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Maelle cried in the dirt, hands pressed so deeply into the cold soil it seemed the earth itself would claim her, root her there like a sorrowful tree, or else bury herself with him. Wet patches bloomed upon her skin, mud threading itself into her nails, scrawling dark, slanted lines down her sleeves. Her knuckles burned where the grit had cut them when she hit the ground. Mud swallowed her knees, soaking clothes until they were heavy and stiff with filth. A single brushstroke of blood across her cheek, not fresh but drying, its edge crusting and its hue already shifting towards rust.
Her family was gone. Gustav – her foster father, her brother, the man who had been both and more – lay still beside her. The last of his warmth had already gone, leached into the same soil clinging to her hands. His body was limp but not yet rigid, one arm bent towards her as though frozen mid-reach. His fingers were curled in that almost-touch, as if even now, even in death, he still wanted to offer her comfort.
You said you'd run.
Somewhere, far away and in a strange place, he watched. A glimpse of a soul. No body now. No lungs to draw in air; no heart to shudder with grief. Yet the pain still reached him, piercing every layer of his painted frame. After all, she was his little sister.
He could return her smile. He could give her a hand to hold again, a shoulder to lean on, a voice to whisper comfort in the dark. A protector to stand before her as the shield. He could give her back what the world had taken.
All he had to do… was paint.
Gustav woke slowly, as though emerging from deep, heavy water.
The light was kind. Gentle. Gold spilled over his skin like tea across linen, soaking into him with quiet warmth. It curved along the bridge of his nose, pooled across his cheekbones. He blinked, startled by the absence of pain. No screeching of Nevrons overhead.
Only wind – a gentle breeze combing through the grass, brushing along his arms. The soft applause of leaves high above.
When he sat up, he found his body felt lighter than it should have done, each breath was easy, unlabored. A steady heartbeat thudded in his ribs softly, insistently, reassuring in its rhythm. His clothes were clean, undamaged. Even the torn seam near his collar had been repaired by some unseen hand.
Then he saw them. Not graves. No carved stone names. Just swords – dozens, perhaps even hundreds – driven into the soil, their blades caught the light, their hilts were bound with ribbons that swayed in the wind.
A field of memory. A tribute to the dead.
The shift of air brushed his back – soft, almost tender, yet holding the same warning stillness as a predator crouched to strike.
A flicker at the edge of his vision, like a film reel stuttering over damaged frames. The light fractured into thin, restless colors. A chill ran down the back of his neck.
Movement above – a nevron. But not like the others. This one moved like ribbon in the wind: liquid and impossible to define. When it spoke, its voice came from everywhere and nowhere, as soft as silk slipping from a hand.
“What if she never died? What if none of you had to fight?”
He blinked, and the graveyard was gone.
The world turned its own page too quickly, flipping past reality. Ink poured outwards in bands of green and blue and amber. Lush grass rose beneath him, the sky unfurled into a wide, cloudless dome. The sun poured honey onto his skin, curled light into his hair.
And there – in the middle of it all, as though she had been standing there every day since she left – was Sofia.
She turned at the sound of her name, a smile breaking across her face like spring. Whole. Alive.
Without thinking, he ran to her. The meadow welcomed him as though it were the doorway to a long-lost home. The past dissolved behind him – nevrons, gunshots, blood and the cold blackness of his own death – scattering like dust on the wind.
They fell into each other's arms. Her laughter echoed in the space between his collarbone and throat. Her weight felt warm, real.
They lived. And lived. And lived.
They laughed until their sides hurt. They danced in the soft grass. They chased the stars and slept under trees. They watched clouds drift by and gave them names. She wove flowers into his hair. He woke to find her hand on his chest. Time didn't matter. Moments flowed into each other like watercolors left out in the rain. Had weeks gone by? Months? He didn't know anymore. He didn't care. There was no expedition. No nevrons. No deaths.
Everything was perfect.
Until…
“GUSTAVE!”
The sound of his name shattered the silence like brittle glass. He froze, pinned in place by its echo.
The grass shifted uneasily, trees pulled back their branches. Sunlight faltered. Birds stuttered mid-song. The air felt brittle, as though one wrong movement might shatter it.
“Snap out of it! This isn’t real!”
The voices echoed through the meadow. Gustav's breath caught. Something was wrong. The edges of the world began to blur, as if the reality of the space around him were being questioned by the intruding voices.
