The first snow fell on the morning Kael opened his eyes.
He had been unconscious for three weeks—his body adjusting to life without hunger, his silver skin fading to grey, then to pale white. The townspeople avoided the clinic where he lay. They remembered the fire. The silver flames. The almost-winter without grain.
Nix sat beside him, as she had every day.
You are awake, she said.
"I am... something."
Can you stand?
"I do not know."
Kael tried. His legs buckled. Nix caught him.
You are weak.
"I am learning."
---
Elara visited that afternoon.
Kael sat by the window, watching the snow fall. His brown eyes—brown now, not silver—tracked the flakes.
"The void tells me you're healing," she said.
The void speaks to you?
"Every day."
What does it say about me?
"That you're afrai
