The shelter was quiet. Just the low hum of recycled air and the creak of old metal.
Jonas sat on an overturned crate, arms wrapped around his knees. His boots were cracked, soles patched with wire and sealant foam. Across from him, a woman in her sixties stirred something in a dented pot. A weak fire crackled under a makeshift vent.
He didn’t know her name. Just that she wore a faded scarf over her face and hadn’t coughed once since they got inside.
“You believe in any of it?” he asked.
She didn’t look up.
“In what?”
“The old stuff. God. Faith. Hope. Whatever people used to talk about before the spores came.”
She kept stirring.
“Used to believe. Still do, sometimes.”
🔩 Just Another Tool
Jonas scoffed.
“Belief doesn’t stop a mutation. Doesn’t fix a ruptured filter.
I’ve watched people pray and die five minutes later.”
The woman didn’t flinch.
“Fire doesn’t fix a filter either. But it keeps your hands warm.”
He shook his head.
“So what, religion’s just a comfort? A blanket for when things fall apart?”
“It’s a tool,” she said. “Like a knife. Depends how you use it.”
🩸 Not the Book—The Hand That Holds It
He leaned forward.
“Tell that to the people who burned that girl in Ashpoint.
Said she was ‘marked’ by the spores. Called it purification.”
The woman looked at him then. Her eyes were tired, but steady.
“That wasn’t belief. That was fear. Fear looking for something to blame.”
“But they used the old texts. Said it was written.”
“People write laws to control. Doesn’t mean they come from anywhere holy.”
❄ Not Cruel by Nature
Jonas spoke quieter now.
“Sometimes I think people are just bad. Like… we were never meant to survive this.
Every time we build something, someone uses it to hurt someone else.”
The fire popped.
“People aren’t born cruel,” she said. “But fear makes them cruel.
Hunger. Grief. Power. That’s what twists things.”
She paused.
“Kindness doesn’t shout. It doesn’t leave a mark.
That’s why we miss it so often.”
🌱 What’s Left
He rubbed his face.
“So what is belief now? Just something to hold onto while the world crumbles?”
She let the question hang a while, then answered softly:
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s what stops you from becoming like the ones who lit that fire in Ashpoint.”
Jonas didn’t say anything after that.
Later that night, he stood at the edge of the lower deck.
Someone had left a child alone near the broken med station.
He walked over, pulled off his coat, and wrapped it around her.
No one saw.
No one thanked him.
But it felt right.
And maybe, in a world full of spores and silence,
doing the right thing—when no one’s watching—is the only belief that matters anymore.