A Fairly Reasonable Crashout (RWBY Adam SI) ch 17

+++

She hid.

He told her to.

But it didn't last.

Not when the Atlesians came.

Not when the steel-faced Knights tore the bunker door from its hinges like paper—rifles raised, visors gleaming with uncaring light. Not when the Marines barked orders, their beams sweeping over the children, the old, the wounded—over her.

They shoved them out into the cold.

Pasiphae hit the snow face-first, ice biting her skin, breath ripped from her lungs as the world erupted into noise and command. Behind her, others stumbled—coughing, crying, staggering from darkness into the raw wind.

She shivered, blinking through grit and smoke.

Nicolasburg had seen better days. The air reeked of scorched stone and charred wood. Half the buildings were gone—reduced to skeletal walls and blackened stumps. Smoke still drifted from the far block near the old clinic. Fires flickered inside what used to be a bakery.

"Alright, up! All of you!" one of the Marines barked.

His voice was mechanical, sterile, filtered through the mask of someone who didn't see people—only problems to process.

They stood, slow, single-file, shuffling.

The Atlesians led them down what was left of the street. Their rifles buzzed faintly, faint blue glows humming at the core. Knights flanked them on both sides—perfect, precise, inhuman. Pasiphae's breath came in shallow gasps as her boots crunched against gravel and glass. She clutched her coat tighter around her, though it did nothing to stop the cold in her chest.

Where was Adam?

She hadn't seen him.

Not since he ran out into the fire. Not since he roared for the others to rise and led them into the hail of steel and light.

He told her to hide.

He didn't say goodbye.

They passed a fallen sign for the town square, half-buried in debris. She didn't realize where they were going until she saw the open space ahead—cleared out, cordoned off, ringed by Knights like sentries in a tomb.

A Marine motioned her forward. "Move."

She did.

Her boots hit the edge of the plaza, snow crunching beneath her steps.

Then she saw it.

Her breath caught.

Everything else disappeared.

There—at the very center of the square—was a body.

Stretched flat on the ground. Arms splayed, face up to the gray sky. His clothes half-burnt, remnants fluttering weakly in the wind. The messer lay beside him, scorched and embedded in the dirt. A pool of melted frost steamed around his back, where the heat had carved through.

He wasn't moving.

Adam.

Pasiphae stopped walking. Her legs refused to go farther. Her knees buckled.

She sank.

Not fell—sank.

As though her body, with all its fragile machinery, simply… gave up.

Her hands trembled as she pressed them to her mouth. Her heart convulsed behind her ribs, twisting in on itself like something wounded and feral.

He was supposed to be standing.

He was always standing.

He wasn't supposed to die alone, in the cold, without her.

Without a hand to hold.

Without a final word.

Her tears didn't come in a rush. They came in silence. In slow, dragging grief, like a wind pulling at the edges of everything she thought was real.

Her knees kissed the ground with a soft crunch. The kind of sound you wouldn't notice any other day. Today, it was all she could hear—that brittle snap beneath her weight as the rest of the world vanished.

She stared.

Adam didn't move.

Her throat seized.

She reached for breath and couldn't find it.

Each second stretched into forever, until the burn in her lungs forced air in whether she wanted it or not—and when it came, it brought a sound with it. A sound she didn't recognize as her own.

A dry, cracking sob, dragged from somewhere deep in her chest. Small. Useless. It wasn't loud. Nothing was loud anymore. Everything felt muted. Like the world had gone under ice, and only she remained above it, frozen, watching.

The Marine near her shifted uncomfortably, as if grief had an odor he found offensive. But he didn't stop her. None of them did. Perhaps they knew there was nothing to be done.

Pasiphae crawled forward. Her hands dug into snow. Her nails cracked. Her palms scraped open on debris and ash and glass. She didn't feel it—not through the scream inside her body.

Adam was close now.

Close enough to see the soot on his lips. The gash across his temple. The blackening of the skin near his collar where the battery fire had kissed him too long. His eyes were closed.

Not peaceful.

Just closed.

"Adam…" she whispered. It came out broken, torn.

She pressed a hand to his chest, fingers trembling. No rise. No warmth. His skin, where she touched it, was cold as the snow.

No.

She shook her head violently. "Adam. Adam, please."

Her voice cracked harder than her hands.

He didn't answer.

Of course he didn't. There was nothing left to say.

