Howling wind battled with roaring blood, withered lungs begged for mercy as thorns and vines fastened around them like savage serpents, legs threatened to buck beneath a heavy burden, and trembling fingers clutched onto a hefty rifle as Trenchant staggered through the blizzard. Her tired eyes were squinted at the blank fog, straining to make out a crooked path in the snow. The ground was littered with bodies - the now-empty vessels of soldiers who used to be human. Soldiers who used to feel, think, laugh, weep, and love. People who had had someone out there, someone who cared and awaited their return as they shrank in the cold corner of their empty abode. Now, they were all but void carcasses buried under the falling, furious white feathers. It was difficult to believe life once raced through their veins. Trenchant felt for them; she personally knew the frosty grip of emptiness that clawed onto their stagnant hearts. Hell, she even envied them a bit; they no longer had to suffer the guilt and sorrow that loomed over her like an axe ready to strike. Pictures of the good days when no heart knew greed nor travail were framed in her hazy mind, torturing and mocking her.

Her legs quaked, her strained breaths shortened and hastened. She tripped over her lifeless comrades and kicked up dry, dusty snow. Blood seeped through her worn and wrinkled uniform. A pity; it used to be her most prized possession. Before she joined the Coalition, she couldn't have even thought of owning nice, proper clothes. She could barely keep her rifle in a steady grip. Her icy hands could not even feel the weapon, and even her best efforts to keep her fingers away from the trigger were to no avail.

Slow steps faltered, heart banged against its cage, fingers uncurled from their desperate grip, legs bucked beneath weight, and the soldier crumpled to the ground with a weak wail. A cloud of powdered snow erupted from beneath her. She gasped in agony and choked on her breath, chest heaving as she hacked out a pool of blood, spitting scarlet streaks. They seeped into the silver snow, painting a scene of utter misery and despair. Trenchant's eyes fluttered shut, her pale and split lips parting in a prayer the wind mercilessly smothered with its raging yowls.

The rifle hadn't landed far from its owner. It lay there, patient and tempting, welcoming the pained soldier with its loaded chamber. It was warm. It had a heavenly glow to it - even as she blinked at it again and again, it never quite faded. With a strangled groan, Trenchant heaved herself up, erupting in a fit of fierce coughs. She spent a good few moments fighting and gasping for her breath before reaching out for the tantalizing weapon. If only she could just... pivot it a bit more until it was aimed at her...

What did she have left? Nothing, that was what. She was a traitor - a filthy, wretched scumbag. Her dying nation wept and shrieked for salvation as she bluntly turned her back on it, squeezing her dull eyes shut and covering her ears. Her soul slowly withered, and spiders wove their dusty webs across her clouded mind. Her heart sank and froze as she stared into the nothingness, as her people keeled over and handed themselves to a lost cause with their last scraps of determination and faith. Those dead soldiers were more human than she could ever be.

Her fingertips blindly searched for the weapon, struggling to get a good grasp on it. She slowly pressed on the soft trigger, her breath stilling as the world went quiet. That was what she wanted. That was what she deserved.

A thunderous shot pierced through the mist and left a vile ringing in its wake.

Silence bled.

A string of disheartened and fuming curses rang through the air; Trenchant had missed the shot.

The recoil jolted through her bones and left her ears screaming, but the world did not end.

Trenchant stared, stunned, at the rifle now trembling in her grasp. The smoke curled lazily from the muzzle, a thin grey ribbon that the wind soon tore apart and scattered into nothing. Her breath came back in ragged bursts, as if her lungs had forgotten their purpose and were now relearning it through sheer stubbornness.

She was still here.

Still cold. Still aching. Still alive.

The realization struck harder than the shot ever could have. Her fingers slackened, and the rifle slipped from her hands, sinking halfway into the snow with a dull, final thud. For a long moment she did not move. She only listened—to the storm, to the distant groan of shifting ice, to the frantic hammering of her own heart that refused to quiet.

It was infuriating.

“Why…” Her voice cracked, barely louder than the wind. “Why won’t it just stop?”

Her question vanished into the blizzard like everything else. No answer came. No mercy. Only the ceaseless howl and the endless white.

She curled forward, clutching at the front of her uniform as another wave of coughing wracked her frame. Spots danced in her vision, but she forced her eyes open, glaring at the ground as if it had personally wronged her. The snow beneath her was already stained and churned, an ugly testament to her weakness. To her failure.

To her survival.

