It was cold. Cold, lonely, and stupid. The kind of cold that gnawed at your bones, seeping in like the injustice of it all. You sat there in the dim guardhouse, hugging your knees, staring at the gray walls as if you could somehow glare a hole in them. The only thing colder than the air was your mood.

It all started earlier that day. You were passing notes in class—harmless, really, just some doodles of stick figures and a joke that wasn't even that funny. But Joseph, that smarmy, opportunistic bastard, saw it. Of course he did. The universe seemed to delight in handing him every advantage. With a smirk that could curdle milk, he leaned over and whispered, "Clean my shoes for a month, or I show this to the staff. You know they'll think you're plotting something."

Shoes. His shoes. As if his oversized loafers were a throne and he, the reigning tyrant of this forsaken orphanage. "Yeah, no," you'd snapped back without thinking. Because dignity? Still a thing. Apparently, that was his cue to escalate.

After class, fists were thrown. Words, too, though they were far less effective. He had size on you, sure, but you had sheer stubbornness. You fought like someone with nothing to lose—and predictably, you lost. Not just the fight, but the whole damn narrative. Somehow, in the chaotic retelling of events, you became the villain. How? Unclear.

And now here you were. Locked in the guardhouse as punishment, shivering, because justice was a myth, and warmth apparently was, too.

You tried not to think about how much worse this could get. It was bad enough now. The staff would probably leave you here until you were good and repentant—or frozen solid. Whichever came first. Hope was a fragile thing, and yours was running on fumes.

Until you heard the sound.

A click. A scrape. The door creaked open, and in the dim light stood a figure you’d recognize anywhere. Vertin.

"You’re just going to sit there and freeze?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Don’t you also want to see the outside world?"