It was dark. It was cold and it was quiet and it was wrong.

Every movement was a break in the utter stillness, echoing in the nothing. Clothes ruffling, the solid tread of boot on steel, the quiet and still too loud heartbeat in her ears. It was death, stalking the midnight streets, death, walking beside her in the dark, and death silent in her keeping.

She ran a distance. Stepping out of time, she landed where she began. The path was straight and narrow and circular all at once. Like she didn’t know where she was going, and death kept watch. Waiting not for her final step, but for her to continue how she had begun. Death-dealer... merciless, cold, and silent.

She didn’t do that. She never did that.

She was warm and alive, and death was her survival. He watched her back; she fed him cold blood and sightless visages.

No. No more. Never again. It wasn’t her fault, it was...

Quiet. Still in the midnight hours, pacing, heartless, cold. Stalking, wanting, needing on the cold streets. Death hunting, for what was his.

She awoke to the morning. Alive, living, breathing. The dead kept theirs, and the living went on. And she chose to live, silently.