Serafim Slepen

Serafim grew up in a settlement beside an ore-processing plant. Before the White Morning he worked as a lab assistant: weighing samples and carefully filling in journals that he now carries in a canvas bag instead of a prayer book. The flash on the horizon left pale scars across his forehead and cheekbones and burned away his sight, leaving cloudy white cataracts. A year later Serafim began to speak of the Dying Atom. He believes the warheads in the silos didn't vanish but warm the earth from within, like embers under a layer of ash.

On the road between Peklo and Verkhny Stvor they call him Slepen. Serafim doesn't beg and doesn't threaten damnation. He trades a safe path for another's eyes. In twelve years of wandering with his gnarled staff, he has never once been wrong about choosing warm cellars. For that he's been beaten three times, but afterward people always came to him for help when no one else could save them from the cold.

Now a forty-seven-year-old man in a tarpaulin coat patched with wire is heading for the ninth shaft, nicknamed the Cradle. According to him, something alive still slumbers there. Serafim needs someone who can pick out the road among the craters. He honestly admits he has no idea what he'll do once he reaches the destination.

Talking to Slepen is hard. He falls silent for long stretches, taps his staff against the asphalt, asks again about obvious things, and answers questions his companion has only thought.