The boy returned from the cursed woods with silence wrapped around him like a second skin.
Beyond the final trees, Ithariel saw the broken outline of his home—half-swallowed by soot and shadow. The slanted roof hunched like a dying creature, doors creaking in rhythm with the wind's grief. He entered without sound. The air was thin here, but breathable. Familiar.
His siblings still slept, tangled in each other's warmth like lost ghosts refusing to wake. The cracked table waited, as always, with the wooden pot.
Ithariel crushed the herbs mechanically—root, sap, ash—his fingers practiced, distant. He stirred the mix until it bled green, his thoughts louder than the scraping wood.
"I nearly died in that forest. Not from fangs. Not from claws. But from myself."
"Next time… I'll find a place with no eyes. No mouths. No beasts to wake. A wasteland where nothing breathes, and I can poison the world in peace."
He exhaled. The fog of it curled like guilt in the dying light.
"When I look around... all I see is acceptance. People living like walking corpses, waiting for the end without knowing it's already inside them. I sometimes wonder—"
"Why were we even born?"
"Just to suffer? Just to die slow and rotten, coughing black from our lungs because of serpents that call themselves gods?"
His voice didn't reach the air. He didn't want it to.
"Still... I'm grateful for one thing. That I can breathe my siblings' poison so they don't have to. That I can take it in their place. At least that much."
He moved from the table, the gel complete. In their dark, shared room, he applied it to their necks with reverence. It stung. They flinched even in sleep. But the tension eased from their faces, the pain softened.
"There's a rule," he remembered. "The Serpents made it with us: No direct killing. No fangs. No claws. Only poison."
"A twisted mercy, but mercy nonetheless. At least we don't have to watch them eat us alive."
He left the room, breath hitching.
Until—
Woof.
His heart froze. His body didn't move, but his soul ran outside.
Woof. Woof.
Snow-colored fur. Blue eyes that held winter and loyalty both. The shape of a wolf. The bark of a friend.
"…Flow?" Ithariel whispered.
The beast—no, the brother—barked louder. Ithariel stumbled forward and fell to his knees, arms wrapping tight around the creature's warm neck.
"You're alive," he said, voice breaking. "Flow, you're alive."
He buried his face in the fur. The dog pressed its head to Ithariel's chest, tail thumping softly.
"I thought you were gone that night… when the monster came. You fought so I could run. And I ran. I left you behind."
Flow whined but licked his cheek.
Forgiveness in a tongue humans forgot.
The grass beneath them was damp with rot, but Ithariel smiled like he'd touched spring.
Flow was more than a pet. He was the last thing his father ever gave him. The only one who saw his mother smile before her mind froze in time. The one who stood by him when Yuna screamed in her sleep and Jon bled from the nose for hours. Flow was childhood and comfort and battle and bond—all in one.
They had grown together. Bled together. Starved together.
And on that night, Flow had stayed behind to face death.
And now—he'd come back.
After the tiger. After the poison. After the near-death.
Ithariel had Flow again.
He finally laughed. A sound rare as clean water.
"You have no idea how much I missed you," he said, voice hoarse.
Flow licked him again. The boy wiped his eyes and stood, placing a hand on the wolf-dog's head.
"Let me check you," he murmured. "For poison."
He scanned Flow with his breath, drawing in faint traces of spiritual venom clinging to the fur. "A trace. Just a trace," he muttered. "Too little to pull out now. I'll check again later, alright?"
Flow barked, as if nodding.
"Come," Ithariel said. "They'll want to see you."
They entered the dim house. The siblings stirred. The air was thick as ever, but lighter now.
"FLOW!"
Jon's shout cracked the stillness as he leapt from the bed and tackled the wolf in a hug. "Where have you been?!"
Flow barked back, tail wagging like a sword of joy.
Even Yuna, frail and ghost-eyed, sat up. Flow bounded to her, curling against her blanket as she reached out weakly, stroking the creature with trembling fingers.
Despite the dark bags beneath her eyes, her cracked lips bent into a smile.
Ithariel watched from the doorway, leaning against the frame, his mouth trembling into something that almost resembled peace.
In a world where nothing lasted... this did.
Yuna began to cry. Not loud. Not broken. Just tears that slipped down in silence.
"I'm glad you came back, Flow," she whispered. "I'm so glad…"
Maybe it was joy. Maybe it was pain finally finding a way out through her eyes.
Jon and Yuna were smart children. Smarter than they let on. They knew they should be dead. But their brother—he had stood in Death's way. Again and again. Drawing the poison into himself like a martyr who never got to die.
They never said it. But they knew it because they saw it.
They saw the veins, darkened by poison. The bruises blooming beneath his eyes like crushed nightflowers. They saw the cost of their survival carved into the blood he never let them see. Every time they fell—and rose again—it was his veins that blackened further, learned to twist stronger in the poison's embrace.
