The truck rolled into a town's outskirts with a deep, mechanical sigh, tires crunching over charred gravel and brittle debris. Twilight dragged long shadows across the crumbling streets.
This place, what remained of it, hovered in the eerie stillness of a memory halfway to ruin. Burned homes sagged inward like they were praying. A stop sign lay melted into the sidewalk. No mist, no movement, but the silence was heavy.
Winter turned the wheel into a narrow alleyway, easing them beneath the skeletal frame of a collapsed awning still clinging to the brick building it had once adorned. The cover was partial, but it obscured the truck enough.
He shut off the engine. The vehicle clicked and ticked as it cooled. For a moment, no one spoke.
Zara, from the passenger seat, scanned the street again, her gaze lingering on a tilted mailbox still bearing a faded sticker: God Bless This Home.
Her fingers twitched. Winter noticed.
