The winter Amelia turned twelve was the coldest anyone could remember.
She'd been cast out of Riverside Orphanage three weeks earlier. Mrs. Graves had finally had enough—too many "incidents," too many unexplained events, too many frightened children whispering about the cursed girl who saw things that weren't there.
"You're old enough to survive on your own," Mrs. Graves had said, shoving a small sack of bread and a threadbare blanket into Amelia's arms. "And frankly, this place will be better off without you."
Emma had cried, clinging to Amelia's skirt. "Don't leave me! Please don't leave!"
But Amelia had no choice. The decision wasn't hers to make.
She'd pried Emma's small fingers loose, pressed a kiss to the top of her red hair—the only affection she'd allowed herself in months—and walked out into the November cold without looking back.
Looking back only made things hurt more.
-----
Now, three weeks later, Amelia huddled in an abandoned stable on the outskirts of town, trying to convince her body to stop shivering. The blanket Mrs. Graves had given her was pathetically thin, doing almost nothing against the bitter wind that knifed through gaps in the rotted wood walls.
Her bread had run out days ago. She'd tried begging, but people took one look at her—too-thin, grey-faced, with those unsettling eyes—and hurried past. Some made warding signs. Others spat.
The cursed child. The calamity. Everyone knew.
Amelia had resorted to stealing. An apple from a market stall. Half a loaf of bread left unattended. Scraps from a tavern's waste bin. It was never enough. Her stomach gnawed at itself constantly, a hollow ache that never quite went away.
But the hunger she could bear. She'd been hungry before.
The cold was different.
The cold seeped into your bones and stayed there. Made your fingers numb and clumsy. Made your thoughts slow and stupid. Made you want to just… stop. Close your eyes and sleep and never wake up.
Amelia pulled the blanket tighter and tried not to think about freezing to death.
The spirits were worse in winter.
She didn't know why—maybe the cold made the veil between worlds thinner, or maybe the dead were drawn to places where people were dying. But they were everywhere now, more than she'd ever seen.
Frozen beggars who'd died in doorways, their spirits still huddled there, confused about why no one would give them alms.
Children who'd succumbed to winter fevers, calling for mothers who couldn't hear them.
Old ones who'd simply given up, tired of fighting.
And the dark spirits, always present, always watching, always whispering.
"Join us," they'd hiss through the stable walls. "Stop fighting. Stop suffering. Let go."
Amelia ignored them. She'd gotten good at that over the years.
But tonight, as the temperature dropped and her body shook uncontrollably, their whispers were more tempting than usual.
*What's the point?* a traitorous part of her mind asked. *Why keep fighting? You're going to die out here anyway. Alone. Forgotten. Just another corpse for spring to find.*
Amelia closed her eyes and tried to remember warmth.
-----
The fever came on the fourth night.
Amelia woke shaking worse than before, but this time it wasn't just from cold. Heat poured off her skin even as ice formed on the stable walls. Her head felt stuffed with wool, her thoughts coming slow and scattered.
*No,* she thought distantly. *This is bad. This is very bad.*
She tried to sit up but couldn't. Her body refused to obey. Every muscle ached. Every breath burned.
Fever. She had a fever. In winter. With no shelter, no food, no help.
She was going to die.
The realization was oddly peaceful. After twelve years of suffering, of being blamed and beaten and cast out, death felt almost like relief.
*At least I won't be cold anymore,* she thought.
The spirits gathered around her, drawn by the approach of death like carrion birds to a carcass. Some were curious, others sympathetic, but most were the dark ones—eager, hungry, waiting to claim her soul the moment it separated from her body.
"Soon," they whispered gleefully. "Soon, soon, soon."
Amelia wanted to tell them to shut up, but she couldn't make her mouth work.
Through her delirium, she saw two figures materialize near the stable entrance. Unlike the other spirits, these ones glowed with a different kind of light—one gold and warm, one deep purple and solemn.
