second heartbeat, pulsing behind her ribs.
She opened her eyes.
The stone in her hands had begun to glow.
---
It was softer than the others. Just a flicker, barely visible.
But it responded to her.
To her feelings.
To her will.
She placed it beside the others.
A third light.
Then she leaned back and pressed a hand against her sternum.
> "There it is."
Her Light Core.
She had felt it before, in moments of panic or pain, but this was different. This was voluntary. Intentional.
She wasn't just reacting to survive anymore.
She was learning how to live.
---
That night, she sat in the center of the glowing stones and let the light wash over her.
She remembered watching stars from her apartment balcony back when she was Bruce. She remembered thinking there was too much wrong in the world to ever fix. That no matter what he did, the rot would always creep back in.
Now, in a cave, dressed in rags and furs, she had made something clean.
Something good.
---
She didn't know what the stones could become.
She didn't know what she could become.
But the idea of exploring that—of seeing it through—excited her in a way nothing had in years.
> "This is mine."
> "No one can take it from me."
> "Not again."
---
She began keeping notes.
Not on paper—she had none—but carved into stone walls with sharp flint:
Shapes of the stones.
Feelings during creation.
Time it took to light.
Glow strength.
She carved small sigils into each one—a tracking system.
She wasn't just surviving anymore.
She was building something.
---
And with each stone, the warmth in her chest grew just a little brighter.
Not enough to change the world.
But enough to keep going.
Enough to believe that maybe, just maybe—
She could.
---
By the time the snows began to melt, the cave no longer felt like a hole in the earth.
It felt like hers.
---
The entrance, once an unguarded crawlspace behind a curtain of vines, was now a carefully camouflaged passage.
Lili had built it stone by stone—stacking flat rocks to form a windbreak, then weaving pine boughs and dry grass into a curtain she could drape over the opening during storms. From the outside, it looked like nothing but moss and debris.
From the inside, it was a gate. A boundary between the wild and the one small place where she had control.
---
She swept the cave floor daily now, using a broom made from bundled twigs. She cleared out loose dirt, built raised sleeping mats of moss and bark, and carved a flat stone cooking slab near the fire pit.
Each task brought her a quiet sense of calm.
> "This is what Frank meant."
> "Build something. For you."
---
In the second chamber, she had cleared the space around the puddles—widening the shallow bowls of collected water, shaping stones into little channels to direct flow. She placed two Light Stones there, letting their warmth slow the chill and prevent the water from freezing overnight.
When she had strength, she practiced fire-making by hand—even though she still used the steel-on-stone spark method most days.
She wanted to know how. Not just survive—but understand survival.
---
She found meaning in details:
A perfectly balanced spear carved from driftwood.
A hollowed gourd used as a water ladle.
Animal bones sharpened into sewing needles.
Every item had its place. Every stone a reason.
Her tools were stored in carved shelves at the cave wall. Her food hung from tree bark hooks above the dry spots to keep it from bugs.
Even her sleeping corner was decorated now—lined with feathers, birch bark drawings, and two smooth stones she called her "sentinels."
---
One morning, she sat at the cave mouth and watched the meltwater stream trickle down the slope toward the lake.
She wrapped herself in a fur-lined cloak she had stitched together from scavenged leather and rabbit pelts.
Her hair was tied back with bark twine.
She didn't look like a child anymore.
She looked like someone who had survived winter.
And that meant something.
---
That night, she sat inside the cave, surrounded by five softly glowing Light Stones.
They flickered like stars.
And for the first time since she woke in a dead girl's body…
She felt safe.
---
It started with a memory.
Bruce—no, she—once watched a video about early survivalists growing plants indoors. No sunlight. No soil. Just hope and patience, and a bit of clever design.
Lili hadn't thought of it in weeks. But one morning, while tending the puddle in the second chamber, she stared at the moss lining the stone walls and thought:
> "What if something could grow here?"
---
The puddles weren't deep, but they were steady. Rain and meltwater dripped from the ceiling in lazy beads, falling into stone bowls she had shaped with her hands. The Light Stones kept the air just warm enough that ice never formed, and steam sometimes clung to the walls like breath.
It wasn't much.
But it was alive.
---
She made her first test with a dead plant.
A curled strawberry sprout, brown and limp—taken weeks earlier from a frozen patch near the Redfield farm, wrapped carefully in cloth. She didn't expect it to survive.
But she placed it near a Light Stone anyway. Built a ring of pebbles around it. Spoke to it.
And waited.
Three days later, a new green shoot poked up from the edge of the withered stem.
Lili stared at it for a full minute, unmoving.
> "You shouldn't be alive."
She pressed a hand gently against the soil.
> "But then again… neither should I."
---
Over the next weeks, she brought more:
A tomato sprout.
Half-frozen basil clippings.
Wild onion roots she found under a tree stump.
She built troughs from split logs and lined them with moss and stone. She funneled water from the puddles using channels carved into mud and bark.
The Light Stones, placed carefully in rhythm, provided just enough warmth and radiance.
And slowly…
life took hold.
---
The strawberry plant bloomed first—tiny white flowers, then berries no bigger than her thumbnail. The tomato leaves grew upright and bold.
The air in the second chamber changed. It no longer smelled of stone and mildew.
