Ashes and Stars

In a world reduced to rubble and silence, Eva clung to the memory of a life before the war - a life filled with laughter, not ash.
Tucked against her heart was a worn photograph of her daughter and herself, the edges frayed from too many nights spent holding it tight.
The photo was the last memory of her daughter before she passed, stolen by illness a year ago, in a world already falling apart.
Eva was full of sadness and sorrow, with all her loved ones gone - her husband lost to the front lines, her brother vanished without a trace, and her daughter taken too soon.
With nothing left to lose, Eva joined the war - not for glory, but in the desperate hope of saving others from the pain that had already hollowed her heart.
It was on a frozen morning, in a village drowned by smoke and snow, that she found Luca - a soldier broken in body and spirit, abandoned by the world he had once sworn to protect.
Wounded and clinging to life, Luca was not ready to give up yet; somewhere beneath the blood and ash, the fire in him still burned.
But when Eva knelt beside him, the weight of everything she had lost came crashing down - and for the first time in a year, she let herself cry