The rain had slowed to almost nothing by the time the sky went fully dark.
Night settled over the city and nobody moved.
Mina sat beside Haruto with her eyes open and empty, the crying had stopped for now, replaced by something quieter and heavier that had no name.
Toviro sat near her, tears drying on his face, feeling a weight in his chest he had no name for and had stopped trying to define.
Elina sat in the rubble of her home with her head down and her clothes soaked through, her cheeks red and raw.
Aryan hadn't moved from the kitchen.
Ozair hadn't taken his eyes off his father and sister.
The whole night passed like that.
No one slept.
The city made no sound worth hearing.
The rain stopped completely before dawn.
The sky stayed heavy and grey, and the silence it left behind was the kind that pressed down on everything.
When the first pale light came through the window, Toviro made a decision.
He stood, wiped his face with both hands, and picked up his staff.
He looked at Mina beside her husband.
"Mrs. Mina."
She didn't look at him.
"I have to go and check on the others. I'll come back soon."
He turned to leave.
Mina's hand found his wrist.
He looked back.
Her eyes were on him now, swollen and red, her voice barely surviving the damage a night of crying had done to it.
"You're leaving me too," she said.
Toviro stood there for a moment.
Then he turned fully and lowered himself to her level and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I promise I will come back safely. I promise nothing will happen to you. I am only going to see how the others are."
He looked at her until she looked back.
"I will return."
She held his eyes for a moment.
Then she let go of his wrist.
"Thank you," he said.
Toviro stood and walked to the door and stepped outside.
The street was grey and still.
The bodies were still there.
He had seen enough of them last night to have stopped being surprised by them and started being something else instead, something that had no clean word, something that sat low in the chest and didn't move.
He kept his eyes forward and walked until Ozair's house came into view.
The front was still black from the fire, the charred wood soft with moisture from the rain.
Toviro stopped in the doorway and looked inside.
Ozair had moved his family.
His father sat against the right wall, upright, back straight, the way he used to sit when he was resting.
His sister Ava was between Ozair and his father, her small back against the wall, her whole body burned black and still.
His mother was on his other side.
All of them sitting together, side by side, like they were just resting before something, like they might get up.
Ozair was in the middle of them.
Back against the wall.
Eyes open, fixed on the opposite wall, not blinking, not moving.
Toviro crossed the room, then stopped.
Ozair was there, and beside him, his family.
His mother, half her body burned. His sister, her small form darkened completely. His father, marked by wounds that told the rest.
Toviro's eyes shut for a moment, his face turning slightly away.
He couldn't look at them like that. Not like this.
The thought came, sharp and immediate, steadying him.
I'm not here to look away. I'm here to change it.
He opened his eyes again, walked forward, and sat close to Ozair, holding himself still, holding the tears back as best as he could.
Now they were sitting in the burned house with the grey morning coming through the doorway and the silence sitting over all of them.
Then Toviro said, "I know it hurts."
Ozair's eyes moved to him slowly.
His eyes were red and swollen, the same as Mina's, his voice damaged in the same way.
"Toviro." He stopped. Then, quietly, "I'm in hell. This is hell."
Toviro looked at him.
His own eyes watered and he wiped them immediately.
He made himself look at Ozair and not at the three people beside him because looking at them wasn't going to help either of them.
"I couldn't do anything," Ozair said. "Not even for my own family. What kind of son does that make me?"
"Ozair!"
"I failed them. All of them. If I had been faster, if I had been—"
"Stop!"
Silence.
Ozair's jaw worked.
"How can I stop when they're gone."
Toviro said, "Breaking here won't bring them back. I know that sounds hard. But it's true."
"I can't carry this."
"You're not supposed to carry it alone. We were all there. We all lost something." Toviro held his gaze.
"You're not carrying anything alone."
Ozair looked at him, then down at the floor.
The tears came again, quieter this time, no sound to them, just a steady line running down his face.
"Then why does it hurt this much?"
"Because it mattered," Toviro said. "Because they mattered. That is not a weakness."
