Chapter Four: “The Weight of Ashes”

Chapter Four:

"The Weight of Ashes"

Berlin swallowed Leo Kraus in its silence, the cold wrapped around him, heavy and unshakable. Snow clung to the cracked pavement, muddied and trampled by thousands of desperate feet. The city's bones, once steel and stone, now sagged under the rot of time and too many bodies. Neon lights pulsed weakly against the night, their colors bleeding into the darkness, a poor imitation of the vibrancy that had once defined the city.

He walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. Around him, people huddled in clusters around makeshift fires, their faces hollowed by hunger and exhaustion. The streets weren't as crowded as they were during the day, but they were never empty. Some souls still wandered, wrapped in ragged blankets, their breath curling in the frigid air as they searched for shelter or warmth.

Even in the dead of night, faint movement lingered in the shadows, watchful figures, merchants haggling in hushed tones, and those too restless or desperate to sleep. Others were waiting for an opportunity, an easy mark.

Leo was not an option.

He kept moving, his boots crunching against the ice, past buildings draped in recruitment posters for The Ultimate Dive. Above them, Gameweaver's projection came to life, eerily smooth, impossibly human.

For a moment, it almost felt like she was looking at him. "A new world awaits. Step inside and be reborn before your final days." The words hovered in the air, golden against the freezing night. The message was the same on every wall: "Humanity's future requires sacrifice. Enjoy it!"

The words weren't a promise. They were a sentence.

He adjusted the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder, its weight an anchor as he carried the last remnants of Sarah's existence. Her mother's wedding ring. The sketchbook filled with her delicate drawings. A bottle of perfume that still held the ghost of her scent. Each object felt heavier than it should have. A life reduced to fragments, carried in a bag too small to hold her absence.

He thought about that night, the night he lost her to the flames.

The city had already been at its breaking point, tension seething beneath the surface, waiting for a spark. He and Sarah had been guards at a ration storage facility, one of the last strongholds of controlled distribution in Berlin. The facility had been brittle in its quiet. The kind of silence that waits to shatter. Outside, desperation simmered just beneath the surface, waiting to boil over.

Then the alarms shrieked, a piercing wail that shattered the fragile illusion of control, jagged and relentless. A warning, ignored by those too numb to panic.

The security gates slammed shut. A protocol meant to prevent looting, but in reality, it had turned the facility into a death trap. The crowd surged, people clawing at each other, at him. They had tried to hold the line, but starvation had turned people into something feral. The first gunshot cracked through the air. Then another.

Sarah's eyes found his. Not pleading. Not panicked. Just knowing. And then the gates sealed. She was on the wrong side of the doors.

He had sealed them.

Leo's breath came fast, ragged, his throat raw as he slammed his fists against the locked gate.

"No! No… Sarah! SARAH!" His voice cracked, desperation clawing at his lungs as he fought against the inevitable.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Please… please, no!"

He had been trying to protect what little remained. That's what he told himself.

Sarah still didn't plead. She still didn't blame him. But no one burns without screaming forever. At first, she fought to contain it, her breath quivering in the choking smoke, but then the fire swallowed more.

A wail ripped from her throat, cutting through the smoke, through the screams, through him. The fire devoured her breath, her body, her voice. Leo's knees gave out. He pressed his forehead against the reinforced door, his fingers trembled against it, helplessly reaching for her. To touch her, one last time. As if that could bring her back, save her.

Before her voice gave out. Before the flames took everything. She looked at him, eyes full of pain—and something else. She mouthed the words, her lips barely forming the shape of them.

'I love you.'

The moment shattered him. The fire took her, and he was left behind, empty.

The ring against his chest was cold now. He had found it in the ashes, the metal warped but whole, unlike everything else.

Unlike him.

The wind bit at his skin. Sharp. Unforgiving. It dragged him back to the present. He passed through a market district, its vendors huddled over oil-drum fires. Bartering had long since replaced currency. Someone offered canned meat in exchange for clean water. Someone else traded a box of cigarettes for a working battery.

A woman nearby knelt over a crumpled figure, her breath visible in the cold as she rummaged through his pockets, searching for anything of value. The figure didn't move. No one stopped to help. They just kept walking, same as Leo.

Leo's hand flexed at his side, a habit he hadn't shaken. His muscle memory still expected the weight of a rifle.

He had been one of them, the Global Resource Committee's Enforcers. The last barrier between order and total collapse.

At first, he had believed in it. A job, a uniform, a purpose. The rules had been clear: No work, no food. No ID, no shelter. If people stole rations, rioted, refused to comply, Leo had been the one to, "stop them."

And he had. Many times.

He had shattered faces over a bag of rice with the butt of his rifle. He had stood guard at the distribution centers while the weak were turned away. He had heard the screams through security gates when the doors locked, sealing the starving outside.

It hadn't been personal.

It had been survival.

It had been necessity.

Then came that night. The night Sarah died. The night he sealed those doors.

After that, he turned in his badge. Walked away. Not in protest, not in defiance, but because he couldn't do it anymore.

He had never been desperate, not like the others, because the G.R.C. had always taken care of its own. But once he quit?

They cut him off like everyone else.

Now, he was just another shadow in the cold. No badge. No uniform. No protection. Walking the same path as the people he used to turn away.

A sudden shout cut through the cold. Not an argument, not a fight, something worse.

Leo turned toward the sound, just as a man collapsed in the snow. His breath steamed in the night air, ragged and uneven. Another person fell next to him, clutching their side.

Then another.

A silent riot.

No screaming. No broken glass. No gunfire. Just bodies folding in on themselves, one by one, swallowed by the snow.

Leo took a slow step back. He'd seen this before.

A food drop.

Someone had spread a rumor, maybe true, maybe not. That a relief truck was coming through, stocked with ration packs. The crowd had swarmed before it ever arrived. Too many hands, too little food. And when that realization set in?

The strongest took what they could.

Leo watched as a woman in a torn coat snatched a loaf of bread from a younger man's hands. He lunged after her, but another figure tackled him from behind, boots slamming into his ribs. The loaf was already gone, stolen again.

It lasted seconds. The fight passed like a winter's night storm, and when it was over, only the fallen remained.

The bread was nowhere to be seen.

Leo adjusted the strap of his bag and kept walking.

The bodies behind him didn't move.

The processing center loomed ahead, its floodlights cutting through the swirling snow. A new projection for The Ultimate Dive spread across the grey night sky, Gameweaver's expression frozen in an unnatural smile, her arms extended as if embracing the city itself.

"Leave the cold behind. Enter paradise."

The screen's glow bled across the ice, painting the slumped figures in cardboard shelters with the false promise of warmth.

Twelve hours. That's all that stood between him and The Dive.

Maybe then, Sarah's voice would finally stop echoing in the flames.

He glanced once more at the warm promise in the sky. The faces of the desperate stared as well.

Leo wasn't sure if he had given up quite yet, caught between the weight of his past and the pull of his protective soul.

Soon, he'd know.