It smelled of green.
---
She began to meditate there.
Sitting in front of the plants, eyes closed, Light Stone in her lap.
She didn't ask for power. Or growth. Or protection.
She simply focused on being here.
Alive.
Present.
Each time she meditated, her Light Core pulsed a little brighter. She could feel it now—not just during crisis, but during peace.
Like something learning to breathe with her.
---
One night, she whispered to the garden:
> "This is mine."
> "Not stolen. Not inherited. Not begged for."
> "I made this."
And the stones around her pulsed gently in response—just once.
As if to say:
Yes. You did.
---
The snow was gone.
Spring hadn't fully bloomed, but the earth was soft again. The trees sighed in the wind instead of cracking. The stream near her cave was louder now, running with purpose. And Lili—no longer starving, no longer waiting—stood at the cave entrance with a stone knife in her hand.
Her reflection shimmered faintly in the still surface of the nearby pool. Pale, dirty face. Long silver-blonde hair tangled down her back. Blue eyes too big for her face, too heavy for a child.
She stared at it for a long time.
---
She no longer saw Bruce.
She didn't see the girl from the car either.
She saw something else now.
Someone becoming.
---
She took the knife and slowly, deliberately, began cutting her hair.
The blade was rough. The ends frayed. But she didn't care. She cut it short—practical, out of her eyes, tied tight against the nape of her neck with bark twine.
Her reflection changed.
Not completely.
But enough.
---
She looked down at her reflection and whispered:
> "Ash."
Not Lili. Not Bruce.
Ash.
A name she used to hear on TV, shouted from a cartoon boy in a red cap with dirt on his cheeks and a spark in his heart. A boy who kept going no matter how many times he lost.
A boy who never gave up.
> "If he could do it, so can I."
She smiled—just a little.
---
Back inside the cave, she dressed herself in the furs she had stitched over the winter. A cloak made from rabbit pelts. Bark-wrapped boots stuffed with moss. A leather bag slung over one shoulder, sewn with sinew and lined with dry grass.
She hung her favorite tools on her belt—a flint striker, a carved bone awl, a small blade of sharpened stone.
She looked like someone out of time.
And yet completely real.
Completely herself.
---
She no longer flinched at her reflection.
No longer waited for someone else to name her.
She had built a home.
She had made light.
She had planted food and carved tools and survived the mountain.
And now… she had a name to match it.
---
She stood at the cave entrance and looked out across the trees.
The wind tugged at her cloak.
Down there, beyond the forests, was a town. A world.
It didn't know her yet.
But it would.
---
> "My name is Ash."
> "And I have a life to build."
---
Ash stood at the edge of the forest, one hand resting on the leather strap of her handmade bag, the other holding a sharpened wooden walking spear.
Behind her, the cave was sealed tight—stone layered over the entrance, hidden with woven branches and moss. No footprints. No smoke. No signs of a home.
Just a memory, left in silence.
---
Inside the bag were her wares:
Dried rabbit meat, clean and smoked.
A bundle of pine tar glue sealed in bark.
Three carved bone needles and a flint knife wrapped in hide.
A pouch of dried berries.
And two Light Stones—dimmed for safety but still gently glowing through the cloth.
It wasn't much.
But it was hers.
---
Her boots crunched softly over thawing underbrush as she followed the stream that wound down the mountain. It would lead her to Lake Mansfield, and from there, to the road. The path was narrow, shaded in parts, but clear enough now that winter had passed.
She moved like someone used to walking alone—alert, balanced, but at peace.
She didn't think of Frank.
Not because he didn't matter—but because he wasn't here.
What mattered now was her trade. Her tools. Her story.
> "I'm Ash."
> "I'm a trapper's child. I live over the mountain."
> "I'm not lost."
> "I have a home."
---
The wind carried voices before she saw them.
Children's laughter, bouncing off the trees like echoes from another life.
Ash froze, crouched low, one hand instinctively moving to the bone blade at her waist. She peered through the underbrush toward the trail near the lake.
There—two boys, tossing snowballs at each other, stomping through the slush in heavy boots.
They were laughing so hard they didn't notice her.
But she recognized them.
The taller one: strong, cheerful, wild-haired.
The other: sharper eyes, quick steps, quieter.
The Wilson twins.
---
She watched them for a moment—half-curious, half-cautious.
She could turn back. Wait for them to leave. Circle around the road and go to town alone.
But something about them… pulled at her. Not familiarity. Not memory.
Just… something simple.
They didn't look dangerous.
They looked like kids.
And for the first time in a long time, Ash felt like she might be one, too.
---
She stepped onto the path.
The boys turned—saw her—froze.
They stared at the fur-cloaked figure in the trees, snow clinging to her hood, eyes sharp and blue beneath windswept hair.
She raised a hand.
> "I'm not here to hurt you," she said.
Her voice was calm. Low.
> "Name's Ash. I'm just here to trade."
---
The wind paused.
The moment held.
And then Greg grinned.
> "You live out here?"
Will blinked. "Over the mountain?"
Ash nodded once. "Yeah. Got a place. Got things to sell. Just need to know what year it is."
---
And just like that, for the first time in two lives—
Ash stepped back into the world.
Not as Lili.
Not as Bruce.
But as someone entirely new.