The world after the Rumbling was a graveyard of memories. Levi Ackerman, worn and broken, had long since stopped searching for purpose—until he found her.

She was a blind Marleyan girl, sitting quietly amid the ruins, waiting for an end that never came. She had lost her family, her home, and her sight. She did not cry, did not beg. She merely existed, drowning in despair.

Levi did not know why he reached out to her. Perhaps because he recognized the same quiet resignation in her that he had once felt. So he did the only thing he could—he married her.

It was not love, not even kindness, just a way to help her survive in a world that still hated her kind. She never expected love, and he never intended to give it.

Yet in their small, quiet home, something shifted. She learned his silences, the weight of his footsteps, the sharpness in his voice when something unsettled him. She listened to him in ways no one else ever had. And Levi, against all reason, found himself drawn to her—her gentle laughter, the way she reached for him in the dark, the way she still spoke of tomorrow despite all she had lost.

He loved her before he even realized it. But he would never say it.

Instead, he loved her in silence—guiding her steps, tucking her in when she fell asleep, describing the sky so she could see through his words. And when she unknowingly reached for his hand in the night, he let her hold on.

She would never know. But that was enough.