The woman knelt beside Amelia, her translucent hand hovering over Amelia's burning forehead. She looked familiar somehow, though Amelia had never seen her before.
"She's dying," the woman said, her voice breaking. "Our daughter is dying, and I can't—I can't DO anything!"
"Aurelia." The man—tall, dark, powerful—placed a hand on the woman's shoulder. "We knew this might happen. She's mortal now. The binding made her mortal."
"Then we break the binding!"
"We can't. It's tied to our essence. We're dead. We have no power here beyond watching and—"
"I won't just WATCH her die!" The woman's form flared brighter, rage and grief pouring off her. "She's twelve years old! She's suffered enough!"
Amelia tried to focus on them, but her vision kept blurring. Were they talking about her? Why did they care?
The man knelt on Amelia's other side. His face was etched with anguish. "If we interfere directly, Solarius will sense it. He'll find her. And then she won't just die—she'll die screaming as he tears her apart looking for the power she doesn't know she has."
"So we do nothing? We just let her freeze to death in this… this hovel?"
"We do what we've always done." The man's voice was soft but firm. "We shield her. We guide what we can. And we trust that she's strong enough to survive."
The woman looked at Amelia's fever-wracked body and laughed bitterly. "She's a child. She shouldn't HAVE to be strong enough."
"I know."
They sat with her through the night—these strange, glowing spirits who seemed to care whether she lived or died. Amelia drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes lucid enough to wonder who they were, sometimes too far gone to wonder anything at all.
In her more coherent moments, she heard them talking.
"—should have found another way—"
"—there was no other way, you know that—"
"—watching her suffer is worse than dying was—"
"—she has to survive, she has to, the prophecy—"
"—damn the prophecy! She's our DAUGHTER—"
Daughter. They kept saying daughter. But Amelia's parents were dead. Had been dead since she was born. These spirits couldn't be—
No. It was the fever. Making her imagine things. Making her see what she wanted to see.
She had no parents. Had never had parents.
Just… just cold. And hunger. And soon, death.
-----
Dawn came grey and bitter.
Amelia woke to find herself still alive, which was surprising. The fever had broken sometime in the night, leaving her weak as a newborn kitten but conscious.
The two glowing spirits were gone.
But something had changed.
Near her head, someone had left things. Real things, not spirit-conjured illusions. A wool cloak, heavy and warm. A small pouch of coins. A piece of paper with an address written on it and three words: *Go here. Please.*
Amelia stared at the items, her fever-fogged mind struggling to understand.
Spirits couldn't manipulate physical objects. Couldn't leave material things behind. That was impossible.
Unless…
Unless they'd guided someone living to bring these things. Found a kind soul and whispered suggestions until that person, thinking it was their own idea, sought out the stable and left supplies for the half-frozen child they'd find there.
Amelia picked up the cloak with trembling fingers and wrapped it around herself. Immediate warmth. Blessed, beautiful warmth.
She looked at the address. It was for a temple on the other side of town—the Temple of the Three Paths, where monks took in travelers and asked no questions.
A safe place. Shelter. Food. Time to recover.
Someone—something—had saved her life.
Amelia clutched the cloak and the coins and the address, and for the first time in weeks, she cried. Not from despair, but from confusion and relief and something that might have been hope.
"Thank you," she whispered to the empty stable, to the spirits she couldn't see, to whoever or whatever had cared enough to intervene. "Thank you."
In the spirit realm, Noctis and Aurelia held each other, exhausted from the effort it had taken to guide that kind merchant to the stable, to influence his thoughts without breaking the rules of death, to save their daughter without revealing themselves.
"She'll live," Aurelia breathed. "She'll live another day."
"One day at a time," Noctis agreed. "That's all we can give her."
"It's not enough."
"I know. But it's all we have."
They watched as Amelia gathered her strength, stood on shaking legs, and began the slow walk toward the temple. Toward safety. Toward survival.
One more day.
Their daughter would live one more day.
And tomorrow, they'd fight to give her another.