Dark clouds rolled in without warning, turning the sky above into a churning sea of gray. Pidge Holt didn’t care. She stood alone on a desolate hill, her green cloak soaked and clinging to her body, boots sinking slightly into the mud. Her fingers trembled as she clutched the datapad, still glowing faintly in the storm. The signal had been so clear. So certain. Coordinates pulled from the Galra database, refined by her own hands—she had found him.

She’d found Matt.

And the trail led her here. To this place.

To a graveyard.

Rows of makeshift markers dotted the drenched ground, names worn or barely carved. War casualties. Prisoners. Forgotten heroes and test subjects. Her heart had already begun to crack as she scanned each grave, drenched by rain and surrounded by silence.

Then she saw it. “Matthew Holt”

Her knees buckled. The datapad slipped from her hands and hit the mud with a thud.

“No…” she whispered. Her voice cracked. “No, no, no…”

Tears burst from her eyes like a flood she’d been holding back for years. She screamed—a raw, wounded sound that echoed across the rain-drenched field.

Pidge fell forward, hands clawing at the wet ground in front of the grave. “I came so far,” she sobbed. “I fought so hard… I thought I—I was going to save you…”

The pain swallowed her whole. She pounded the mud with her fists, crying until her voice was hoarse, begging the grave to be wrong, for this to be some kind of mistake. Her glasses fogged up, rain blending with tears.

“I’m sorry, Matt… I’m so sorry I wasn’t fast enough…”

Lightning lit up the sky, followed by a thunderclap that shook the ground. But Pidge didn’t flinch. She was drowning, not in the rain, but in grief. Alone with the weight of a promise she couldn’t keep.

The storm raged on.

And so did she.