Life by the river continued its gentle cadence, like a soft melody that never quite ended, only drifted from one verse to the next. The days blended seamlessly into one another—clear skies reflected in the slow-moving water, the chatter of birds nesting in the reeds, and the distant hum of the forest beyond. Every morning, the old wooden bridge creaked under the weight of Ren and Mara's fishing cart, a familiar sound Mark had come to associate with peace. The small cottage sat nestled among golden-leaved trees, and smoke from its chimney often curled upward like a quiet promise of warmth.
That autumn afternoon, the world felt especially still. The air was crisp, with the faint, sweet rot of fallen leaves mingling with the sharp, clean scent of the river. The wind carried with it a whisper of the winter to come, rustling through branches already half-bare. Mark had spent the better part of the day in the forest, gathering firewood. It was a ritual he enjoyed—not out of necessity, but because of the silence. The forest was steady. Predictable. Each snap of a twig underfoot, each gust that swept through the pines, reminded him that this place, unlike the world he had fled, asked for nothing and judged no one.
His boots crunched softly over the uneven path as he made his way back, his arms laden with a heavy bundle of logs. A few birds still called out lazily from their perches. The river's quiet murmur was constant in the background. For a fleeting moment, Mark allowed himself to imagine a simple evening ahead: the hearth burning softly, Mara's gentle humming as she prepared supper, Ren whittling a new carving for the children in the village. He imagined the warm, simple laughter that filled their evenings—a sound that had begun to untangle something tightly knotted inside him.
But then the wind shifted. A strange scent drifted toward him—not the familiar smell of pine and earth, but something acrid. Metallic. The smell of overheated circuits and burning insulation. His steps faltered. There was a sound too—faint at first, then clearer—a distant, distorted crackle and the sharp staccato of raised voices. Shouting. Not the kind of shouting that belonged to the woods. It was urban, sharp, careless.
He quickened his pace, the logs biting into his forearms. As the tree line thinned, the cottage came into view—and his heart stopped.
There, by the narrow, winding dirt path that led to the bridge, lay a sleek, obsidian-black ground-car. Even overturned, its gleaming panels and streamlined design screamed luxury. Its engine core was still active, hissing and sputtering with bursts of blue-white energy. Smoke curled upward in thick, ugly ribbons, staining the clean sky. The vehicle's high-speed dampeners were shredded from the crash, flickering weakly like dying fireflies.
Around the wreck stood a group of young men. Their expensive casual wear was out of place here, their polished boots digging into the mud of a countryside road they clearly despised. The scent of alcohol carried faintly on the wind. One of them, tall and slim with a sharply cut jacket and an expensive wristpiece flashing at his arm, kicked at the mangled side mirror like it had personally offended him.
"Stupid road!" he slurred, stumbling slightly, then waving his hand with careless authority. "Stupid old bridge! Who builds this kind of garbage?" His laugh was harsh, the kind that echoed with privilege, not mirth. "Father will have this whole area torn down. Honestly, who lives in such a backwater?"
Another boy snickered, leaning against the smoking chassis as if the wreckage were nothing more than a broken toy. The others looked on, half-dazed, half-amused, but none of them afraid. They didn't belong here. And they knew it.
Then Mark saw it.
At first, it didn't register. His eyes traced the path the vehicle must have taken—too fast down a narrow country lane, probably swerving on the wet leaves—then to where the ground was churned up, where the old fishing cart had once stood.
Ren and Mara.
They lay crumpled on the ground beside the splintered remains of their cart. Their simple woven basket, filled earlier with the day's modest catch, was overturned, its contents scattered across the dusty road. A silver fish still twitched faintly near the wheel of the overturned ground-car, its gills flaring weakly. Ren's old wool hat lay several feet away, trampled and smeared with dirt. The smell of blood—raw, unmistakable—hung thick in the cold air.
For a heartbeat, Mark couldn't move. It was as if the forest itself had gone silent, holding its breath. Then a crushing dread wrapped around his chest like iron bands. The firewood tumbled from his arms with a dull thud, logs rolling aimlessly across the road. The sound seemed swallowed by the air.
His heart, which only recently had relearned how to beat gently, now pounded with something sharp and cold. His breath caught somewhere between a scream and a gasp.
He rushed forward.
The young men turned toward him, surprised, as he shoved past them without a word. Someone cursed, someone else grabbed his sleeve, but he ripped free, the world narrowing to just that patch of ground.
"Ren! Mara!" His voice finally broke free—a raw, hoarse cry that tore through the thin afternoon air.
He dropped to his knees in the dirt beside them. Ren's hand still clutched the small, carved wooden bird he had been shaping earlier that morning—a simple gift he'd promised to finish by nightfall. His eyes were open, wide and unseeing, fixed on nothing. Mara's silver-streaked hair was spread across the ground, matted with blood. Her face—gentle, kind, always smiling—was unnaturally still. Her lips were faintly parted, as if she had been mid-sentence when the impact came. There was no twisted agony, no final cry—only a quiet, eerie peace, as if death had stolen them in an instant.
Mark's hands trembled as they hovered over their bodies. His chest felt hollow. He whispered their names again, weaker this time, as if saying it might pull them back. His instinct—the part of him he had tried to bury—rose unbidden. A soft, golden light flickered at his fingertips, trembling like a dying flame. He pressed it to their wounds, willing it to work, willing time to reverse just this once.
But the light only illuminated their still faces. It found no pulse, no spark to grasp. Life had already fled, quietly, irrevocably.
A cold wind slid through the clearing, stirring the broken pieces of the cart. A fish flopped weakly against the dirt, then went still.
Behind him, the boys had finally stopped laughing. Their drunkenness drained away in an instant, replaced by pale, tight-lipped fear. The one with the designer jacket—clearly their leader—straightened sharply, his jaw clenching. His eyes darted between the wreck, the bodies, and Mark, calculating.
He pulled out a sleek communication device from his pocket. His voice, when he spoke, was no longer slurred. It was clipped. Cold. Practiced.
"There's been an… accident," he said. "Two locals. Small bridge collapse. Send a clean-up crew, discreetly. And tell Father I need an alibi." He didn't even look at Ren or Mara again.
The words echoed in Mark's head like hammer blows. Accident. Collapse. Alibi. The ease with which he said them, the way they rolled off his tongue, told Mark everything he needed to know. This wasn't the first time. These boys lived in a world where lives like Ren and Mara's were disposable. Where consequences could be erased with a phone call.
His breath shook. His hands curled into fists. The golden light that had failed to save now burned faintly against his skin, like a brand.
They had reached him. The world he had fled—the one that crushed, consumed, corrupted—had found its way to this quiet corner of the river. And in one careless moment, it had stolen the only warmth he'd ever known.
The wind carried the scent of smoke, of oil, of blood, and beneath it all, the faint sweetness of autumn leaves. The gentle world he had built cracked under the weight of a single word:
"Accident."
But he knew better. This wasn't an accident.
It was a wound. One that would not heal.