*Run.*
*Don't look back.*
He ran.
He didn't know for how long. He didn't know in which direction. The massive trees blurred past him — dark shapes against a darker sky — and the only thing his mind could hold onto was that single, desperate command.
*Run.*
---
His chest was burning.
Not the kind of burn that fades. The kind that sits deep — like he had swallowed hot coals and they were still glowing, still eating through him from the inside.
His small head throbbed with every step.
And his bones —
His bones felt like they were tearing apart. Like something inside him was trying to break free of its own cage.
---
Then his legs gave out.
No warning. No stumble.
Just — gone.
He hit the freezing mud hard. The impact sent a shock through every part of him that still had feeling left. For a moment he just lay there, cheek pressed against the cold ground, breathing in the smell of wet earth and dead leaves.
*Get up.*
He tried.
His trembling arms pushed against the mud — and refused. They simply would not listen. The signals left his brain and disappeared somewhere along the way, swallowed by the pain before they could arrive.
So he did the only thing left.
He dug his bleeding fingers into the dirt.
And he crawled.
Inch by inch. Dragging his broken body through the dark, through the mud, through the cold that had long since stopped feeling like cold and started feeling like nothing at all.
---
*It hurts.*
The thought was small. Almost childlike in how simple it was.
*It hurts.*
He had cried so much on that cold stone table. He remembered the ceiling above it — grey, cracked, always the same. He had stared at it so many times that he had memorized every line in it.
He didn't want to go back.
He couldn't take it anymore.
---
A memory surfaced — fuzzy at the edges, like something seen through fogged glass.
A warm hand.
Larger than his. Steady in a way that his whole world hadn't been.
And a voice — quiet, close, meant only for him —
*"No more pain. I promise."*
He didn't remember the face that went with the voice.
He wasn't sure he had ever seen it clearly.
But the hand — he remembered the hand.
---
He just wanted the burning in his chest to stop.
That was all.
Not safety. Not rescue. Not warmth or food or any of the things a child was supposed to want.
Just — *stop.*
*Please.*
---
Slowly, the massive trees began to blur.
The howling wind — which had been tearing at him this whole time, cold and relentless — faded. First to a murmur. Then to silence.
His fingers, still curled into the mud, went still.
His eyes fluttered.
Once.
Twice.
And then the heavy darkness came — not violent, not sudden, but slow and inevitable, like a tide coming in — and it swallowed him whole.
---
Night grew darker.
The forest stretched on in silence.
And somewhere between the massive, indifferent trees —
A small, broken shape lay still in the mud.
Breathing.
Barely.
But breathing.
---
**[Prologue — End]**