Chapter 2: What We Leave Behind

  His name was Nikoi.It had been years since anyone had spoken it out loud. Out here, names were dead weight--things to be stolen,used, or forgotten. But in the silence, in those cold hours when hunger gnawed and the wind whispered, heremembered.He was seven when the wild took his parents.Not in some dramatic ambush or mutant attack--just hunger, cold, and the merciless emptiness of the world.The kind of death that came slow, quiet, and cruel. The kind that didn't let you scream.They had found shelter in a shattered greenhouse outside the City's reach. Thought they could make it work.But the seeds never sprouted. The rats stayed away. And the winter came early that year.He buried them with bare hands, frostbitten fingers trembling as he pushed soil over bones. Then he keptwalking.He never stopped walking.The pn was simple--keep breathing. Until the day he heard the myth.It happened months ago, on a day bleached dry by a high, pitiless sun. Heat shimmered off the broken road,and the light made everything feel brittle and exposed. He had crossed paths with a group of five--skeletalfigures dressed in patchwork gear, their faces hidden beneath cracked goggles, scarred masks, and strips ofscavenged cloth. Skin pale and blotched. Eyes wide and twitchy from hunger or worse. You could smell therot on them before they even spoke.One of them, a tall man with a lopsided jaw and peeling cheeks, stepped forward, holding up a rusted tin can."Pulled this from an old cache east of the Sinkholes," he said. "Dried apples. Real ones." He gave a crookedsmile, revealing bckened teeth. "You look like you could use a bite."Another figure, short and wiry with a pitted bde strapped to his thigh, let out a high-pitched chuckle. "Wedon't bite. Much."The others hung back, silent but circling like buzzards.They ughed--sharp and sudden like broken gss.Nikoi didn't.He stood still, shoulders rising and falling with slow, careful breath. Eyes scanning, pretending to weigh theoffer. Inside, he was already watching their hands, their stances. None of them carried food. Just knives. Justhunger.He knew what they were the moment he saw their eyes: too wide, too bright. Laughing too easily. Too hungryto be human."I got scraps to trade," he muttered, voice rough with dust.The tall man grinned wider, stepping closer. "Then you're in luck. We got a warm fire and no trouble--just sit,eat, swap stories. We don't leave folks starving out here." He gestured toward a crumbling overpass in thedistance, where smoke curled faintly into the sky."Few others already settling in," he added. "You bring scraps, we bring heat--it's how it works out here.Everyone gives a little."His tone was too smooth. Too practiced. The kind of voice that had lured people before.Nikoi said nothing. Just let the silence stretch, pretending to consider. Inside, his grip had already tightenedslightly on the worn strap of his pack. If this was how they fished, they were expecting someone moredesperate. Someone slower.He saw it in their eyes. The way their hands stayed too close to their bdes. The way they kept gncing ateach other like wolves sizing up a wounded deer.Still, Nikoi pyed along. Kept his eyes low, face sck, like just another desperate stray.But the moment the tall one turned his back, Nikoi moved.He pivoted fast, driving his shoulder into the nearest figure--a lean one with twitchy fingers already reachingfor a bde. They hit the ground hard, and before the others could react, Nikoi rolled away, pulling his ownknife.The short one lunged first, screaming. Nikoi ducked, felt the bde slice across his upper arm--hot painblooming, but not deep. He countered fast, ramming the hilt of his knife into the attacker's throat, then sshingupward.Two down.The tall one was already charging, rusted pipe in hand, eyes wide with surprise and fury. He swung wild.Nikoi took the hit on his side, felt ribs protest, but stayed on his feet. He ducked low, swept the man's legsfrom under him, then drove the bde home.The st two hesitated. Just a flicker. But hesitation in the wilds was fatal.Nikoi shifted his stance and faked a throw with a rock--no sound, just the motion. It was a bluff, a twitch ofmuscle and movement designed to draw attention. As the nearest one flinched and shifted his weightinstinctively, Nikoi was already moving. He closed the gap in a breath, grabbed the man by the back of theneck, and smmed him headfirst into a broken post. Blood sprayed. The fifth tried to run.Didn't get far.The scuffle was fast. Ugly. Loud.And when it ended, the clearing was silent again.Nikoi stood over the bodies, chest heaving, blood dripping from his fingers and his arm burning like it wason fire. The only sounds were the wind brushing over cracked concrete and the slow, shallow rhythm of hisown breath. He wiped the bde clean on one of their coats, not even sure which.Then came the sound--scraping metal, a choked cry, something dragging.It was the first. The one Nikoi had dropped at the very beginning--the one whose fall had been sudden, butnot final. Somehow, he'd cwed his way through the chaos, slipping free while others bled out around him.Somehow, he'd crawled out of the chaos, clinging to survival like a weed in cracked stone. He'd slipped awayduring the fight, crawling through the wreckage. Now he was limping toward a rusted pipe, trying to lift itwith trembling hands.Nikoi approached slowly, blood still trickling from his arm. The man raised the pipe and swungonce--clumsily. Nikoi caught it with his forearm, gritted his teeth against the pain, then wrenched it free anddrove the end into the man's knee. The crack was wet and sharp.The man screamed, fell, then tried to crawl. Nikoi kicked him onto his back. The pipe lifted again, this timeabove the man's head."Wait!" he gasped, eyes wide with panic. "I--I got something. Not food. Better."Nikoi didn't speak. He held the pipe steady."A story," the man coughed, voice thick with desperation. "A real one. About a Witch."His words tumbled out fast, slurred with fear. "She grants anything. Anything you want. If you find her. It'snot just a myth. People say she lives beyond the wilds. Past the frozen rivers." He hesitated, breathing ragged."I heard it once. Didn't care then. But out here... maybe it means something."Nikoi didn't blink."Where?" he asked quietly.The man sobbed. "I don't know. Just rumors. Just stories. But I thought--maybe--it could save me."It didn't.The silence after was long.He hadn't believed it. Not really. But in the wilds, belief wasn't the point.Out here, you needed something to follow. A direction. A reason.Even if it was madness.So now he walked. Not toward hope. Not toward safety.Toward the Witch.