The Courier

The woods lay silent beneath a slate-gray sky, the trees skeletal in the cold light of a waning moon. A single figure moved between the trunks—swift when the wind whispered, still as stone when it died. His cloak was mottled with earth and pine needles, blending him into the forest’s dark patchwork. No trail marked his passage but the faintest shift of leaves.

His name was lost to all but himself. To the scattered survivors who might one day speak of him, he would simply be the courier.

For weeks he had skirted the old highways, slipping through ghost towns where wind rattled windowless frames and the scent of ash still lingered from fires long spent. Along the way he gathered whispers: of a wanderer named Aurelian Tharos, of a voice carrying through the dead tunnels of Los Angeles, of relics that glimmered like memory itself. The stories varied—some called Aurelian a mad hermit, others a prophet—but every tale held the same spark: hope.

Hope was dangerous currency. The courier knew that well. Too many false saviors had risen and burned, leaving only deeper scars. So he traveled in silence, not to spread rumor but to see with his own eyes whether this ember was real.

Ahead, through the thicket, a faint orange glow pulsed. The encampment.

He crouched behind a fallen log, studying the shapes that moved around the fire. A dozen, maybe more—faces gaunt but alert, the quiet watchfulness of people who had survived too much to trust easily. Children huddled near the center, their small movements like fragile birds. A sentry paced the perimeter with a makeshift spear, his breath ghosting in the cold.

The courier’s heart quickened. These were not wanderers lost in the dark; they were a community—thin, wary, but alive. And if the stories of Aurelian were more than myth, if a new beginning truly smoldered beneath Los Angeles’s endless ruins, these people might be the ones to carry that spark outward.

But first came caution.

He remained in the shadow of the trees, lowering his breathing until it matched the slow rhythm of the forest. He would watch. He would listen. Only when he knew their hearts—whether they still dreamed or had hardened past hope—would he step forward and tell them of the murmurs rising from the ashes of the city.

For now, the courier knelt among the roots and waited, the tales of Aurelian Tharos flickering in his mind like distant firelight.