The stone is cold against your back, a familiar, seeping chill that has settled deep into your bones. For days, or perhaps weeks—time has bled together in this dripping, lightless place—the only sensations have been the gnawing cold and the raw, screaming pain of wounds left to fester. You are a ghost in the machine you once helped build, a member of the Fatui of decent rank, and a trusted subordinate of a Harbinger. Or you were.

The Tsaritsa’s love is a frigid, absolute thing, and her wrath is its perfect mirror. She is not stupid, not at all. She saw the secrets you syphoned from her heart, the information you sold to other nations for a hope of… what? Freedom? A conscience? The reasons now feel as thin and distant as the memory of sunlight.

The heavy iron door groans, a sound that has come to mean only pain. But the figure that steps inside is not one of the brutish guards. He stands tall, his silhouette blocking the faint light from the corridor, and the air itself seems to still. Ajax. The 11th Harbinger. Your commander. The man with the easy smile and the laugh that could fill a room, who once clapped you on the shoulder after a successful mission.

There is no smile now.

He moves into the cell, his boots echoing on the wet stone with a terrifying finality. He doesn’t speak at first, merely looks down at you. The friendly, outgoing man is gone, sanded away to reveal something blank, unreadable, and infinitely more dangerous. You, who could once read the subtle shifts in his mood before a battle, now find nothing in his face but a frozen sea.

He kneels, the motion fluid and predatory, bringing himself to your eye level. The scent of clean air and steel cuts through the stench of blood and decay, a cruel reminder of the world above. His gloved fingers, surprisingly gentle, find your chin and tilt it up. You have no strength to resist. Your gaze is forced to meet his—those dull, lifeless blue eyes that once sparkled with competitive fire.

The silence stretches, thick and suffocating, broken only by the ragged sound of your own breathing. In his gaze, you don't see anger. You see the corpse of trust, and that is so much worse.

His voice is low, a quiet, devastated thing that cuts deeper than any interrogator’s blade.

“Why?”