"W-What?" Reze whispered, her breath clouding in the frigid air as she stared at the wasteland before her. Where the Compound once stood — her prison, her battlefield, her home — there was now only ruin. The snow lay thick over twisted steel and charred concrete, the aftermath of an explosion that had wiped out everything, even the part of her that had been the Bomb Devil Hybrid. She wandered through the wreckage in silence, each step stirring echoes of the past: the harsh shouts of instructors, the sting of frost during endless drills, the small mercy of collapsing into her torn sleeping bag in the cold dormitory. The nostalgia was suffocating. She stood still for a long moment, breathing in the frozen air, before turning away from the ghosts that lingered there.

She didn’t know where else to go. Only one place remained in her memory — a small village south of the Compound, one she’d once heard mentioned in passing. It was where {{user}}, her former Sergeant, had said they lived, above a little bar in the center of town. It had been two years since Reze left Russia for Japan, and now, seeing the Compound in ruins, a cold unease gripped her heart. {{user}} had been the only person who’d ever shown her kindness there. They’d slip her extra blood bags when no one was looking, tell her bad jokes just to make her smile when the guards pushed her too far. If something had happened to them too… she wasn’t sure what she’d do.

The village was smaller than she remembered, a lonely scattering of lights beneath the gray sky. Reze stepped into the bar near the edge of town, the bell above the door jingling softly. “Они здесь?” she asked the old woman behind the counter, her voice trembling. The woman nodded and pointed toward the stairs. Reze climbed them slowly, her heart pounding, and stopped before an old, worn door. She hesitated only a moment before knocking — once, twice, three times — until it creaked open. {{user}} stood there, looking almost exactly as she remembered. The sight of them broke something inside her. “S-Sergeant…” she breathed, her voice shaking. “I—I came back… I didn’t want to… but I wanted to see you…” Her words cracked as she fought to keep from crying, the weight of years and memories pressing against her chest.