She curled beside him, arms folding around his shoulders, pressing her face into the crook of his neck—the way she used to in the early hours of the morning, when the sun had barely breached the windows and the mine hadn't yet devoured him. She rocked slightly, holding him like she could coax his soul back through sheer will. Her body trembled, not from cold, but from something deeper—raw, wild sorrow, the kind that eats and keeps eating.

The grief ate her, the sorrow of loss and pain only a few could feel and even fewer understand. A part of her soul died as she died, under the cold smoking sky.

He was supposed to come back.

He was supposed to win. He was supposed to live.

They were supposed to have time.

Children.

A future.

And now all she had was his scent scorched into her skin and a ribcage collapsing under the weight of a hundred unspoken things.

"Please…" she whispered, again and again. "Please, please, please…"

No one stopped her.

Even the Knights had turned their visors away.

Pasiphae didn't care. She clung to him, forehead pressed to his chest, tears soaking what blood had not already dried. Her sobs became deeper, voiceless, wracking her with each breath until she couldn't breathe at all. She took his hand, having him clutch her face, as if imprinting him on her.

Her cries of grief echoed.

+++

Winter inhaled slowly, the cold air burning faintly in her lungs as if even the atmosphere itself had been scorched by what had occurred below.

She had to see it for herself.

The Wings of Victory hovered in the haze-drenched distance like some terrible god of war. Her Bullhead landed just beyond the wreckage of the outer district, the tarmac half-pulverized, blackened with ash and gouged by impact scars. Her boots crunched against the ruined earth as she stepped out, flanked by two escorts in matte-gray armor.

Behind her, a voice jabbered with the tone of someone who thought survival was a form of achievement.

"Oh, the Faunus—they tried, they tried—but we fought like hell, Miss Schnee, we held out as best we could. Alas, we were overrun…"

The foreman.

Recently freed from captivity, still dressed in soot-smudged company uniform, his hair matted but face maddeningly smug. Despite his alleged suffering, the man looked disturbingly well-fed, as if a week in a locked cell had barely touched him. If anything, he wore his release like a badge of validation.

Winter didn't acknowledge him with more than a glance.

Her eyes were on the town.

Or what remained of it.

Buildings were gone—not damaged, gone. She recognized the layout of Nicolasburg only from memory and map overlays; what stood here now was a graveyard of scorched foundations and melted beams. Sections of the wall had been reduced to rubble, its stones shattered by focused artillery fire. Some homes still smoldered. A bakery had collapsed inward, smoke curling from its broken chimney like the last breath of something long since dead.

She stepped over a broken water main, steam hissing from where the heat of impact had cracked it open.

The destruction was surgical in its chaos. Not random. Chosen.

She stopped at the edge of the town square.

Her breath caught.

Miners, civilians, were kneeling, ringed by Knights. Medics moved among them, bandaging heads and hands, but their expressions were blank, hollow. Defeated.

"Give me time, Miss Schnee, and I will spot all the traitors here. I promise you, it will be quick."

The foreman grinned.

In fact…" His smile widened, wolfish and rotten with vindication. "I believe I already have one."

He turned sharply and began striding toward the center of the square, boots crunching over broken stone and scattered belongings like they were debris instead of remnants of people's lives. His steps were loud. Deliberate. Like he was performing for her.

He stopped before her.

Pasiphae didn't look up.

She was still lying curled over Adam's body, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other resting over his heart, which no longer beat. Her cheek was pressed to his chest, and the silence between them was the kind that should have broken her. Instead, it fused her to him like a second shadow.

The foreman scoffed.

"I recognize this one," he said, turning slightly to flash Winter a proud, smug look. "That's her. Pasiphae Sol. Or Taurus now. His wife if you can believe that."

Pasiphae didn't move.

He crouched slightly, lowering himself like a schoolmaster about to scold a disobedient child. "Well? Don't you have anything to say for yourself? You could at least show some respect. Miss Schnee is standing right there."

Nothing.

Just the soft, broken rhythm of her breathing. She didn't even blink.

"Hey," he barked. "I'm talking to you."

Still nothing.

Pasiphae didn't hear him. Or maybe she did. Maybe she just didn't care. All she could do was stay next to him—Adam—what remained of him. Her body was shivering now, not from cold, but exhaustion. Grief. The kind of pain that presses into your bones and doesn't leave.

The foreman straightened, face twisting with disgust. "Filthy animal…"

Then, he lashed out.

