The Place Between Worlds

At first, there was warmth.

Not fire-warm, not the scratchy comfort of bundled hides — but a remembered warmth. The kind that once lived in a home. In breath shared beneath blankets. In morning light on tile floors. In the hush of a child's laugh.

Vince blinked, and the village was gone.

He stood in a narrow kitchen, lit golden from some unseen sun. There was steam on the windows. A pot simmering. The smell of garlic and simmered tomatoes filled the air like prayer.

Elena sat at the table, legs too short to reach the floor, humming as she stirred something in a chipped ceramic bowl. Her dark curls bounced with every motion.

Lucia leaned by the stove. Pale robe. One hand on her hip, the other holding a wooden spoon. She looked at him with the ease of someone who had waited forever — and never blamed him for the wait.

"Non sei in ritardo," she said softly. You're not late.

Vince opened his mouth — to ask, to beg, to confess — but no sound came. Only breath.

He stepped forward.

Elena looked up, smiling.

"Papà," she whispered. "Hai freddo?" Are you cold?

Vince knelt. His hands trembled as he reached for hers.

They were warm.

Alive.

Real.

And then—

The spoon fell.

A single crack of wood on tile.

Lucia's eyes turned.

Not away from him — but through him.

Behind him, the window glass began to frost. The golden light dimmed. The hum of the stove vanished. Elena's smile faltered.

Lucia stepped forward. Her voice quieter now.

"You don't belong here," she said. "Non ancora. Not yet."

The walls shuddered. A sound like snow collapsing.

Vince turned — too slow.

The kitchen was gone.

Only wind. Only dark. Only the sensation of falling upward through snow and stars and breath he hadn't earned.

He gasped—

—and woke, upright, stiff, cold to the bone.

The fire behind him had gone low. His knees ached from locking. Frost clung to the edges of his cloak. The shelter groaned under the weight above. A child coughed once, then stilled.

And outside, behind the thin wall —

a single sound.

Not wind. Not snow.

A step.

Then silence.

Then... another.

The wind didn't scream.

It pushed.

Relentless. Heavy. Like something alive, exhaling against the skin of the world, trying to collapse it.

Snow fell sideways now. Not in flakes, but in fists. It hammered the shelters, pressed into the seams, buried fire pits and doorways. The outer huts leaned like drunkards, their frames groaning beneath the weight.

Then — a crack.

Not from above. From the leftmost ring.

A rush of white. A roar of falling reeds.

One of the outer huts gave in.

Not slowly. All at once.

A tangle of bark, thatch, and snow slammed to the ground. A shout went up — two figures scrambled out, coughing, pale, soaked. No one was crushed. But fear moved faster than frost. It spread, swift and silent, from eyes to hands to breath.

Inside the central shelter, people began to rise, too fast, too loud.

Vince shouted — once, sharp. His voice cut through the panic.

"Down. Stay low!"

He caught Branik's eye across the room. The roof sagged above them, bowed like the belly of a beast too full of snow.

Branik pointed to the beams, signing: Move now.

Together they rose. Vince felt every bone resist. But there was no choice.

They climbed to the back wall, to the low stretch of support lashed with leather cord. The wood bent. A slow drip of meltwater darkened the center.

Branik pushed up with his shoulder. Vince jammed his cane beneath and wedged a broken board beneath it. Not a fix — a delay.

"More hands!" Vince barked.

Three came. Four. Maela, Eldan, even Rhosyn. They pressed, braced, whispered prayers. The beam groaned but held.

Behind them: a sound.

A child — crying.

Not the whimper of fear. But the full, unbroken scream of panic, of someone too young to name what they felt.

It filled the shelter. Pierced it.

And for a moment, it fractured everything.

Voices rose. Feet shuffled. Eldan stumbled. The tension snapped like thread.

And in that noise — Vince felt it: the storm outside had entered them.

The air inside the shelter was hot from too many bodies, yet it felt cold beneath the skin.

Damp cold. Panic cold.

Not the kind that froze fingers — the kind that soaked through the bones, that whispered of collapse.

Vince sat again, shoulders shaking not from chill, but something deeper — the tremble of command, of responsibility, of the slow erosion of control.

A weight he had carried before.

A weight that always outlived the men who bore it.

He stared into the flickering remains of the fire.

It was no longer warmth, only movement — a weak dance of light that refused to die but offered nothing in return.

He'd seen this before.

Not the snow. Not the primitive shelter.

But the unraveling.

Naples, '82.

Food riots after the shipment delay. Children crushed at a bread stall. His uncle shot in the street, and no one claimed the body for fear of being next.

That scent of burned oil and blood. The distant sirens that never came close enough. The silence that followed a scream too large to be processed.

Vince had held the line back then.

Barely.

Orders barked from a warehouse rooftop. Men with bats, pistols, empty stomachs and wild eyes.

He remembered the cold sweat, the sound of his own voice steady while his hands trembled behind his coat.

And here? Now?

Here there were no guns. No lieutenants. No name to make men hesitate.

Just villagers.

Raw fear.

And snow, like dust falling from the ribs of a dying world.

He glanced at the villagers — huddled, quiet, some crying without sound.

Children with dull eyes, mothers too tired to soothe.

An old man coughing into a frayed cloth.

A girl tracing circles in the frost on the ground with the tip of one finger, over and over again.

He felt their eyes not on the storm, but on him.

Not the fire.

Not the sky.

Him.

They waited for him to hold.

To be the wall.

To be the voice that said we will live when nothing else could say it.

But he wasn't sure he could.

He thought of the dream.

Elena's voice. Lucia's eyes. That warmth.

That impossible moment — so real he could taste the steam from their kitchen, could feel Lucia's fingers in his beard, could hear Elena's laugh echo from the hallway.

Then the sudden shift.

The cold in Lucia's voice.

The way she looked at him like a stranger.

The warning:

You don't belong here.

A lie?

Or a truth he hadn't yet understood?

He reached beneath his cloak, touched the stone charm — warm from his skin, worn smooth by thumb and thought.

Still here.

Still breathing.

The only prayer he'd kept.

Not to a god — but to memory.

He inhaled.

Held it.

Then—

A sound.

Outside.

Not wind. Not snow.

Closer.

Branik turned to him, brow furrowed.

Not fear.

Readiness.

Another step.

Slow. Crunching.

Then another.

Not running. Not stumbling.

Approaching.

Deliberate.

The kind of sound made by something that knew it was being heard.

The child who had cried now stared at the entrance, eyes wide, mouth open — but silent.

Frozen.

Vince felt it before he moved — the ripple through the room, every breath held, every thought tangled at the same word:

Now.

The flap of the shelter shifted.

No one moved.

Even the fire stopped cracking — as if the wind itself was listening.

Vince stood.

No cloak. No cane. Just his body, tired and alive.

He took one step forward, and whispered, low:

"Chi sei?"

(Who are you?)

The flap lifted—

And everything went dark.