The village of Liria had changed in the fifteen days since Eren arrived.
Snow still blanketed the roofs. The chimneys still puffed gently. But now, there was a quietness that wasn't just winter's hush—it was reverence. As if all of Liria held its breath, watching a small boy fight against the silence within himself.
Eren had survived the unthinkable. Found amidst the frozen bodies of his family, lying in a pool of blood and ash, his breath ragged and barely audible, the villagers who discovered him couldn't forget the haunted stillness of that scene. He was just three years old—too young to understand, and yet, too scarred to forget.
For two days, he didn't move. The village doctor, an elderly man with shaky hands but a kind heart, tended to him carefully. "He's breathing. That alone is a miracle," he would say as he wiped Eren's face and changed the warm cloth on his forehead.
When Eren's eyes finally opened, they were blank—icy blue, the color of frozen rivers, and just as lifeless.
He didn't cry. He didn't speak.
He simply sat on the small bed, staring through the window where snowflakes drifted like ash, as if waiting for someone who would never return.
The villagers tried in their own gentle ways. They left little comforts by the door—bread, toys, small blankets stitched with care. But nothing reached him.
Until Arin.
Arin was only five. She had honey-blonde hair, always in a messy braid, and big brown eyes filled with simple, unshaken kindness. Unlike the others, she didn't try to talk or cheer him up. She simply walked into the room one morning, holding her favorite cloth rabbit, and sat on the floor beside his bed.
She looked up at him and smiled. "You look lonely," she said softly.
Eren didn't respond.
That first day, she sat there for hours in silence. The next day, she came again—and the next. Sometimes, she hummed little songs to herself or played with her rabbit. Sometimes, she offered him half a cookie or spoke softly about the birds outside.
Eren never spoke, but he began to notice.
And then one day, he followed her.
He walked out of the small house and found her sitting under the bare tree at the village edge, playing with a stick in the snow. He sat beside her without a word. The snow creaked under his weight.
They didn't speak.
But that moment—silent, simple—was the first step out of his frozen world.
A week passed.
And then one day, under that same tree, his voice broke the wind. "I had a sister… like you."
Arin looked up, her rabbit clutched to her chest. She smiled sadly. "I don't have a big brother. Maybe you can be mine."
He didn't reply. But his eyes softened—just a little.
From then on, Eren would speak, only sometimes, and only to her. He still sat alone, still stared at the snow more than people, but when Arin was near, the frost in his eyes seemed to melt, drop by drop.
The villagers watched from a distance, hearts warmed and heavy all at once.
And though he was still broken, still hollowed by grief, the boy with white hair and blue eyes—Eren—was no longer entirely alone.
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