Figures appeared. Like ink on thin parchment, they flowed, blurred and distorted, flickering here and there, as if the world could not decide whether they were allowed to exist. He knew them. Even through the blur. Even half-seen: Expedition 33. The people he’d died for. The ones he thought he would never see again.
“Come home!”
“Please, Gustave!”
Maelle’s voice. One he knew all too well. Too gentle to belong to a nightmare.
Gustav staggered, feeling the ground beneath him tilt like a ship caught in a storm. His head pounded. The world was fighting for its existence. But the distortions were already everywhere. The perfect paint of this world was peeling off.
He squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted it to stop. Just for a moment.
Then, Sophia’s arms wrapped around him. Her fingers gently stroked his back, the way she often did when he woke up from a nightmare.
"Don’t listen to them." Stripped of its effervescent shine, her voice came trembling and cracked, freighted with a new resonance and a grim vibration she had never carried before. A fine patina of dread coated every syllable. " They want to ruin this. Our life. Our peace. Don’t let them."
She pressed her forehead against his chest. And then he noticed the absurd yet undeniable presence of the sword in his hand. He had no recollection of drawing it. And yet the blade was there: heavy, real and humming with possibilities he wanted no part of. His hand trembled as it was forced to bear the burden of it, as though the sword itself compelled his flesh to serve.
“They’ll ruin it all,” Sofia said again. “Everything you have made. Everything you love.”
She leaned into him, clutching tighter.
“Please.”
The sky, once golden and perfect, was now as thin as tattered parchment, as grey as old film. Cracks spread across it, thin at first and growing wider and wider. The light seeping through them was dull and cold.
The memories. They came back to him, not softly and gently, but sharply, like water breaking through a dam. Maelle unable to break through the barrier. The grey-haired man. The fire in his chest. Then darkness.
He was dead.
Gustav was dead.
And this?
He didn't know who he was anymore. A memory? A glimpse of a soul wrapped in circuitry? Or a painted echo of who he used to be?
This place, this exquisite falsehood, offered no salvation. It was a prison disguised as paradise, a fantasy created solely to keep him here.
“You’re not her,” he whispered.
The world heard him. And groaned.
Above them, the sky let out a low, aching creak as if the weight of the lie had finally become unbearable. Beneath their feet, the grass crumbled like ash, leaving only grey earth behind. The illusion floundered like a trapped beast, desperately clinging on.
Sofia's face trembled. Her eyes smudged as if someone had run a wet brush over a finished painting. She was falling apart, frame by frame.
The forest behind her caught fire. But there were no flames. There was no heat. Only smoke rose upwards like ribbons in the wind. The bark peeled off in strips. The lanterns they had lit together shattered one by one underfoot, like glass bulbs.
Her voice quivered. “We could be happy…”
He looked at her – at the body she inhabited, the face that wasn’t hers, yet bore the weight of her sadness, her light and her memories. He wanted to believe her. He did. God, he wanted the world she promised. He wanted her smile to be genuine. He wanted this field, this warmth.
But it wasn’t real.
He closed his eyes.
Raised the gun.
And fired.
The illusion shattered in two, unravelling faster than the nevron could contain.
And Sofia–
– or the thing wearing her face –
fell.
Collapsed into his arms – weightless, fading like smoke. It was as if, the moment he stopped believing, there was nothing left to sustain her form.
He held her. Despite knowing she wasn't real; he couldn't bear the thought of her dying alone. He didn't turn away. He held her until there was nothing left to hold on to.
He awoke to an absence: the cold, quiet ruins. Where once it had been green, the earth beneath him was now covered in ash. The wind wandered aimlessly, devoid of all warmth, like a ghostly breath scouring the stone.
And footsteps.
Real ones.
A voice, a mixture of prayer and disbelief:
“Gustave?”
Maelle. Alive. Real. Her red-rimmed eyes spoke of a grief that her mouth could not voice. A stranger stood beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder with unsettling familiarity. Gestral, Ciel and Lune.
Everyone was looking at him as though he were a ghost.
Maybe he was one.
Maelle moved first, lurching three steps forward before her small, shaking hands pummeled his chest in a futile protest. Then she gave way, folding into him and twining her arms around him like desperate rope. Her sobs poured into the warm cup of his neck, their sound strangled and wet.
He knelt. Let her hold him. Let her feel his weight and warmth.
The cool, keen wind howled through the ruins, reminding him that the world had never been golden or gentle. It was a hard and fractured place, where nothing was promised and little was forgiven.
But he was here, surrounded by those most dear to him. Whatever came next, they would take care of it.