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.