etchedinmysoul
In a world where the dead refuse to stay buried, a child learns how to survive the living.
When the world falls apart, Marin Dixon is just a kid-too young to understand why people run, why screams echo through empty highways, or why her father never looks back long enough to make sure she's still there. She follows anyway.
As the apocalypse unfolds, Marin grows up in the shadow of Daryl Dixon-a man built from silence, survival, and scars he refuses to explain. He protects her the only way he knows how: from a distance. With a crossbow in his hands and walls around his heart, Daryl teaches Marin how to stay alive, but not how to be a daughter.
From the early days of the Atlanta camp to the long, brutal road ahead, Marin is forced to grow faster than she should-learning how to fight, how to run, how to bury the people she loves. All the while, she is trying to piece together what it means to belong to someone who doesn't know how to love out loud.
As walkers close in and humanity slips further away, Marin must decide who she wants to become in a world that takes everything. A survivor. A daughter. Or something stronger than both.
Because in the apocalypse, blood doesn't make a family-
staying does.