Life: Time and Death
In a world that refuses to end,
Two forces alone hold any meaning—
Time and Death.
Alone, they are hollow.
Together, they give life its meaning.
You could have died at any moment,
and yet you read this, breathing.
Someone else could have read these words once,
but now their eyes rot six feet beneath the light.
Life has meaning because they coincide.
A clock that ticks toward a sudden stop,
They are the shadows that prove the light is real,
Forcing the living heart to choose its worth
and give its singular meaning to the vast.
Chapter 7: The Defiant Hearth
Snow drifted in slow, silent spirals as dawn crept over the horizon. The city below was quiet, half-buried in winter, yet speckled with stubborn lights. Candles in windows. Paper stars dangling from balconies. A faded string of Christmas lights flickering weakly across a rooftop. Christmas. Day Four. Seven days remained before the world cracked open.
They celebrated anyway.
From the rooftop where I stood, the world looked fragile—like glass held together only by warmth that refused to die. Their hope wasn't loud. It wasn't triumphant. It was soft, private, trembling—and for that, it was dangerous. Because Heaven sees hope as defiance.
Maeve hovered beside me, barely visible in the pale light. "They know nothing of what's coming," she said. "And yet they sing."
"They know," I answered. "They've always known. They sing anyway."
We left the city behind. Frost-laced roads wound toward a small hill on the outskirts—toward a place I hadn't returned to since my second life began.
The cemetery was quiet. Snow blanketed the stone markers, softening the names carved into them. My boots crunched on the path, stopping before three graves standing side by side.
My father.My mother.And Sera.
She hadn't been here in this life—not yet—but in the last one, when she died, broken and bleeding in my arms, I carried her here. I buried her beside them because I couldn't bear leaving her alone in the world she died protecting.
Maeve's voice softened behind me. "This is where you brought her."
"Yes."
"How did she die?"
I didn't answer for a moment. Snow continued to fall, soft and merciless.
"She died because she chose to stand between a god's wrath and a group of children who couldn't defend themselves. She knew she couldn't win. She did it anyway. And I… was too far to reach her in time."
Maeve was silent. Not out of pity—she never pitied—but out of respect.
"…And your parents?" she asked quietly.
"They died before the world ended. Sickness. Ordinary. Human." I brushed the snow away from their names with a gloved hand. "Back then, I thought ordinary deaths were the worst kind of cruelty."
"And now?"
"Now I think… ordinary deaths are a mercy."
Maeve stood beside me, gazing at the three stones. "You buried her with them. Why?"
"Because she was the only person who made all of this—" I gestured to the graves, the world, the silent sky "—feel like it was worth surviving."
We stood there for a long time. Not praying. Just remembering.
"They know the sky is watching," Maeve said quietly. "They know something is coming. So why the songs, Aris? Why the lights? Why the hope?"
I looked down at their names—names carved into cold stone, but still spoken in my heart.
"It's not about winning," I said. "It's about refusing to lose. Their hope isn't a request for mercy. It's a declaration. A way of saying, 'Even if you break us, you will never own what we are.' The gods can take everything—our bodies, our homes, our time. But as long as someone still sings, someone still remembers, they haven't won."
Maeve said nothing. But her wings lowered, and her eyes softened with something like understanding.
We left the cemetery behind.
At the edge of the town, near the husk of an abandoned library, I heard it—soft breathing, too controlled to be sleep. We stepped inside.
A child, no older than ten, sat huddled beside a broken window. Wrapped in a thin coat. Sketching shapes in the frost on the floor with a trembling finger. A small candle flickered beside him—half melted, defiant.
He looked up at us with wary, feral eyes.
I knelt down slowly. "What's your name?"
Silence. His hand tightened around a scrap of paper—drawn on it, a family of three holding hands beneath a tree.
"You can come with us," I said. No promises. No lies. Just the truth. "You won't be safe. But you won't be alone."
He hesitated. Then, his small, freezing hand reached out—and placed itself in mine.
Maeve watched, a strange smile touching her lips. "You just invited death's favorite prey into a war against Heaven."
I stood, lifting the child gently to his feet. "No," I said. "I just gave myself a reason to win it."
Outside, somewhere far above the clouds, I could feel the gods watching.
Let them.