The silence after that was different from the one before it.
Slightly softer. Still heavy, but differently heavy.
Toviro stood and picked up his staff.
He looked at Ozair for a moment. "You can stay here as long as you need. Cry as much as you want. Hate all of it if that's what you want to do."
He looked toward the doorway, at the grey street beyond it. "But that is not what they wanted for you… And somewhere in you, you already know that."
He walked out.
Ozair watched him going out, while his mind was trying to make himself understand the situation.
Toviro made it a few houses down before he stopped and put his back against a wall and covered his face with one hand.
The grief came out of him in silence, no sound, just the shaking of it, everything he had been holding back since Haruto's hallway the night before and Ava's small burned body.
Everything the night and this morning had contained, moving through him at once.
After a moment he said, quietly, to no one: "Not yet."
The words faded into the air.
He remained where he was, breath uneven, before lifting a hand to his face and wiping it clean.
It took a second more to gather himself, to straighten, to move.
He walked without thinking, steps carrying him forward until Aryan's house came into view.
When he reached Aryan's house, he slowed.
The wall beside the door had melted.
Up close, it looked worse, the surface pulled downward and hardened in uneven lines.
He stood there for a moment, taking it in, before stepping closer.
He crossed the threshold carefully and entered.
The living room was empty.
No movement. No sound.
Just the remains of what had been there.
He took a few steps in, his eyes moving across the space, searching, expecting something.
Nothing.
Then he heard it.
A sound, faint, coming from deeper inside the house.
Not steady. Not right.
He followed it.
Aryan was sitting on the kitchen floor with his back against the refrigerator, one knee raised, the other flat.
Beside him was a pack of cigarettes and three finished ones on the floor.
He had another between his fingers and he was coughing around it, the cough of someone who doesn't smoke but had been forcing himself to.
Toviro crossed the kitchen and slapped it out of his hand.
Aryan's upper body went sideways with the impact, the cigarette hitting the floor.
Aryan didn't look up nor did he react.
He just stayed where he landed, half tilted, his cheek toward the cabinet.
"What were you doing?" Toviro shouted at Aryan.
Silence.
Then Aryan turned his head slowly and looked up at him.
His eyes were dry.
That was the thing about Aryan.
He didn't look destroyed, he looked like someone who had absorbed something so large that the outside of him hadn't caught up with the inside yet.
"I just wanted to finish what my father started," Aryan said, his eyes moving to his father without the rest of him following.
Toviro followed that line of sight.
At first, it didn't fully register, just a shape, a body on the floor.
Then his gaze settled.
The neck. The angle of it.
Something in him went still as the meaning settled in.
His breath tightened slightly, his eyes holding there for a moment longer than they should have.
On the other side was Aryan's mother.
Toviro's eyes moved to her, then to Aryan, and he felt the weight of what Aryan was carrying.
He sat on the floor beside Aryan and put his arms around him and held on.
That was when Aryan broke.
Not loudly.
Not the way Ozair had broken, with sound and force.
Quietly, the way Aryan did things, the tears coming without announcement, his body shaking slightly, his hands gripping Toviro's back.
He said into Toviro's shoulder, "What do I do? Where do I go? There is no one now. I am completely alone in this vast world."
"You are not alone," Toviro told him. "You were never alone. You have us, and we have you. That's what a family is."
He held on a moment longer and then pulled back and looked at him directly.
"Don't ever say that again. Do you hear me."
Aryan looked at him.
His eyes were wet and his face was open in a way Toviro had never seen on him before.
"Then what do I do?"
Toviro held his gaze.
"Nothing. You don't have to do anything right now. You don't have to say anything or decide anything or be anything. Just stay, just breathe. That is enough for right now."
Aryan was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded, just once, barely.
Toviro stood and picked up his staff from the floor. "I'm going to check on the others. When you're ready, come find me."
He left Aryan in the kitchen and walked back through the house and out into the morning.
The grey light had not changed.
The street was still silent.
He stood outside for a moment with the staff in his hand.
One more.
He walked toward Elina's house.