A bitter laugh escaped her before she could stop it. It sounded foreign—dry, sharp, almost hysterical. The dead around her did not laugh. They did not cough or shiver or curse the cold. They simply lay there, unmoving monuments to a finished story.

She hated them for that.

“Hah… look at you,” she rasped, addressing no one and everyone at once. “Couldn’t even do that right.”

The storm offered no judgment, but something else did: a faint, distant crunch.

Trenchant froze.

Another crunch followed, muffled by the snow but unmistakable—footsteps. Not the shifting of ice, not the roll of wind over drifts. Measured. Human. Drawing nearer through the fog.

Her heart lurched, this time with something sharper than despair.

Panic.

With clumsy urgency she dragged herself toward the rifle, fingers fumbling as they brushed the cold metal. The earlier glow was gone; it was just a weapon again, heavy and indifferent. She wrapped both hands around it, forcing her numb limbs to obey as she hauled it close to her chest.

The footsteps paused.

A shape began to form within the blizzard’s veil, crooked and indistinct at first, then gradually gaining edges—a silhouette moving against the white, steady despite the storm’s fury.

Friend or foe. Hunter or rescuer. Executioner or salvation.

Trenchant could not tell. She only knew that whoever it was had seen the smoke. Had heard the shot.

Her pulse thundered. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to hide, to vanish into the drifts and let the storm finish what she had failed to do. But her legs refused. They quivered uselessly beneath her, heavy as lead and just as unyielding.

So she stayed.

The figure drew closer, boots crunching rhythmically, until it finally stopped a few paces away. For a moment neither of them spoke. The wind howled between them like a living thing, tugging at coats and hair, trying to shove them apart.

Then, through the gale, a voice cut across the distance—hoarse, disbelieving, and unmistakably alive.

“Trenchant…? Is that really you?”

Her breath caught.

Of all the ghosts she expected to meet in this frozen graveyard, that was not one of them.

Trenchant’s breath snagged in her throat.

For a moment she wondered if the storm had finally claimed her mind. The blizzard roared so loudly it could twist sound into anything it pleased. Voices, memories, accusations. She had heard them before—whispers of comrades long dead, echoes of commands that no longer mattered.

But this voice was different.

It trembled.

“Trenchant…?”

The figure stepped closer, pushing through the curtain of snow. The wind tugged at their coat, snapping the dark fabric like a torn banner. A hand rose to shield their face from the storm, and in that small motion something painfully familiar surfaced in Trenchant’s mind.

A habit.

A gesture she had seen a hundred times before.

Her fingers tightened around the rifle.

“…Don’t,” she rasped, her voice thin and cracked. “Don’t come any closer.”

The figure stopped immediately. For a heartbeat the storm seemed to hold its breath with them. Then the stranger lowered their arm, and the swirling snow briefly parted just enough for Trenchant to see their face. Her stomach dropped.

“No…” The word slipped out before she could stop it.

The man standing before her looked older than the memory she carried of him. The cold had carved deeper lines into his face, and frost clung stubbornly to the dark stubble along his jaw. But his eyes—sharp, steady, and painfully alive—had not changed.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Trenchant whispered.

A humorless smile tugged at his lips.

“Funny,” he said hoarsely. “I was about to say the same thing.”

The rifle in Trenchant’s hands wavered.

She lowered it an inch. Then another.

“…Kade.”

The name felt foreign in her mouth, like a relic dug up from another lifetime.

Kade exhaled slowly, a cloud of mist spilling from his lips as tension drained from his shoulders. For a moment he simply stared at her, as though confirming she wasn’t another trick of the storm.

“You vanished after the breach,” he said at last. “Whole unit thought you were buried under the ridge when it collapsed.”

Trenchant let out a weak laugh that quickly dissolved into a cough.

“Would’ve been better if I was.”

Kade’s expression hardened.

He took another step forward. The crunch of snow under his boot sounded unbearably loud.

“Don’t say that.”

“You don’t know what I did.”

The words came out sharper than she intended, brittle with exhaustion and something dangerously close to panic. Kade stopped again. For a moment the two of them simply stared at each other across the short distance, the blizzard clawing at their clothes and hair like it wanted to tear them apart. Trenchant felt the weight of his gaze pressing against her, searching for something beneath the blood, the frost, the hollow shell she had become. Finally, his eyes flicked downward.

The faint scorch mark in the snow where the bullet had struck. When he looked back up, something grim settled behind his eyes.

“…You fired that shot,” he said quietly.

