Behind Liz and Dan, Emma walked in step with Jett and Ron.

  Jett moved with the quiet grace of someone used to watching over her little brother. Her jet black hair was pulled tightly behind her head, bits of snow already clinging to the strands. Ron, small and wide-eyed, kept close beside her, his hands tucked deep into his coat as he walked carefully, occasionally glancing up at Emma with a kind of wordless curiosity.

  At first, they walked in silence. The only sound was the crunch of boots and the soft hiss of the icy wind curling around rocks and broken trees poking through the snow like skeletal fingers. The sky above was colorless, a blank canvas of pale gray stretching endlessly over their heads.

  Emma’s breath came out slow, fogging the air in front of her face.

  She didn’t mind the silence.

  But after a while, a soft voice cut through it.

  “Uhm…”

  Emma turned her head slightly.

  Jett looked over at her, her pale gray eyes wide, thoughtful, her voice hesitant but not shy.

  “Sorry, but… I’d like to know your name. That is… if you don’t mind.”

  Emma didn’t stop walking. Her eyes stayed forward, but she nodded, and her answer came quietly through the snowfall.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “My name is Emma.”

  Jett smiled softly, testing the name on her tongue. “Emma…” she repeated, drawing out the sound like it was something delicate. “That’s a nice name. It suits you.”

  Emma’s gaze shifted slightly toward her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Jett,” she answered, lightly brushing a few snowflakes from her shoulder. “My name’s Jett.”

  Emma nodded once. It was the first time she’d heard it so clearly.

  She had listened to them before, from a distance. Hidden in a broken structure, she had crouched quietly behind, letting the wind carry their voices to her.. but she hadn’t used the wind properly back then. Not enough to hear names. Not enough to remember.

  Now she had names to go with their faces.

  Jett smiled again and began gesturing gently to the others with her hand.

  “That’s my little brother, Ron,” she said, motioning toward the small boy beside her. Ron blinked up at Emma, then gave a slight wave before quickly hiding his hand back inside his coat.

  “The girl up front with the red hair is Liz,” Jett continued, “and the grumpy one next to her is Dan.”

  Emma’s lips twitched slightly. Not quite a smile, but close.

  “I see,” she said.

  The snow continued to fall around them, silent and constant. It painted everything in a pale glow, softening edges and making the world look dreamlike, almost forgotten. But for the first time in a while, Emma didn’t feel like a shadow moving alone through a hollow icy place.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  For a little while.. just a little, she wasn’t walking alone.

  And somehow, that made the cold feel just a little less sharp.

  ****

  After the brief exchange of names, silence fell again. Not the awkward kind, but something softer, like a thin blanket of snow settling over still ground. Their boots crunched against the hardened frost beneath them, the rhythm of their steps muffled by the icy wind that continued to sweep across the mountain trail in slow, steady waves.

  The slope beneath them was gradually steepening, forcing their legs to move with more effort, more caution. Loose snow scattered at each step, and broken rocks occasionally jutted out from the white, reminders of the hidden terrain beneath the cold.

  Emma walked beside Jett and Ron, her silver-white hair fluttering gently around her shoulders. Her unique white eyes were fixed on the path ahead, but her mind drifted, alert to every shift in the snow, every sound from the others.

  Ron stayed mostly quiet, his small breaths coming out in steady puffs as he tried to match their pace. Occasionally he looked at Emma... curiosity flickering in his pale gray eyes, but he said nothing. Jett, on the other hand, glanced at Emma sideways more than once, as if pondering something.

  Eventually, she spoke.

  “You don’t seem like you’re from around this region...”

  Her voice broke the hush like a stone skipping across still water.

  Jett’s eyes flicked toward Emma’s face. “Are you from Xang?”

  Emma's expression shifted... barely, but noticeably. Her brows pulled together slightly, and her lips pressed into a thin line as the cold wind blew another stream of snow across their legs. Her answer came with that same calm tone, but it held a little edge of reluctance.

  “No. I’m not.”

  Jett blinked, tilting her head slightly, clearly puzzled. “You’re not?”

  The cold wind howled softly behind them, stirring the tips of Jett’s hair and the edge of Emma’s skirt as they continued their slow ascent.

  If not from Xang... then from where? Jett wondered to herself, her brows furrowed slightly in thought. But before she could ask again, Dan’s voice rang out from the front, cutting through the wind.

  He didn’t turn around when he spoke.. he rarely did. His sea-deep eyes stayed fixed ahead, scanning the mountain trail while he walked alongside Liz.

  “If you’re not from any of the regions,” he said, voice cool and blunt, “then you must be a traveler from another Fruit.”

  His tone was unmannered, plain, like someone stating a dull fact without much care for how it landed.

  Emma nodded. Her gaze didn’t waver.

  “Yes... you’re right.”

  There was a small pause before Jett let out a soft sound of realization.

  “Ohh,” she said, her voice stretching the syllable as if things were finally clicking in place. That explained a lot why Emma didn’t seem to know anything about the regions, why her name and clothes felt foreign, why her aura had that strange unfamiliar stillness.

  A traveler from another Fruit.

  Someone from a fruit outside their own.

  Emma glanced toward Jett, curious now. Her voice came quiet but steady.

  “The region we’re heading to… is that Xin?”

  She asked not because she doubted what she had overheard earlier, but because she wanted to be sure... confirm it with the one who walked beside her now, not through wind-carried voices in a distant hiding place.

  Jett smiled slightly at the question, a small upward tug of her lips, almost cheerful despite the cold. She nodded once.

  “Yes,” she said. “The Xin Region is where we’re heading. It’s where Ron and I live.”

  As she spoke, she gently raised her hand behind them, pointing with her fingers into the pale, fog-choked distance.

  “It’s located northeast,” she continued, turning her wrist slowly as she spoke. “It spreads and circulates around those directions.”

  Emma followed Jett’s hand with her eyes, trying to see through the falling snow, but the snowy wind was thick, obscuring everything past a certain distance. The horizon was no more than a blur of white and pale gray.

  Jett shifted her arm again, pointing in another direction now.

  “From here,” she said, gesturing behind them toward the southern edge of the trail, her hand moving slowly, deliberately as her coat sleeve flared in the wind. Emma’s gaze followed the line.

  “To here.”

  Jett’s hand turned, now gesturing toward the west. Her finger moved with the gesture, painting an invisible arc through the air.

  “That is Xang,” she said. “It covers everything from the South to the West. Its territory stretches along that path.”

  Emma’s eyes narrowed slightly as she tried to make out the faint shapes beyond the swirling snow.

  But there was nothing.

  Just cold.

  Just white.

  She stared into the wind-blurred expanse, her silver white hair catching the falling flakes like a sheet of starlight. Her breath came out slow and steady, forming small clouds that quickly faded.

  The snow had buried the world, and nothing could be seen beyond it.

  Yet even if she couldn’t see where she was going…

  She now knew which way was forward....