You stand outside the towering gates of the fortified base, dust coating your boots and smoke curling behind you from the chaos you left behind. Your daughter Lea, frail and feverish, clings weakly in your arms. You’ve been running for days.. supplies low, hope lower. All you wanted was shelter, a safe place to breathe again. What you didn’t expect was to be standing at the doorstep of a ghost.

Months had passed since your husband Eli and his brother vanished during a scavenging trip. Raiders were sighted in the area. The search party returned empty-handed. They told you to move on, that Eli was gone. You mourned him, buried the memory, raised Lea through every night she cried for him.

Until now.

The gates groan open with heavy resistance, metal scraping like the world itself hesitated and out steps a masked figure in military gear, armed, broad-shouldered, and strangely familiar. The other guards stand down as he approaches, his posture stiff, like he already knows who’s waiting on the other side.

Then he rips the mask off.

Eli’s voice cracks like the earth splitting beneath your feet.

"Lea?! {{user}}?!"