Chapter Text
The air was dense, reeking of iron and old smoke.
Gustave moved through the corridor slowly, his boots crunching against something that should not have sounded like that. He froze.
Bodies.
Left behind.
The expedition leader’s vision blurred red—not only from the blood coating the stone, but from the panic crawling up his spine, tightening his muscles, stealing his breath.
They weren’t going to make it.
Some of the dead still wore expedition markings—faded numbers stitched into torn fabric, blackened by ash. Their eyes were wide, hollow, frozen in horror. Their bodies twisted in agony, as if death had caught them mid-scream.
They looked like they were still suffering.
Still screaming.
Still hiding.
Still dying.
Eternally.
Limbs bent at impossible angles. Weapons lay useless beside hands that would never close around them again.
Hands.
So many hands.
Reaching.
Begging.
Not eternally dying, Gustave realized at last.
Waiting.
Waiting for salvation that never came.
Expeditions before his.
Failures before his.
Names already erased by the city that sent them here.
Gustave swallowed hard.
Thirty-three.
That was his expedition’s number.
He didn’t need to check the blood-soaked uniforms. He didn’t want to. Numbers carried weight here. Years carried curses.
His breath hitched as panic seized his mind, the truth settling deep into his bones with terrifying clarity.
This is where it ends.
The corridor opened into a wider chamber, its ceiling smeared with that same cursed crimson. Pale light spilled down, illuminating the carnage like a cruel spotlight.
Gustave walked alone among the dead.
No voices.
No orders.
No hope left to pretend.
He knelt beside one body—someone young. Too young. Their eyes stared upward, fixed on a question that would never be answered.
Gustave closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
He wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to anymore.
…The cruelty of the truth. Was… He was apologizing to himself.
The leader of Expedition 33 felt his hand tremble.
Sadness and panic suffocated his mind with painfully grief and hopeless.
Gustave stays still breathing hard. Trying to control his own emotions. Sophie memories the crushing his heart. He won’t make it. He was a false. The mission even before start was a sentence of death.
The brown haired man feel his body loosing control. He didn’t fight it. The pain he felt when his knees hit the ground was nothing. His heart felt it shattered like crystal. pain
Turned into tears.
it reached for his sidearm.
The metal felt heavier than it should have. Final. Absolute. The cold in contact with his feverish skin feels like a relief.
He stood.
There was no dramatic despair. No sobbing. Just a hollow exhaustion that emptied him from the inside out.
“This is pointless,” Gustave said aloud, his voice barely echoing. “We never make it. We never will make it. We just… take turns dying.”
———
Somewhere above, unseen, a shadow shifted.
The shadow had followed the expedition for hours; keeping distance, staying hidden, studying the man with the mechanical arm and brown, curly hair. He had no intention of revealing himself. Not now. Not ever, if he could help it.
But he saw the path where this man decedent to walk through.
Verso had followed the expedition from a distance, careful, silent. He had watched leaders before. Had watched them break in different ways.
This one was breaking fast.
The bodies.
The hopeless was consuming this young leader.
Once, they had crushed him too.
Now, Verso mourned in silence, burying grief beneath years of guilt. Till left no more feelings to make him remember.
But verso was facing a conflict inside nis own mind . something about that man was pushing him to worry. He quite clearly even questioning himself
…why was is he bothering so much about one more death in this land?
Verso saw the gun.
The young man was going to end his life.
Not my place, he told himself. Again
It’s not my mission
The man Biden in the shadows sawsThe barrel pressed against Gustave’s head.
“Mierda.”
His finger tightened.
Verso moved.
The older man crossed the space between them in a blur of controlled violence silent boots, perfect timing. His hand struck Gustave’s wrist just as the trigger began to pull.
————
The gun fired.
POW!
The shot tore into the stone wall, showering sparks and dust.
Gustave staggered back with a sharp gasp, the weapon clattering across the floor.
Before the leader could react, a firm grip locked around his wrist. A hand that was the reason Gustave still breathing.
Don’t,” a voice snarled. “Don’t you dare.” A voice came next to him. Demanding.
Gustave’s head snapped up.
For a second, all he saw was a blur of shadow and anger.
Then a man.
Older. Taller. Eyes hard with something far worse than rage.
“Who the hell are you?!” Gustave shouted, trying to tear free. “Let go of me!”
Verso didn’t release him.