They were only children. But how could they not understand? They had lived too close to the sacrifice.
Their hands paused on Flow's fur.
And together, they looked up at their brother.
The boy who held back the reaper with nothing but his spine.
And they spoke at once:
"Please never leave our brother alone again, Flow. Okay?"
Ithariel froze.
His eyes widened. His throat closed.
The words struck him with more force than any wound he'd ever taken.
Then, slowly, he turned to them.
He knelt beside them—quiet, trembling, human.
And for a moment, no poison, no death, no war lived in him. Only this.
"Why would Flow ever leave me alone?" he said softly, voice rough. "I'm not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever."
He looked at each of them—Jon, Yuna, and Flow—and smiled. Not perfectly. Not without pain. But real.
"We'll live. Together. As long as we can. You, Yuna. You, Jon. And you, Flow."
Yuna leaned into his side. Jon wrapped his arms around his waist. Flow pressed close and rested a heavy head on Ithariel's knee.
And for the first time in too long, the silence wasn't empty.
It was full.
After a while, he stood and left them there—Jon, Yuna, and Flow—bundled together in a rare stillness, laughter like a candle's flicker in wind. He let them have it. He didn't need it.
The hallway sighed beneath his feet, whispering with the dust of old dreams. Left door. The one they never opened but he always did.
He stepped inside.
Her room.
Nothing had changed. Nothing ever did.
The herbs burned faintly in the corner, choking the stale air with a scent of false life. The curtains hung limp. The mirror still faced the wall.
And she—his mother—still sat like a forgotten statue on the bed, propped against faded pillows, head tilted, lips parted, eyes closed.
Unmoving. Unchanging.
Unalive. Undead.
And yet her chest still rose. Barely. Like the world hadn't decided whether to finish the job.
Ithariel sat beside her. The same creaking chair. The same posture. The same ritual.
He spoke every day. As if it mattered. As if the voice of a son could reach through temporal rot and wake a mother frozen in half-death.
His voice came soft. Too soft to break anything.
"Hey, Mom… I'm back."
He smiled gently, like guilt hiding behind a grin.
"Sorry I'm late. The forest slowed me down a bit."
The chair creaked again as he shifted.
"I found Iceleaf. Used the last of the clean water on it… so I'll have to go to the well again tomorrow. Maybe I'll ask Flow to carry the bucket this time."
No response.
She never responded.
But he kept going.
"Yuna had another almost-end. But it passed. She's strong. Stronger than me, I think."
He paused.
"Jon didn't sleep again. But Flow came back, and they've started playing again. You remember Flow, right?"
Still no movement.
"He used to bite your shoes. You hated that." A faint chuckle. "But to me… he's everything. My shadow, my savior. He's bigger now. And eats like a beast."
Silence again.
Breath again.
A ghost of one.
His eyes dropped to her hands—folded in her lap like a prayer someone gave up on. He reached for them.
Her skin was neither cold nor warm. Like moonlit stone. Like a memory.
"…It's been six years," he whispered. "And I still don't know if you're in there."
His fingers brushed hers.
"Do you feel it when I speak?"
No answer. There never was. But he waited.
He always waited.
Until something cracked inside, and words slipped out too real to pretend anymore.
"I want to tell you something… something real this time."
He swallowed.
"I almost died today."
The words were heavy. Not tragic. Just true.
"There was something in the forest. A tiger. Big as our roof. Maybe bigger. Its eyes… weren't right."
His smile came again—thin as rusted wire.
"I thought that was it. I really did. I couldn't tell if I was breathing poison or just air. Felt the same."
He laughed once.
"But when I thought I might stop breathing forever…"
"…I started breathing easier."
His hand slowly curled into a fist on his lap.
"But I didn't die."
"Because I'm a freak."
"The kind of freak poison doesn't kill."
The room grew still again.
The kind of still that watches you.
"…Why was it me, Mom?" he said, almost too quiet to hear. "Why was I the one the poison couldn't touch?"
He didn't cry.
He couldn't. He'd cried it all out in years past—until grief became routine and sorrow became survival.
Instead, he exhaled.
And smiled again. A lie. A lullaby.
"That's enough of that."
He stood, brushing imaginary dust from his pants.
"Good news—Jon and Yuna are doing better now. I'll tell them you smiled at them in your dreams."
He looked at her one last time. Her eyes still closed. Her body still held together by the edge of death's blade.
She was a statue carved from love and rot. A goddess of stillness. A mother made myth by time and poison.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Mom."
He left the room.
The night had fallen behind the clouds. You couldn't tell by sky. Only by weight. The air was heavier now, like her stillness had followed him out.
But he shook it off. He had things to do. A meal to make. A well to reach. A dying world to outlive.
Because even if the gods were dead and the serpents ruled the world—he was still her son. Still their brother.
And he hadn't broken. Not yet.