Without hesitation, he drove his boot forward—low, fast, hard—striking her square in the groin.

The sound was dull, brutal, wrong. Flesh against boot. A sharp exhale of pain burst from her throat and her body folded in on itself instantly. She flew a short distance—more rolled than landed—arms instinctively curling around her midsection.

Winter inhaled sharply.

"Stand when you're spoken to, girl!" the foreman snarled, turning to throw a triumphant look back at her. "That's how you handle these things. Discipline, not sympathy."

But Pasiphae didn't scream.

She didn't fight.

She whimpered. Small, fragile. The sound a wounded animal makes when it realizes there's no one coming to help.

And then—

She crawled.

On trembling limbs, hunched and shaking, she dragged herself across the scorched stones, dragging her body through ash and blood and frost, inch by inch, breath catching with every movement. Her legs barely worked, but it didn't matter. She reached Adam again.

She pressed her face against his arm. Fingers found his collar. She lay back down, curling into his chest.

As if nothing else in the world mattered.

The foreman seethed. "You mo-"

"Enough!" Winter roared, her voice cracking through the square like a whip. "Enough of this petty cruelty!"

The foreman stiffened, his smugness shriveling in an instant. "Ah, b-but I was just—"

"If you had even an ounce of true leadership," she snarled, striding toward him with rage boiling behind her eyes, "this entire disaster wouldn't have happened!" Spittle flew from her lips. Her gloves clenched at her sides. She looked seconds away from striking him herself.

The foreman backed up, face pale, stammering. "I—I was just following orders! Corporate wanted Q3 to look good, I didn't—I didn't know—!"

Winter stopped inches from him, trembling with fury. She wanted to scream, to hurl every word of scorn she had stored since landing. But the man wasn't the architect. He was a cog. A petty, cowardly bureaucrat who had let the machine grind its way through bones and blood without ever once asking what the cost might be.

This wasn't just his failure.

This was her father's.

All this—burned homes, broken bodies, graves waiting to be filled—because Jacques Schnee wanted a quarterly report that glistened for shareholders.

She exhaled sharply, trying to gather herself.

Then came the voice.

"This… is your fault."

Weak, but clear. Raw.

Winter turned. So did the foreman.

Pasiphae.

Still curled over Adam's body, her face ghost-pale, streaked with soot and blood, yet somehow more alive than anything else in the ruined town square. Her eyes locked onto Winter's with a terrifying steadiness.

She pushed herself up, swaying as her legs struggled to support her. Her lips trembled. "This is your fault. This is your family's fault."

Winter stepped back, stunned. "I—I had nothing to do with—"

"THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" Pasiphae shrieked, voice hoarse and raw. "YOUR FAULT!"

She charged.

No hesitation. No logic. Just a scream and a body propelled by grief and fury.

Winter's hand went to the hilt of her sword—reflex, training—but there wasn't time.

Pasiphae closed the distance, hands outstretched.

BOOM!

A gunshot cracked through the plaza.

Winter flinched.

Pasiphae collapsed, her body twisting mid-motion, crashing hard to the stone with a choked gasp. Smoke curled from the burn across her back, the laser round having struck just above the hip. Something shimmered, though Winter figured it to be a trick of the light.

Winter stared, heart hammering.

For a moment, Pasiphae didn't move. Then—twitches. Her fingers clawed at the earth, legs kicking weakly. She was still alive.

"Marines! Knights! Do something!" the foreman shouted, gesturing wildly. "She just attacked the heiress!"

Winter's guards moved, fast. Two of them rushed forward, hauling the girl up by her arms.

Pasiphae writhed, not from pain, but from rage.

Her voice cracked like thunder across the ruins, raw and guttural.

"I WILL HAVE YOU DEAD!" she screamed, eyes blazing. "YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, YOU WILL PAY, SCHNEE! YOU WILL PAY!"

Winter's throat closed.

The girl's screams followed with ugly sobs, and cries of "Adam! Adam!" echoed through the wreckage, bouncing off the broken walls of Nicolasburg like the howls of a ghost. The Marines dragged her away, her feet scraping along the stone, fingers reaching toward Adam's still form, nails digging furrows in the ash.

Her voice did not quiet.

Not until she was gone.

The foreman turned back to Winter, trying to regain his composure. His hands smoothed down the front of his soot-smeared coat, his breath unsteady, eyes darting after the dragged girl, then flicking up to Winter's pale, furious face.

