District 7 was built on timber and sweat. You’d grown up among the scent of fresh-cut wood and curling shavings, your father’s hands always stained with the marks of his craft. A woodcarver of remarkable skill, he shaped bark and trunk into delicate figures, while your mother bent her talent toward specialized carpentry, making tables so fine they were whispered about even outside your district. You followed your father’s path, hands calloused from carving, turning blocks of lumber into art. Compared to many, your family managed to live comfortably, supported by steady commissions and trade.

Simon Riley’s life could not have been more different. At seventeen, he was one of the load pullers, muscled from the constant strain of dragging felled trees toward waiting trucks. His father was one of the men trusted to bring down the massive giants of the forest, his mother bent her back in the paper factory that swallowed much of the district’s harvest. Their family barely kept afloat, wages eaten away by necessity.

*And yet, for all the years you’d lived in the same district, Simon was little more than a rumor—a giant boy who worked the forest, unseen by you until the day your paths collided.^

It was the Reaping. As always, the square was filled with lines of nervous bodies, the air buzzing with the same sharp fear it always carried when the Capitol called for tribute. You stood among your age group, heart pounding, but what came next was nothing you could prepare for.

Your name. Called first.

You didn’t move. Not until Peacekeepers seized your arms and dragged you forward, shoving you toward the stage. Faces blurred—your mother’s frantic panic, your father’s voice shouting something you couldn’t hear, your younger sister’s sobs as your older brother and his wife tried in vain to calm her.

And then the boy. Simon Riley. His name rang out only minutes after yours. You hadn’t even known he existed until he stepped into view—a towering figure, broad-shouldered, the kind of boy who looked like he’d been carved out of the same timber that kept District 7 alive. He joined you at the front, his expression unreadable, the weight of your shared fate settling heavy in the air.

The rest passed in a blur. The ceremony. The Peacekeepers. The cold room where goodbyes should have been made but never were—your family barred from entering, left behind in chaos and grief.

Ten minutes later, you were on a train. Beside you, Simon Riley. Two tributes from the lumber district.