The silence after chaos is always the loudest.
It’s not perfectly peaceful.
It’s not too calm.
It’s the kind that makes your ears ring and your pulse roar so hard you think the world might shatter if you breathe too deeply.
Snow keeps falling.
Soft. Mocking.
As if the night didn’t just try to kill us.
The engine ticks as it cools, metal snapping faintly like a warning. Steam curls from the hood, ghost-white against the dark rail corridor we barely escaped. The freight train we missed by seconds is already gone—its thunder still echoing somewhere far down the line, like the aftershock of a bad decision.
Luna stands a few steps away from me.
Alive.
Breathing.
Unbroken.
And I can’t stop shaking.
Not from the cold.
From the fact that for the first time in my life—
I was the one
