The cold slashed across his face like a thousand icy blades.
Nikolay Parfenov stood motionless at the edge of Round Lake near Moscow. But it wasn’t just the cold that made him tremble—it was the memory.
A single moment, sharp and unstoppable, that shattered the fragile routine of his life.
Before that day, he had simply been a struggling father. A widower.
His life was an unending cycle of barely scraping by—calloused hands from construction work, sunken eyes from sleepless nights, a heart weighed down by constant worry.
Debts were piling up like snowdrifts, his salary barely enough to stretch across the week.
But through it all, his daughter Maryana waited with hope in her eyes, as if clinging to the belief that tomorrow might bring something better.
That Sunday was supposed to be different. A brief escape. Just a simple walk through the park, a trail winding beside the frozen lake.
The snow reached their ankles, but Maryana didn’t care. She skipped along beside him, holding his hand as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
Since her mother had died two years earlier, Nikolay had taken on every role in her life—father, mother, guardian, comforter.