“You don’t get to die here,” Verso said coldly.
That broke something open.
A raw, ugly laugh tore out of Gustave. Angry and frustration.
“You think this is your decision?!” he screamed. “You think you understand anything about this?!”
“No. Don’t—don’t do it,” Verso said sharply. “I don’t fully understand, yet… believe me this it’s not the solution.”
A broken laugh escaped Gustave. “You think you can stop me?”
“Yes,” Verso replied calmly. “And I already did.”
Gustave’s anger flared. raw, desperate.
“WHO ARE YOU?! You don’t know anything!” he snapped, shoving against Verso’s arm. “You didn’t see them! You didn’t see what happens to us! The old man with a cane in the chore!… he dismantled us like a blood bath welcome. We had no chance!”
Verso tightened his grip just enough to hold him still.
“I saw the bodies,” he said quietly.
That stopped him.
“I saw enough. Fuck this mission.”
Gustave’s strength collapsed all at once. His shoulders sagged, his forehead pressing briefly against Verso’s chest, as if gravity had finally won.
“…Then you know,” he whispered. “We’re already dead.”
Verso hesitated.
Slowly, he loosened his hold; but didn’t step away.
“No,” he said. “You’re not.”
Gustave shook his head. “Don’t be a liar. It’s a countdown!” The voice came weaker
Verso studied him. Really looked at him now. the exhaustion, the grief packed so tightly it had nowhere left to go.
“Do You think dying here gives it a meaning,” Verso said. “No, It doesn’t.”
Gustave looked up, eyes burning.
“S-Sophie is gone… I—I need this to mean something. But…”
“You still have a chance,” Verso replied, softness.
“There’s no redemption for me! You don’t know me. Stop putting faith in me.”
“You are not alone. Yeah I still don’t know your name s-still… I saw the others,” Verso said. “Some of them are still alive. And they need their leader.”
That struck deep.
Silence fell between them.
Gustave let out a weak laugh, his fists clenched, trembling.
“…I didn’t want to be afraid anymore.”
“You are not the only one who are afraid. Ending this won’t help,” Verso said quietly.
“Who are you? Why are you helping?” Gustave still didn’t had a chance to look at the other.
“I’ll answer when we leave this cave.”
They stood there, surrounded by the dead. Gustave was more calm and start to think what a terrible choice he was about to do. A wave of guilty hit his body and heart.
Finally, Verso stepped back and pick up the gun holding closer to his body.
“Get up,” he said. “If you’re going to die, it won’t be alone in a corridor.”
Gustave hesitated; then slowly straightened.
“…Who are you?” he asked.
Verso turned toward the exit, his silhouette already blending back into shadow.
“Someone who refuses to let an expeditionary take away his own live.”
Gustave followed. Gaining distance from that nightmare.
⸻
Relief was not the right word.
Whatever Gustave felt shattered the moment his eyes fixed on the man walking ahead of him.
The uniform was old—an expeditionary cut he recognized instantly, worn thin by years rather than battles. Fur lined the man’s shoulders and nape, heavy and unfamiliar, as if he belonged to a colder, older time.
Then the light shifted.
It caught in his hair.
Black; threaded unmistakably with white.
Not a trick of dust.
Not ash.
Not a single stray strand.
Whole sections of it were gray.
Gustave’s breath caught sharply in his throat.
His body stopped before his mind could catch up. His feet refused to move, as if the stone itself had seized him. A chill ran through his chest, deep and sudden, and his heartbeat stumbled, striking too hard against his ribs.
No.
The number echoed in his thoughts, uninvited.
Thirty three.
That kind of gray did not belong to thirty-three.
Whoever this man was whoever had pulled him back from the edge; he was older than the limit. Older than the rule. Older than he was ever supposed to be.
He should not be alive.
The realization settled like a weight, heavy and wrong, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.
Ahead, the man slowed.
Then he stopped.
He hadn’t turned yet, but Gustave knew—knew—that the other had felt it. That he had sensed the moment the truth finally reached him.
The silence between them thickened.
“Yeah,” the man said at last, his voice calm, almost resigned. “I forgot to mention.”
He turned slowly.
The white in his hair was impossible to ignore now.
“And the reason I prefer to stay unseen…”
He faced Gustave fully, eyes steady, ancient in a way that had nothing to do with wrinkles or scars.
“I’m Verso,” he said. “And I was an expeditionary too.”