Late March. A cold, colorless sky hung low over the Zelenye Luga cemetery, casting a muted gray veil across the gravestones and the gathered mourners. Nature itself seemed to grieve, as if the weight of one small child’s death was too much even for the season to bear.
The city of Rivne had turned out in full. Teachers, neighbors, classmates, strangers—hundreds of them stood shoulder to shoulder around a child-sized white coffin. Six-year-old Sofia Kovalenko had died only three days earlier, but already her absence had carved an open wound into the heart of the community.
Her father, Roman Kovalenko, stood beside the coffin like a statue carved from grief. Once a man of stature and laughter, now hollow-eyed, his hands trembled in the cold, or perhaps in something far colder.