I knelt beside him.

  The silence was total, the sky grey, his eyes open, the scar on his shoulder white, his hands torn, his core dark.

  I looked at his face. At the features that were fourteen and half-formed and belonging to no one now. Bone and skin and expression that I had watched change over years — from the child who argued with the pot to the boy who fought cultivators to the body that lay in dirt with the grey in his eyes.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  And then —

  He never had a chance.

  The thought arrived from somewhere cold. Ancient. Not from analysis, not from grief. Words that fell through the silence like a stone.

  He never had a chance.

  I stayed there.

  With the sentence.

  With his open eyes and the grey sky in them and the cold fact of words that were true and whose truth did not help.