"I… apologize, Miss Schnee," he stammered, voice thin. "That outburst—it was inappropriate. I acted in haste. But I assure you, I will see to it that all the traitors, all the instigators, are found and dealt with properly. We'll make examples of them, of course, but with due—"

"Stop speaking," Winter said coldly.

He blinked, startled. "I—I only meant—"

"I said stop."

Her tone cracked like ice under pressure. She stepped closer, her presence towering over his bluster, every inch the commanding officer that her father had tried to make a mouthpiece. But there was no hesitation in her eyes now—only disgust.

"You brutalized a grieving woman in front of civilians and soldiers alike. You mishandled this town from the beginning. And when it all burned down around you, you made a spectacle of your own cruelty like it was policy."

The foreman opened his mouth to speak—shut it again.

Winter took a breath, steady but sharp. "You are no longer needed. You are relieved of your position."

He paled. "What? No, wait, Miss Schnee, you can't—this isn't—"

"I can. I just did."

He took a frantic step forward. "You don't have the authority to fire me. That comes from corporate. That comes from your father!"

Winter didn't flinch. "Knights," she said, not raising her voice.

Two units stepped forward in eerie unison.

The foreman recoiled. "Wait—wait, please, I—Miss Schnee, I've been loyal! I did what was necessary! Don't let them—!"

"Remove him."

The Knights seized him by the arms. He struggled, sputtering, trying to twist free, but they held him like a child thrashing against iron. His voice turned shrill.

"This is a mistake! I served this company—I SERVED IT! I DID WHAT I WAS TOLD!"

Winter didn't even watch him as they dragged him away.

She turned her eyes back to the blood-stained square, to the cooling wreckage, to the spot where Pasiphae had screamed herself hoarse.

She closed her eyes.

"Take his body, and prepare it for burial. I want it nice and clean. Do you understand that?" she said, turning to another Marine.

Winter in silence as Marines prepared bodybags, and a bullhead waited to transport it out.

She looked up, then paused.

The eyes of her Granfather's statue seemed to stare down at her.

And they stared down in shame.

+++

He hid.

The Atlesians were rounding everyone up. He crouched low in the shadows, his breath shallow and sharp, his heart sore with grief. From his vantage point, he saw Pasiphae—her small frame struggling against the hands that dragged her forward. SDC troopers, faceless behind their visors, hauled her like she was nothing more than cargo.

Where the hell were they taking her?

Blizzard stalked them silently, moving through the backstreets and alleys, keeping to the dark. Snow fell in frantic, swirling flurries, muffling the sound of his boots against the rubble-strewn ground. He wanted to charge them, to tear them apart but he knew better. Not now.

Pasiphae had fallen limp in their grip, her sobbing faint but constant, her head drooped as if she had already given up. She looked like a broken doll, lifeless except for the trembling in her shoulders.

Dead.

No. She wasn't dead.

Was she?

Blizzard shook the thought away, his jaw tightening. He couldn't think like that—not now. She was alive. She had to be.

The troopers moved without hesitation, their bootsteps precise and mechanical. They cut through the ruins of Nicolasburg like wolves leading a captured lamb to slaughter. Every so often, one of them would glance over their shoulder, scanning for threats, but Blizzard was always a step ahead—ducking behind a crumbling wall, slipping into the shadows of a half-burnt building.

Then, they dropped her in a alleyway.

One of them raised his pistol.

Oh shit!

He moved like a shadow. Silent. Sudden.

The pistol hadn't even cleared the holster before Blizzard was on them.

A sharp crunch of boots on gravel. A blur of motion. One of the SDC troopers turned just in time to see a dark shape crash into his partner like a thunderbolt.

Blizzard's shoulder slammed into the soldier's chest plate, driving him backward into the brick wall with a thud that cracked mortar. The pistol flew from his hand. Blizzard grabbed it mid-air, spun, and dropped the second trooper with a brutal blow to the side of the helmet. The soldier went down hard, armor scraping against stone, limbs twitching from the impact.

The snow muffled the collapse.

Pasiphae gasped—sharp and startled.

Blizzard dropped to a knee beside her. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, unseeing at first.

"Hey. Hey, it's me," he whispered, voice low, urgent. "Pasiphae. It's Blizzard. You're okay."

She blinked. Her lips trembled. Recognition struggled through the haze of pain.

"Adam…" she breathed.

Blizzard's jaw clenched. "I know."

