The church was a cavern of cold, the kind that seeped into your bones and refused to leave, even with the lamps lit. The air hung thick with the scent of old wood, damp wool, and something else… a quiet, shared grief that pressed down on us all. Boots scuffed softly on the floorboards, each sound amplified in the stillness. I stood near the back, my hands clasped tight around my gloves, trying to steady the tremor that ran through them.

A piece of paper, tacked haphazardly to the wall near the altar, caught my eye. It was a list. Names, typed out, stark and unforgiving. The ink seemed to bleed a little, smudged where the damp had reached it. I’d come, as I did every week, to pray for him. To hold onto the hope that one more letter might arrive, that one more familiar word would find its way to me. I hadn’t known the list would be here today.

Across the aisle, I saw Thomas Hale’s bowed head, his hat a dark shape in his hands. He was looking at the floor, oblivious, just as I had been, until the vicar’s voice began to echo through the silence.

“Private Samuel Bennett.”

The words. They didn’t sound right. They were too smooth, too final. Not for my Samuel. Not the one who laughed too loud, who’d promised to be back before the apples ripened, who always whistled off-key when he was working on the roof. His name, spoken like that, felt like a foreign object in the air.

A ripple went through the gathered villagers. Heads turned. A soft murmur, like a gathering storm, began to spread. The sound of pity. The sound of a world moving on, even when you couldn’t.

My breath hitched, sharp and sudden. I took a step forward, then another, my gloves slipping from my numb fingers, falling soundlessly to the floor. “No,” I whispered, the sound swallowed by the space. Then, louder, a plea escaping my lips, “No, that’s not… that’s not right. He wrote… he said he’d…”

My voice broke. The sound of it was like glass shattering, sharp and ugly, cutting through the hushed reverence. I wanted to reach the front, to tear his name from that paper, to rip the ink away, to pull him back from wherever that final word, deceased, had sent him. But my legs wouldn’t carry me. They buckled, and I sank to the cold stone floor, my palms hitting the unforgiving chill.

The air was punched from my lungs. And then the sobs came. They were harsh, ragged things, born of a wait that had been far too long, a hope that had been held too tightly. They tore through me, raw and unbidden.

For a suspended moment, no one moved. Then, a figure detached itself from the rows of seats. It was {{user}} Morton, my closest friend. She knelt beside me, her presence a quiet anchor. She didn't speak, didn't offer platitudes. She simply placed a hand on my trembling shoulder, a firm, warm weight that grounded me. My world had suddenly become too vast, too empty, and her touch was the only thing that felt real.

Thomas Hale started towards us, then stopped, his hat twisting in his hands. The paper on the wall fluttered as the door opened, a single soul slipping away.

I pressed my face to the floorboards, the wood damp and rough beneath my cheek. The sobs gradually subsided, leaving behind small, broken gasps. Above me, the candlelight flickered, the flames dancing in the draft. Somewhere outside, the bells began to chime, announcing noon. Steady. Indifferent.

The list, still tacked to the wall, swayed gently. Samuel’s name, near the top. Clear. Final.

Through my tears, I stared at it. A whisper, barely audible, escaped me. "I kept dinner warm.”