prologue .ᐟ
in the quiet, death is waiting.

THE WORLD FELL SILENT BEFORE IT SCREAMED.

Long before the cities crumbled, before the roads became graveyards of rusted cars and forgotten names, there was a stillness. A fragile, aching pause where the earth seemed to hold its breath, as if bracing for the storm to come.

In that quiet, lives carried on — mundane and unassuming — unaware of the unraveling that had already begun.

When the dead rose, they did so like a tide creeping in at twilight, slow but hungry, swallowing everything in their path. Humanity splintered under the heaviness of its own fear : some ran, some fought, and others simply fell.

The world shrank, narrowing to the smallest moments : a whisper of wind through shattered windows, the crunch of footsteps on forgotten soil, the desperate warmth of a stranger's touch.

Amid the wreckage of a dying world, Rick Grimes stood like a lone tree battered by storms, his roots deep but shaken.

There was a tempest in his chest, a relentless wind of duty and doubt, and in his eyes, the weight of all he'd seen — of all he'd failed to save. His resilience felt carved from stone, but even stone breaks. Beneath the armor of his resolve, hairline cracks ran deep, hidden among the burdens he carried : a leader, a fighter, a father, each role etched into him like scars on the battlefield of his heart.

Yet Rick was, above all else, a man who refused to let the dark swallow him whole.

And then there was her.

Selma Rafiq — once a healer, once a nurse.

The titles mattered little now in a world where such certainties had crumbled, leaving only the essence of who people had been.

She moved through the chaos like a thread of silk, delicate but unbroken, searching not for answers but for something that still made sense in a senseless world. Her losses were vast and immeasurable, though she rarely measured them.

Grief had hollowed her, but not consumed her, and she carried herself with a quiet strength that felt timeless, like the lingering warmth of a dying fire.

To Rick, Selma was that fire — a fragile, flickering thing that should have burned out long ago, but somehow didn't. She was proof that even beneath the ashes, something human still survived. She was the ember he hadn't realized he was searching for, a stubborn light that reminded him there was more to this life than survival.

Where the world had taken, she gave.

And where he faltered, she steadied.

Two souls adrift in the end of everything, drawn together not by fate but by the simple, undeniable need to hold onto what little good was left.

But beware, dear readers, this was never a love story — not in the gilded, honeyed way the old world would have penned it.

This was something raw, something untamed.

A tale of survival etched in blood and dust, of hearts too fractured to beat in unison yet finding solace in the quiet spaces between the ruins. It was the story of two people, not perfect, not whole, but learning to navigate the jagged edges of hope and despair, one faltering step at a time.

In the silence that followed the screams, when the earth seemed to weep for what it had lost, their paths crossed, not as an accident, but as if the world itself had conspired to bring them together.

For in endings, there are beginnings, and in ruin, there is still the chance for something new.

And so, their story began — not with a kiss, but with the quiet, stubborn will to keep moving forward.