She let out a sound—somewhere between a sob and a scream—but it was soft, fragile. He wrapped an arm around her, gently lifting her as she whimpered in pain. Her body was light, far too light, and her skin was like ice through her torn clothes.

"I've got you," he murmured. "I've got you. We're getting out of here."

The troopers groaned nearby—one reaching weakly for his comm.

Blizzard turned. Raised the pistol. Two silent flashes of light.

Neither of them would call anything now.

He tossed the gun aside and lifted her fully into his arms. Her head dropped against his chest, her breath warm and shallow.

Blizzard melted back into the ruins, holding her close. He moved like wind over stone, every footstep calculated, silent, precise. His breath fogged in the frigid air as he ducked into a collapsed warehouse, the half-burnt frame giving just enough cover from patrols that still roamed the bleeding skeleton of Nicolasburg.

Pasiphae was curled in his arms, her body limp, head nestled against his shoulder. She hadn't spoken again. Not since the alley.

He laid her gently against a stack of splintered crates, pulling his scarf from his neck to wrap around her, not that it mattered. She didn't shiver anymore.

He crouched beside her, eyes darting to the broken slats of the warehouse wall, watching for movement.

"We leave through the way you showed me," he whispered, more to himself. "It's hell but it will be unguarded."

She didn't answer.

Blizzard clenched his jaw and pulled his bag open. Inside, buried under spare batteries and emergency rations, was the camera.

The real prize.

Hours of footage. Of the assault. Of Adam. Of the batteries leveling the wall. The screams. The civilians. The execution that nearly was. And her—Pasiphae's agony in the square, her last words. It was all here.

"This," he said softly, holding it like it was glass. "This changes everything. We get this out, Atlas chokes on the truth. We show the world what they did to this town. To him."

"I don't want to go."

Her voice was like a cracked bell. Dull. Lifeless. Her eyes stared straight ahead, unfocused.

Blizzard froze.

"Pasiphae…"

"Nothing's worth living anymore," she said, voice hollow. "Not after that. Not after him."

He shook his head, crawling closer. "No. No, don't say that. Don't talk like that. He—he wouldn't want you to just—"

"You think I care what he wants?" she snapped, suddenly glaring at him with a flare of something close to fury. "He's gone. He's gone and I'm still here, and I don't know why."

He knelt beside her, struggling for words.

"I watched him die," she said, quieter now, the fury fading as fast as it came. "I felt his skin go cold. I felt the world go with him. There's nothing after that."

Blizzard looked at her like she was a ghost. A breath. A heartbeat away from vanishing.

"Just go," she whispered. "Get your footage out. Do your job."

"I'm not leaving you here."

"You will."

He didn't move.

She turned her head slowly toward him, her face pale, her eyes glass. "Please. Just leave me."

"Blizz!"

A voice hissed from the darkness behind the crates. One of his volunteers, rifle in hand, coat dusted in snow, eyes wild with urgency. Another figure followed close, crouched and anxious.

"They're getting closer," Kala snapped. "Two blocks away. We have to go."

Blizzard stared at Pasiphae. She wouldn't look at him.

The volunteer grabbed his arm. "We don't have time for this!"

He lingered a second longer, watching her like a man trying to memorize every inch of a dying flame.

Then he nodded.

Silently, he rose. Pulled the camera bag tight across his chest. The others moved. He followed. The door shut behind them with a whisper.

Pasiphae didn't watch them go. Her dull senses focused on the Atlesians walking around the plaza, documenting her people, putting him into the ground.

The she shifted her attention south.

To the mines.

To the raw untapped dust still there.

She moved.

The SDC wanted Dust?

She was going to give them exactly what they wanted.

+++

General Derringer sat slumped at his desk, sleeves rolled back, uniform wrinkled from wear and sweat. The lights in his quarters were low—intentionally—so the flicker of the screen wouldn't make the blood on the casualty reports stand out too much.

He poured himself another glass. Not even bothering with precision. Amber liquid sloshed into the tumbler, some spilling over onto his desk. He didn't care.

The reports were final.

The town would have to be cordoned off until it could be rebuilt. To retake it, the cost came with a hundred Knights destroyed. Twenty men dead.

The Knights were easy. Replaceable. Machines with serial numbers and budgets. He could write that part of the report in his sleep.

But the men?

Twenty real, living bastards. Twenty letters to write. Twenty faces that had laughed with him. Or saluted. Or screamed when the batteries came down.

