Reidar didn't wait and went through the door that would lead him to where his mother was.

He stepped into a wall of cold air. The ward smelled of rubbing alcohol and silence. Healers patrolled the lines of beds, administering potions and changing dressings for the comatose.

Reidar moved through the hushed ward; his feet felt heavy, and each step gave him a sense of urgency. It was as if the silence itself could swallow him whole.

Every step felt like a countdown, and he couldn't avoid dreading what he was going to find.

The silence of the room, the rows of lifeless figures, and the scent of antiseptic and herbs all heightened his anxiety.

He had been searching for his mother for months, and the thought of finally seeing her, while knowing her condition, gave him a mix of powerful emotions that almost made his head spin.

Hope, fear, and a deep-seated need to reconnect. They were all there.

The occasional whispers of the healers moving between the beds was the only sounds that broke the silence.

Sometimes, healers came here to feed the patients using specially designed tools, or better spells.

These fed clear liquids into their mouths, sometimes into their arms if they could not digest for some reason.

Each patient there seemed to be comatose.

<What a messed up world…>

The scent of herbs Reidar had no idea what they were needed for, and something else, something metallic—dried blood, maybe—lingered beneath the sterility.

Reidar's pulse quickened as he scanned the room, counting the beds, searching faces.

His eyes found her.

Judy occupied a cot against the far wall. A sheet covered her. Her silver hair fanned across the pillow; the clinical light bleached the strands to a brilliant white. Reidar's lip quirked. Matthias. Only his father arranged her hair with such devotion.

The coma smoothed the deep lines around her eyes, leaving her face slack. She was clean. Stable. But her silence was pressing against his ribs like a stone.

"Mom…"

Reidar's steps faltered. He took her hands, now resting limp on the blanket. He remembered the way she'd tuck that silver strand behind her ear when she was thinking and the way her hazel eyes would light up when he walked through the door.

A memory surfaced. It was about a sunny afternoon at the park. He was 8, maybe 9, and she was pushing him on a swing. He remembered her laughing and telling him to use his legs to go higher.

He remembered her perfume. Then another memory resurfaced. She was hunched over the kitchen table, her reading glasses resting on her nose as she helped him with his homework.

"Look at it from a different angle, Reidar. It's not so hard once you break it down."

And that was what he started doing.

Reidar remembered bringing Martha home for the first time, recalling how his mom's face brightened as she saw how happy he was.

Although she hugged Martha tightly, offering warmth, she also took the chance to size her up. After the presentations and dinner concluded, she pulled him aside to say that Martha was a keeper, warning him not to dare mess it up.

And Marcus's birth. The joy on her face as she held her grandson for the first time was barely containable.

"He has your eyes, Reidar," she'd said with tears in her eyes.

Martha and Marcus were across a monster-infested country, more a continent than a country now.

His father was in the next room, aged by grief and strain, his hands working to save lives. And his mother was here, trapped in a sleep from which no one could wake her. Unless his father did.

As a sob tore from Reidar's throat, he stumbled to the chair beside her bed because his legs were giving way beneath him.

He reached out to cover her still hand with his calloused one and found it warm to the touch, which was proof that she was still alive despite everything.

He bent his head while his shoulders shook, allowing hot, silent tears to streak through the grime on his face.

He wept for the park swings, the algebra homework, and the advice, mourning a grandmother who wouldn't get to see her grandson grow up in this terrible new world unless his father found a cure.

Overwhelmed by the sense of loss, he cried for the safety, the past, and the future that they had all taken for granted back then.

But who could have imagined?

The bustle of the healers continued around him, a world moving on while his was kept frozen in this room, at this bedside.

The hand was held of the woman by whom he had been taught to be a man—along with his father—and by whom he had been set toward a bright future that was shattered by the apocalypse.

As his sobs subsided into a ragged breath, he didn't wipe his tears away but simply sat there, clinging to her hand as if his grip alone could tether her to this world and pull her back.

Reidar remained there for hours, unaware of how much time had passed, haunted by the thought that although his mom wasn't gone yet, she remained defenseless against a monster, a person, or even the Church that might eventually finish her.

—[Judy Elmar—Level 0]—

Matthias stood under the frame of the door, leaning against it, supported by the crutch he now needed to move.

His shoulders slumped under the heavy emotional weight. Deep lines cut across a face that was usually focused; shadows darkened his eyes, and his jaw was set tight.

He spotted his son as he stepped inside the room. Reidar was a broken shape beside Judy's bed; his shoulders were hunched, his head bowed over her hand.

Matthias saw the tremor in his son's hands. He saw the white-knuckled grip with which he was trying to prevent his mother from disappearing. Reidar was grieving; Matthias knew it well. He lived it every day, because Judy was not dead, but she was gone nonetheless, until he did something to change that.

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