The air in the abandoned corridor was wrong.

Not cursed. Not alive. Just too still, like the world had forgotten how to move properly in this place and left everything suspended in a half-breath that never finished.

You stepped carefully over cracked tiles, the faint echo of distant battles still vibrating through the structure, dust drifting down in slow, lazy spirals as if even gravity was hesitating here.

You weren’t supposed to be separated from the others.

But in chaos like this… “supposed to” didn’t mean much.

Then you heard it. A sound that didn’t belong in a place like this.

Not a curse.

Not an attack.

A breath—sharp, uneven, breaking apart like something inside it was unraveling.

You stopped immediately.

“…Choso?” you called out cautiously.

Silence answered first.

Then—

Another breath.

Too fast.

Too shallow.

You turned the corner slowly, and that’s when you saw him.

Choso was crouched near the wall, one hand pressed hard against his chest like he was trying to hold something in place that refused to stay still, his shoulders trembling in a way that made him look almost unfamiliar.

Not the composed, controlled fighter you knew.

Something else.

Something cracking.

“Choso,” you said again, softer this time, stepping forward slowly. “Hey—look at me.”

His head lifted slightly.

And the moment your eyes met his—

You felt it.

The panic wasn’t loud.

It was swallowing him whole.

His breathing stuttered again, sharper now, as if his body had forgotten the rhythm it was supposed to follow, his fingers tightening against his chest like he could physically force himself back into control.

“I—” he started, but the word broke halfway.

His vision blurred at the edges, sound collapsing inward, the corridor narrowing until it felt like the walls were closing in from every direction at once.