He lifted the glass and drained it in one swallow, the burn sliding down his throat like penance.

A knock came at the door.

He didn't look up. "What?"

"Sir?" came the muffled voice from beyond.

"Enter."

The door slid open. An officer stepped in, stiff-backed and nervous. "Sir. Councillor Geyer is on comms. She's requesting immediate contact."

Derringer blinked slowly.

"Geyer?"

"Yes, sir. Councillor of Internal Oversight. Commissioner on Corruption." A pause. "And civilian casualty protocol."

Derringer let out a dry, humorless laugh. "And pray tell, what does the good, noble Councillor want with me now?"

The officer didn't laugh. "Sir, you can't ignore her."

He sighed through his nose, long and slow. "Tell her to go away."

The officer hesitated. "Sir…"

"Fuck. Fine," Derringer snapped, standing suddenly, the chair scraping behind him. He grabbed the decanter, refilled his glass, then waved the officer off. "Transfer the call to my quarters."

The screen on the wall brightened with the waiting connection. Derringer ran a hand through his hair, tossed back the fresh drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and forced his face into something resembling a smile.

The screen flared to life in Derringer's quarters with a muted chime, flickering once before stabilizing. Councillor Florianne Geyer's face resolved—sharp, ageless, composed with the kind of poise that made politicians dangerous. Her eyes, cold and unreadable, stared straight through the glass.

Derringer leaned back in his chair, glass in hand, a smooth smile already curling on his lips.

"Councillor Geyer," he drawled, lifting his tumbler slightly. "What a surprise. I was just about to toast your impeccable sense of timing."

"General," she said crisply, not smiling. "Status report. Nicolasburg."

He swirled the drink, casually. "Coming along fine. Resistance has been pacified. We're in the stabilization phase—cleanup, processing, containment, the usual post-conflict management."

Geyer raised an eyebrow, lips twitching—not into amusement. "Fine, you say."

He nodded. "We've secured the Dust mine. SDC assets are safe. We minimized structural loss as best we could under the circumstances."

"Did you, now?" she said, tilting her head just slightly. "And tell me, General…did you impress the miners with the dazzling show of force you brought?"

His smile thinned. "It was necessary."

"As I understand, these are just starving miners, yes?" Geyer questioned. "Truly, an achievement. How bravely you faced them with your twenty-centimeter guns."

Derringer's smile strained.

His smile slipped, just slightly. "It was the most efficient way to break resistance."

She leaned forward, the corners of her lips curling—not into amusement. Into something colder.

"You brought Squadron Epsilon. The Twelfth Battalion. A cruiser, two destroyers, and an assault ship. To pacify a rebellion over wages." She let the silence stretch. "Remind me, General—how many tons of Dust does the Wings of Victory burn through per hour?"

Derringer opened his mouth—

"Don't," she said, slicing across his reply. "Don't waste my time with spin."

The silence between them stretched taut.

Geyer narrowed her eyes. "Prepare your defense, General. I expect it on my desk the moment you return to Atlas."

And with that, she ended the call.

The screen went black.

Derringer stared at it, the hollow glow fading from his face. The ice in his glass had already melted.

Then he set the glass back.

He did not scream, no he was far too dignified for that. "Stupid bitch," Derringer muttered. "If things were different, you'd be a worm on the street."

The Color Revolution overturned the old world. The low were at the highest, the highest at their lowest. If it would not have happened, the Geyers wouldn't have amounted to anything but still be minor nobility and his, one of the highest of genteel folk.

He shook his head. This was not the time to relish on old wounds. Jacques had to be told.

+++

Pasiphae staggered through the skeleton of Nicolasburg like a ghost in her own story.

Central faded behind her—its broken bricks, its charred timbers, the scorched outline of where Adam's body had lain. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. His face was carved into her thoughts now, too deeply etched to fade with distance. She could feel him in every step. In the ache behind her eyes. In the breath that still, impossibly, dragged itself in and out of her lungs.

She didn't remember how she got to the mine's edge.

Just that one moment she was walking and the next—she was standing before it. The yawning black mouth of the south shaft, sealed only by shattered fencing and old floodlights too damaged to flicker. Her boots crunched over frozen mud. The cold air grew colder, the kind of cold that came not from the weather but from memory. The kind that seeped down the spine and never left.

She paused.

Her knees buckled, and she sank to the ground beside the rusted rails of the Dust cart track. For a long time, she just sat there. Breathing. Or trying to.

