By late afternoon, the sky had turned the color of lead.
Snow flurried down in dry, thin flakes that caught on the blackened stones of the ruined streets.
Dorian left the riverbank and wandered aimlessly toward the center of the city.
His boots crunched on the frozen ash.
As he turned a corner near what had once been a school, he noticed movement — a slight shifting of rubble against the wall of a half-collapsed building.
He approached slowly.
There, huddled between two broken slabs of stone, sat a boy of perhaps eight or nine.
He was thin to the point of frailty, his jacket torn at the elbows, his knees drawn tight to his chest.
A small tin can rested in his hands.
It was empty.
The boy's eyes followed Dorian warily, but he didn't speak.
His lips were chapped and pale.
Dorian stopped a few steps away.
He felt the familiar ache — the same weight that pressed on his chest whenever he saw a child.
"He's like my boy would have been," Dorian thought, the words heavy and slow.
"Small. Alone. Waiting for someone who never comes."
For a long moment he simply stood there, unable to move.
The boy shifted slightly, as if expecting to be chased away.
His eyes had the distant, hollow look of someone who had already learned too much about hunger.
Dorian crouched down at last.
He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a scrap of bread he had saved from the morning's meager rations.
He held it out without a word.
The boy stared at it as though uncertain it was real, then reached out and took it in both hands.
No thanks.
No smile.
Just the slow, deliberate act of biting into the crust and chewing carefully, as if afraid the bread might vanish.
Something shifted in Dorian's chest — a faint, painful stir, as if a heart long frozen had twitched.