Trenchant didn’t answer.

For a long moment Kade said nothing. The wind screamed through the valley, scattering loose snow across the bodies around them. Pale shapes half-buried beneath white drifts—silent witnesses to everything. Then he ran a tired hand across his face.

“Damn it, Trenchant…” he muttered.

Her jaw clenched. “Save it.”

“I’m not here to lecture you.”

“Good.” Her laugh was hollow.

Kade studied her for another long moment. Then he did something unexpected. He started walking again.

Straight toward her.

The rifle jerked up in her hands, instinct snapping through her nerves.

“I said don’t—”

“Shoot me if you want.”

His voice cut through the storm like a blade.

But he didn’t stop.

Step.

Crunch.

Step.

Crunch.

Each step carried him closer until he was standing only a few feet away, close enough that Trenchant could see the frost clinging to his eyelashes. Close enough that if she pulled the trigger this time…she wouldn’t miss. Kade looked down at the trembling rifle, then back into her exhausted eyes.

“If you’re really done,” he said quietly, “then do it right.”

The wind howled.

Trenchant’s finger trembled against the trigger.

But the shot did not come.

The wind howled like a wounded beast across the frozen field, tugging at Trenchant’s coat and driving needles of ice against her skin. Her finger still rested on the trigger, stiff and trembling, but the strength to pull it had long since drained from her arms.

Kade didn’t move for a moment.

Then, slowly, he reached out and pushed the barrel of the rifle aside.

Trenchant didn’t resist.

“You’re freezing to death,” Kade muttered.

“So?” Her voice was dull, almost bored. “Saves me the trouble.”

He shot her a sharp look. “You always this annoying?”

Trenchant almost managed a smirk, but it collapsed into a cough that bent her nearly double. Dark blood speckled the snow again, stark against the pale ground.

Kade swore under his breath.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Before she could protest, he crouched and slung her arm over his shoulders. The movement was rough but practiced—something learned from hauling wounded soldiers out of worse places than this.

Trenchant stiffened immediately.

“Don’t—”

“Too late.”

“I can walk.”

“You just tried to shoot yourself,” he said flatly. “Forgive me if I don’t trust your judgment.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but another violent shiver cut the words short. Her legs trembled beneath her like brittle branches ready to snap. Kade shifted his grip and hauled her up. The moment her weight settled against him, he winced slightly. She felt lighter than he remembered—dangerously light, like something already halfway gone.

“Damn it, Trenchant…” he muttered.

“Put me down.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know where you’re going.”

“I do.”

She let out a weak laugh. “In this storm? Sure you do.”

Kade jerked his chin toward the barely visible slope ahead.

“There’s a supply outpost half a kilometer west of here. Abandoned last winter.” He adjusted his grip as they started moving. “Roof still intact last time I passed through.”

“Last time?” she rasped.

“Three days ago.”

Trenchant blinked slowly.

“You’ve been wandering this hell for three days?”

“Five.”

The answer made her stare at him.

Kade trudged forward through the snow without looking back. Each step sank deep into the drift, boots crunching against buried ice and debris. The wind tried to shove them sideways, clawing at them like it wanted to drag them both down.

But he kept moving.

Behind them, the battlefield slowly faded into the white.

Trenchant’s head lolled slightly against his shoulder. Every breath scraped through her lungs like broken glass.

“Why…” she mumbled.

Kade grunted as he hauled her over a ridge of packed snow.

“Why what?”

“Why bother? You could’ve just walked past,” she continued faintly. “Would’ve saved you a lot of trouble.”

Kade didn’t answer immediately.

They pushed through another curtain of swirling snow before he finally spoke.

“Because I know you.”

Trenchant’s brow twitched.

“You used to drag half-dead idiots out of firefights,” he went on. “Even the ones who hated your guts.” He glanced down at her briefly. “You pulled me out once, remember?”

Her eyes shifted weakly. A memory flickered somewhere in the fog of her mind—smoke, shouting, the thunder of artillery… and a younger Kade slumped against a shattered barricade while she hauled him away.

“That was different,” she murmured.

“Was it?”

The wind screamed over the ridge as they crested it. Beyond the slope, the vague shape of a small structure emerged through the storm—low stone walls half-buried in snow, a crooked metal door hanging from rusted hinges.

Kade nodded toward it.

“There.”

Trenchant squinted at the silhouette.

“…Looks like a tomb.”

“Good.” He adjusted her weight again. “Then it’ll feel familiar.”