The silence was not peace. It was hollow. As hollow as she felt.

Her thoughts wandered—to the first time she met him.

She was new here, with her family. She thought being useful would allow her to be accepted quicker. She volunteered to carry some boxes she swore she could carry, until she couldn't and fell. She was in pain until he helped her up when she'd tripped, her hand bloodied by the jagged edge of a vein.

He looked so rough...but also looked so kind.

She remembered the way he'd stared at the mountains after a shift. How he would look like he was thinking of something deep and pondering, only for him to just be thinking about nothing.

He gave everything.

And now, she had nothing.

Pasiphae drew something from the pocket inside her coat. A matchbox. She didn't even remember picking it up. It was an old thing—flint and sulfur, soaked in old grease. She struck one match and watched it flicker to life in her hand, the tiny flame feeble against the dark wind howling out of the mine.

She rose.

The abandoned southern shaft loomed before her. Its structure, cracked and leaning, was half-buried in snow and rubble, but she could still see the embedded Dust veins glowing faintly in the stone—untouched, raw, unstable. Crystals the size of her fists lay scattered like bones, some cracked, some pulsing faintly, like dying hearts.

They hadn't gotten to these yet. The company had deemed them "low yield," too dangerous to extract safely without extensive support.

But they were pure.

They were volatile.

Pasiphae stepped over the broken security rails, her shadow long against the scattered crystals.

The match in her hand guttered in the wind. She shielded it, crouching low as she set it against the base of the largest Dust cluster, where fragments had spilled like shattered glass. Just a spark. That's all it would take. That's all Dust ever needed.

One spark. One scream. One body they couldn't silence.

She whispered, "For him."

And dropped the flame.

+++

The Bullhead's cabin hummed around her—steady, unshaken, sterile. Winter sat alone on one of the troop benches, hands folded tightly in her lap, knuckles pale beneath her gloves. The engines thrummed beneath her boots. Outside, the fractured skyline of Nicolasburg receded inch by inch, a graveyard of ash and ice dissolving into gray.

Her breath misted faintly in the cold air of the unpressurized troop bay.

She didn't shiver.

She couldn't afford to.

Her thoughts were too loud anyway.

What had it cost?

The operation was done. The mine retaken. The insurgents scattered or dead. She had failed to stop the massacre. She had watched a girl scream over a body and had said nothing—nothing that could have made it matter.

Pasiphae.

Winter's lips pressed into a hard line. That name would stay with her. The way the girl had looked—wild, undone, her voice raw with pain.

Winter leaned back, the cold bulkhead pressing against her spine.

She was utterly unsuited to be the heir.

For the first time, she truly understood what her father had tried to teach her.

In his SDC, there would be no such thing as ideals. In his altar of avarice, only results mattered.

She would give this up. She would tell him directly.

But not before slapping him in the face.

The windows flared with light.

She blinked.

What—

BOOM

The Bullhead jerked violently, the world behind them erupting into a thunderous bloom of fire and chromatic light. It lit the sky like a second sunrise. The cabin shook, metal groaning as Winter was hurled from her seat, slamming into the opposite bulkhead. Pain seared through her shoulder as her boots scraped against the vibrating floor.

Alarms blared in panicked bursts.

"Hold on!" the pilot roared, his voice cracking through the intercom.

Winter's breath quickened, her chest heaving as the Bullhead rattled and groaned beneath her. The chaos steadied—just barely—before she staggered to the viewport window.

Outside—

The horizon was burning.

But it wasn't over.

"MISS SCHNEE, HANG ON!"

The pilot's voice broke again, raw and panicked, as the Bullhead lurched hard to starboard.

Winter stumbled, her boots skidding across the deck. She barely caught the overhead railing before being flung sideways again. Somewhere beneath her, metal shrieked with the strain as the troop bay groaned and swayed like a ship caught in a storm.

Outside the viewport, the sky shattered.

From the ruins of Nicolasburg, a plume of Dust-fueled flame screamed into the heavens—iridescent, unrelenting, unnatural. From it came rock. Not debris. Not rubble.

Mountain.

Slabs of stone, saturated with raw Dust, launched skyward like artillery shells. Some spun, glowing sharp as cleavers. Others tumbled like meteors, trailing crystalline fire as they broke apart midair. The southern shaft had become a cannon, and the sky was full of shrapnel made of earth and hate.

