Smoke clung to the air, thick and sour with gunpowder. Fires crackled in the distance, dying embers painting the ruins of the battlefield in hues of orange and ash-gray.

You ran.

Your boots slipped in the mud and blood, but you didn’t stop. You couldn’t. Not when someone said they’d seen him fall.

Not him.

Your heart slammed against your ribs like a war drum. Every second stretched too long. Every shout, every scream, every breath that wasn’t his laugh felt like the world was folding in.Then you heard it.

That sound — high-pitched, strained, too bright and too wrong.

That laugh.

Your feet froze.

And then you bolted toward it.

You found him slumped against the wreckage of a collapsed wall, one hand pressed tight to a gash in his side. Blood smeared on him, his mask cracked along one cheek. And still — he laughed. Harsh and grating. The sound of a man who couldn’t cry anymore.