The snow was endless — a white, suffocating ocean that swallowed the horizon whole. Jane’s boots cracked through crusted ice as she climbed the ridge, her breath ragged in the still air. Beside her, Paul limped with every step, clutching his side, where the cold had crept in deeper than blood. The wreckage was two miles behind them, now nothing more than twisted metal and scattered memories. No one was coming. The black box had burned in the crash, and the emergency beacon blinked only once before going silent forever. Out here, the sky was quiet, the wind indifferent. Out here, they were the only heartbeat left.
Jane hadn’t wanted to live. Before the crash, her plan was simple: take the flight, vanish quietly at the destination. Pills in her coat pocket, note left on her phone. But fate, cruel and strangely exact, had torn the sky open instead, crashing her into something she’d never asked for — survival. And Paul, a stranger she wouldn’t have spoken to on the plane, now became the only thing keeping her sane. He cracked dry jokes when her fingers trembled. He shared what little warmth his coat offered. And in his silence, she heard something terrifying: the will to live.
They found shelter in a cave — not warm, not safe, but away from the wind. Nights were the worst. The cold whispered her name like an old friend. Paul spoke of his daughter in broken thoughts, as if saying her name aloud might break something inside him. Jane listened, nodded, then cried when he couldn’t see. Every morning they woke expecting not to, and every morning they kept walking. For food. For warmth. For nothing more than the promise of one more mile. They were no longer survivors. They were ghosts learning how to haunt their own bodies.
And then — the radio tower. Half-buried in snow, half-broken by age. A miracle, or a final punishment. Paul collapsed halfway there, blue-lipped, shaking. Jane screamed his name into the sky, begged the silence to give her something. Anything. But the silence didn’t answer. She reached the tower alone. Fingers bleeding, throat raw. And when the static crackled through the broken handset, it wasn’t hope she felt — it was grief. Because survival, she had learned, was not escape. It was remembering. It was carrying the weight of the lost, step by broken step, into whatever came next. Jane would survive. But she would never be the same.