Winter pressed her forehead to the cold glass, eyes wide as one of the escort destroyers—the Robin, painted in Atlesian blues—swung too slow.

The rock hit center-mass.

It didn't crumble. It didn't shatter.

It punched straight through.

The Robin's bow erupted in a bloom of ruptured Dust tanks and screaming steel. One engine pod flared, then snapped off entirely, spiraling downward in a trail of black fire. Her hull cracked like brittle bone, and tiny specks—figures—tumbled from the breach.

Winter covered her mouth.

She saw one of them clawing at nothing, arms flailing as he vanished into the burning clouds.

"No," she whispered.

More rock was falling now—lofted high, curving down in deadly arcs. Chunks of Dust-laced cliff smashed into the frozen valley below, detonating on impact with shockwaves that reached the Bullhead even at this altitude.

The hull rattled under the barrage, like drumfire pattering against its sides—then came the slam, the whole aircraft jarring sideways.

"Miss Schnee, brace!"

She hit the floor hard, curling instinctively before the next impact. The lights flickered above her. Outside, a boulder the size of a gunship screamed past the port side, shattering against a distant ridge. The explosion set off a cascading ripple of Dust detonations, the cliffs crumbling like sand under the blast.

The Bullhead twisted again, rotors howling, the nose pitching downward as the pilot dove the craft away from the chaos. Fires danced across Nicolasburg. From above, the city looked like a wound carved into the earth—open, pulsing, and seething with light and loss.

Winter dragged herself back to her seat, forcing the harness over her chest with trembling fingers. She glanced back through the viewport one more time.

The Wings of Victory loomed in the storm-heavy clouds above it all—dark, scarred, barely holding together.

Smoke leaked from her underbelly. Deck plating was scorched black. She was still flying. But only just.

The pilot's breath crackled over the intercom, strained and uneven.

"Orders, Miss Schnee?"

Winter exhaled, her hands still shaking.

"Back to the Wings of Victory," she said, her voice quiet but firm.

+++

The Wings of Victory was wounded. Alarms screamed through the bridge like sirens from an old war. Smoke coiled from ruptured conduits. Sparks leapt from shattered control panels. Crew staggered across the floor, slipping in spilled coolant and blood, hauling the wounded clear as emergency lockdowns slammed into place with bone-jarring clunks.

And in the middle of it all—Derringer roared.

"GET ME THOSE READINGS!" he bellowed, one hand braced on the map table as it flickered, glitched, reloaded. "I want eyes on everything—that shaft, the plateau, the damned valley! If it even looks like it's glowing, I want it marked, mapped, and set for bombardment!"

A lieutenant scurried to his station, smoke curling from his sleeve. "Sir! The Robin—she's gone. Hull breach midships. No survivors from starboard section. Sir, we are wounded. We must pull b-"

"I KNOW THAT, YOU FUCKING PARROT!" Derringer spat, slamming a fist onto the railing hard enough to rattle the bolts. "WHAT THE HELL DID THAT EXPLOSION!"

He spun toward the gunnery officer, eyes burning under his gray-streaked brows. "Was it the mine? The shaft? The ridge? That was a Dust detonation, not artillery—what the hell did they set off!?!"

The gunnery officer, a woman with blood dripping from her temple, managed to rasp, "Unconfirmed, sir. Thermal spike originated from the southern shaft. Must've been a Dust seam—volatile, raw. The whole thing ignited."

"NO SHIT IT IGNITED!" Derringer shouted. "It looked like the sun had a stroke and threw up over my fleet!"

A young ensign shouted from the comms pit, voice barely holding together. "Sir! Landing Ship 33 is requesting immediate evac assistance. Multiple casualties in the valley below. I rep-"

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!"

Silence settled in.

Then: he slammed a hand on the comms terminal.

"This is General Derringer to all Atlesian units. Immediate orders follow. All vessels are to begin full withdrawal from the Nicolasburg perimeter. I repeat—we are pulling back. This is an organized tactical retreat. Maintain altitude discipline and combat formation. Evac first, then reassess."

Voices on the bridge stilled. Silence spread like cold water over fire. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

Derringer's teeth ground together. "I said move, dammit!"

Irving stepped in, already relaying orders.

"Signal to ground units: drop beacons and make for secondary evac points. Wings will cover their extraction. Get the Bullheads in the air and anyone left on the slope off it now."

They moved

+++

​A/N: I lied. One more chappie then vol 2 of this fic.