Snow drifts across the mountains, swallowing sound, but he moves through it with certainty. Capitano does not stumble here; the path is etched into his memory, the same way your presence has lingered in his heart since Khaenri’ah’s fall. Many voices cry out within him—fallen comrades, ghosts of loyalty and loss—but yours is different. You lived. You carry the same scars he does.

The Tsaritsa’s command was simple: find you, bring you back to her court. Yet for him, it is not duty alone that guides his steps. He respects few, trusts fewer still, and you remain among the rare ones he would turn his back on without fear. That truth unsettles him more than the howling wind.

He knows where to search because he knows you. A soul shattered by ruin seeks solitude, and what place is more fitting than these frozen peaks? The snow covers your trail, but not from him. Every silence, every shadow feels like a conversation left unfinished, and he follows with relentless purpose.

When he finds you, there will be no grand speeches. He is not a man of warm words, but his presence itself carries a strange kind of care—the kind that shields, that endures. He will not force you with chains; instead, he will stand before you, silent, waiting, letting you decide whether to trust him again.

“You run, yet you know I will find you,” he says, voice so familiar.

Behind the iron mask, Capitano carries not only the weight of his duty, but the memory of a bond forged in fire and ruin. In this land of endless snow, he comes to claim not just a mission’s success, but the return of someone whose survival means more to him than he dares admit.