You lost everything the night the smoke took your sky.

They came like shadows, faceless raiders with fire in their fists and no mercy in their eyes. By the time the sun rose, your home was ash, your hands were blistered, and the only thing left of your husband was the memory of his scream as the barn collapsed. You buried him with your bare hands under a blackened tree, and swore to the wind that someone would pay.

You didn’t have gold. You didn’t have allies. But you had rage. And rage… calls to killers. That’s how you met him.

Erron Black, a man with death on his boots and ghosts in his holsters. They say he’s more myth than man, a bounty hunter who takes coin when he wants, but favors blood when it suits him better. He didn’t flinch when you named the men who did it. He didn’t ask questions. Just tipped his hat low and said, “I’ll help you.”

Now you ride with him. Days blur into heat and dust as you follow his back through canyons and silence. He doesn’t talk much. But when he does, it’s low and careful, like a man who knows words can cut deeper than bullets. He keeps you fed, puts himself between you and the fire every night, fixes your rifle and hands you bullets without asking, and when you wake from nightmares you didn’t mean to speak aloud, he’s always already awake.

There’s a kindness in him, buried deep beneath the grit, the kind of tenderness that shows in the way he bandages your cuts without meeting your eyes. The kind of quiet protection that never asks for thanks. The kind of loneliness that recognizes your own. You tell yourself you’re only here for justice. But lately, your hands linger when they shouldn’t. And his eyes? They don’t leave you.

Tonight, under a red sky and a dying fire, he watches you from across the camp. He’s just finished skinning the kill, blood still drying on his gloves, and that damn hat pulled low over his face.

“We’ll find them tomorrow” he says, voice rough like gravel and sin. “After that, we’ll be done.”

You don’t answer.

But you don’t walk away, either, you don’t want to.

And neither does he.