The fire crackled weakly in the frigid dusk, its struggling flames barely enough to fight the cold. But Ron kept feeding it—wood, scraps of cloth, broken furniture—anything he could find. Anything to make it burn long enough for her.
Jiya's body lay wrapped in an old bedsheet, arms folded over her chest. Her face was calm now, as if in sleep. As if she had simply closed her eyes for a moment, not fallen to the cruelty of the world.
Ron knelt beside the pyre, his arms trembling not from cold but from the weight inside his chest. Priya stood quietly behind him, her arms around herself, face streaked with dirt and silent tears. Shreya sobbed quietly in Puja's lap, the mother rocking her as if it could undo the day.
But there was no undoing it. Not this time.
Ron struck the match.
The flames leapt up slowly, licking the sides of the pyre, then climbing higher with each passing second. The wind hissed through the half-broken windows of the shelter, carrying the scent of burning flesh, char, and wood.
Ron didn't look away.
He needed to remember.
---
They had come back with blood still crusted on their skin—Jonathan's blood. Ron's knuckles had split open punching the bastard's skull until the weight of his own bones gave way. Priya had crushed his ribs with a steel pipe, screaming until her voice gave out.
And when it was over, they had found the orb.
But too late.
Jiya had already turned.
Her once-warm eyes were pale and clouded, her mouth slack. She stood over Shreya, who was cornered and weeping, too terrified to move. Ron didn't hesitate. His blade went in fast. Clean. He had to make it clean.
He told himself it was mercy.
---
Now, as the fire consumed her, he remembered things he had buried under exhaustion, duty, and pain.
Jiya's smile when he handed her that half-frozen chocolate bar.
The way she looked away, embarrassed, when he told her she was stronger than most men he'd known.
He remembered the way Jiya clung to his arm, shaking, as he helped her down the stairs. The silent way she kept glancing up at him, even when she thought he wouldn't notice.
He had been too busy surviving to see it.
Too focused on protecting them all to notice the one who looked at him not as a hero, but as a man.
The flames dimmed. The outline of her body began to break down, ash lifting into the sky like fragile butterflies. Ron stood up slowly, his chest hollow, his heart aching like it was being crushed by a fist from the inside.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice raw.
Priya came to his side. She didn't speak. She just took his hand.
Ron squeezed it. Grateful. Guilty.
"It should've been faster," he murmured. "I should've known. She was waiting. Hoping."
Priya's voice was soft. "She knew you cared. That was enough."
He didn't answer. Because it wasn't enough. Not for Jiya. Not for the future she'd never have.
Ashes rose into the wind, carried off into the sky like dying stars.
---
That night, they buried what little remained in a quiet corner of the shelter's rooftop. A place with sky and wind. A place Jiya would've liked.
Ron stayed there until morning.
When the sun finally rose, cold and gray, he stood.
The world hadn't changed.
But he had.
There was no safe horizon. Only the road ahead. And the memories they carried.
[End of Book One]