Chapter 15: Ashes Burn Quietest
Time: 8:17 P.M.
The fire was small — on purpose. Selene had cleared a shallow pit behind a ridge wall, burying the flame in the land itself. The stars overhead looked too clean for a world this broken, scattered across the sky like they didn't know the cities had fallen. They watched in silence, distant and unbothered.
Aria sat with her knees drawn to her chest, wrapped in a thermal jacket that still smelled faintly of bleach and metal. Her eyes reflected the flicker of the flame, but her mind wasn't there. It was back in the wreckage of Sector Nine, behind broken walls and rusted doors, where the silence had screamed.
Beside her, a ration bar lay half - eaten on a rust - colored crate. She didn't remember opening it.
Selene moved like smoke in the dark — checking the perimeter, pausing to listen, then vanishing again. When she returned, she crouched near the fire, her rifle across her knees, her jaw tight.
They hadn't spoken much since Sector Nine. Aria hadn't had the words, and Selene never offered more than she needed to.
Aria finally broke the silence. Her voice was quiet, the kind that has to push through debris to make it out. "You knew I'd change after I saw it, didn't you?"
Selene didn't look at her. She used a stick to adjust the coals, as if the fire had an answer hidden somewhere in its glow. "You had to," she said at last. "If you didn't, I would've left you there."
Aria blinked. The words hit like a slap, not because they were cruel — but because they were true.
Selene continued, eyes still on the flame. "This world doesn't bend for innocence. It breaks it. And it does it quietly. Not with bombs, not with blood. Just the slow peeling away of what used to matter."
Aria looked down at her hands. Trembling again. Not from cold.
"Do you ever wish you were wrong?" she whispered. "About all of it?"
Selene finally looked at her. For a moment, her face softened in the firelight. Not pity. Just something unspoken. Something hollowed out and left behind.
"I wish none of it had to be true."
The fire cracked and spat embers like sparks from an old memory. The wind shifted, curling down the ridge with a sudden, subtle edge. Not sharp, not loud — just wrong.
Selene was on her feet before Aria registered the change. The rifle lifted, her posture still as steel.
Aria sat up. "What is it?"
Selene gave a sharp motion. Down. Quiet.
Aria dropped low, heart hammering against the dirt. She could hear her breath in her ears. Then nothing.
A sound broke the stillness. Not Selene. Too slow. Untrained.
Footsteps.
Then a voice. Young. Raw with cold and caution. "Don't shoot. I'm not armed."
Aria inched up, just enough to see over the pit's edge. A figure stepped into view — female, early twenties at most, wrapped in a tattered field coat two sizes too big. Hands up. Face pale, smeared with dirt and desperation.
Selene emerged from the trees, rifle steady but not yet raised.
"Stop right there," she commanded.
The girl froze. "I saw your smoke. I just wanted warmth. Please."
Aria stepped forward before Selene could speak. "What's your name?"
"Mae."
"How long have you been out here?" Selene's voice cut in, sharp and slicing.
Mae hesitated. "Since I escaped the northern quarantine station. Two nights ago."
Selene's posture shifted. Not looser — tighter. A hunter recognizing bait.
"There are no quarantine stations left," she said.
Mae said nothing. Her lip trembled. She didn't cry, but she looked close.
Aria turned to Selene. "Let her sit. She's starving."
Selene's eyes didn't leave Mae's face, but after a long pause, she gave a short nod.
Mae dropped beside the fire like gravity had finally caught up with her. Aria handed her the ration bar she hadn't finished. Mae devoured it like she hadn't seen food in days. She probably hadn't.
The shadows shifted again. The fire, small as it was, seemed to stretch tall around them, throwing twisted silhouettes across the trees. Aria pulled her jacket closer, watching the flames instead of the girl.
"They told us the infection was under control," Mae said finally, voice scratchy. "Said reinforcements were coming. But they stopped feeding us. No one explained anything. People just started dying in their bunks."
Selene didn't react. But Aria saw the way her fingers tensed on the rifle. Like she was trying not to remember something.
"They weren't sick," Mae added. Her voice cracked. "They were just forgotten."
The words hung there like smoke that refused to rise. Aria stared at the fire, watching ash spiral upward and vanish.
"I'm not going back," Mae said, quieter now. "I won't. Even if it's worse out here."
"You won't have to," Aria said. And she meant it.
Selene glanced over but said nothing. That was answer enough.
Mae's eyes flicked between them. "Do you have a plan? Or are you just running?"
Selene sat back, resting her rifle beside her knees. The fire carved her face into something jagged and certain.
"No one gets to survive alone," she said. "That lie is what killed the Safe Zones. So yes. We have a plan. Not a perfect one. But better than what they sold us."
"What's the plan?" Mae asked.
Aria didn't speak. She just watched Selene.
Selene didn't blink. "We find the cracks. We follow the rumors. We expose the things they buried in places like Sector Nine. And if we can't burn their empire down — then we bury the truth in enough hearts that one day someone else will."
Mae stared at her like she wasn't sure if Selene was serious or mad.
Probably both.
"I can help," Mae said, though her voice wavered.
Aria nodded. "Then you will."
The fire cracked loud, scattering a burst of ash into the sky like startled birds. Aria watched the flecks disappear into the dark, knowing how easy it was to vanish.
But tonight, they hadn't.
Behind them, somewhere past the ridgeline, the horizon was still burning — slow, steady, and unbothered. Like a fuse no one knew they'd lit.
Aria pulled her jacket tighter and looked around the circle of flame. Three people, one plan, and a world that wanted all of them erased.
But the silence wasn't the same anymore.
It wasn't hollow.
It was waiting.