The street was an ice-choked throat, gasping for air. The snow didn't just fall; it descended with a calculated violence, turning the cobblestones into a battlefield where the weary and the stray dogs fought for the right to breathe another hour. To the comfortable world above, this place was a stain—a gutter-born nightmare they hurried past with averted eyes.
They looked at us with a poison mix of hatred and pity, as if poverty were a crime we had committed against them. I wanted to scream at their retreating backs: Is it my fault? Is it our fault we were born into the dirt?
But the air was too cold for screaming.
Through the white haze, a shadow lengthened. I watched the Grim Reaper approach, his cloak darker than a moonless night. I wanted to find my voice, to demand an answer: Is it my fault I am dying here? Is it my fault I was born with nothing but hunger? But I remembered the stories. Death doesn't speak. He only listens.
People told us to "enjoy life," as if joy were something we could pull out of a trash heap. Now, even the Reaper was looking down at me with a gaze that felt like a eulogy. I had only one question left for the dark: Tell me, Reaper… do they have food in hell?
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.I looked down at the twenty-year-old boy. He lay broken on the frozen earth, his body a map of bruises and jagged scars. He was clutching a piece of bread—molded, stale, and tiny—as if it were a jewel more precious than his own soul. His dark hair was matted with ice, and his blood stained the snow a brilliant, tragic crimson.
With a rattling breath, the boy looked up at me. "Hey… Mister Reaper," he wheezed. "Can you… please… give this to my little brother? He hasn't eaten in a week."
He began to crawl. It was an agonizing descent, every inch of movement a fresh sacrifice. His fingers clawed at the ice, dragging his fading weight toward my boots. He reached out, his hand trembling as he offered the bread
"Mister Reaper, please. Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him… it's all my fault."
His eyes glazed over as he spoke to a ghost, a brother who wasn't there. "Be strong, luke. You're going to be a singer, remember? Don't stop. I'll be there… I promise."
I stood paralyzed. I am a creature of porcelain and shadow, a vessel for the end of things. I have seen empires fall and kings beg for mercy, yet I found I could not move. A single, hot tear tracked down my white skull, carving a path through the frost. Even Death can weep when he meets a soul that is too heavy for the scales of the world.
The boy's hand went limp. The light in his eyes flickered and died, leaving him cold in the silent snow. He died as he lived—offering everything he had to someone else.
I didn't take the bread. I stood there as the snow began to cover him, falling softly as if out of respect for a fallen king. I reached into my cloak and pulled out the scroll—the contract where his name was written in ink that never fades.
But as I looked at the parchment, the ink began to shimmer and vanish. The paper itself refused to hold him; it denied his name, as if even the laws of the afterlife knew he didn't belong in the ledger of the dead.
"Remember this, boy," I whispered into the wind. "When you find the Light at the end of this cold, you can ask Him for anything you want."
Like the snow that vanishes with the coming of spring, the beggar's life faded away, finally leaving the winter behind to find a summer that would never end.
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