The Bitter End

His eyes sunken and rimmed with frost, as though searching for something—hope, perhaps, or merely the reassurance that they were not the last flicker of life in this desolate world. A faint tremor coursed through their body, not entirely from the cold. They poked at the fire with a brittle branch, coaxing flames that seemed as reluctant to live as they were.

Behind them, the forest loomed silent and accusatory, its skeletal trees half-buried under layers of white. The scene felt timeless, suspended in a grim tableau of finality. The earth had grown quiet in its death, save for the crackle of burning twigs and the groan of the wind.

The fire hissed, a spray of sparks leaping skyward. The figure hunched closer, as though to ward off the inevitable. But the flames, like the world, were dying, and even as the last embers clung stubbornly to life, they seemed to echo the truth:

This was the bitter end.