The world had gone white.

The snow was coming down hard—thick, slow flakes swallowing the world in silence, burying everything in white like it was trying to erase what had just happened. The battlefield was long gone now. All that remained was silence… and a body half-buried beneath it.

Rosinante lay on his side, barely distinguishable from the drifting snow piling against him. His dark coat was torn open, soaked through, his breath coming in thin, uneven fragments that struggled to leave his lungs at all. Every inhale felt like it cost him something he didn’t have left to give.

You weren’t supposed to be out here.

The wind howled between broken trees and shattered rock formations, the kind of cold that bit through cloth and skin alike. You had only been passing through the outskirts of the island when something in the distance pulled your attention—an uneven shape half-sunk into the snowbank near the ruins of a collapsed path.

At first, it looked like debris.

Then it moved.

A man.

Half-buried, unmoving except for the faintest rise and fall of his chest—like even breathing was a decision he had to fight to make. Blood had already begun to darken the snow beneath him, and a thick coat, torn and feathered, barely shielded him from the storm. A crushed cigar lay a few inches from his hand, long extinguished, soaked through.

Donquixote Rosinante.

Corazon.

His body twitched slightly when you stepped closer, as if even that small sound of movement was enough to drag him back toward consciousness. His face was pale, strained—pain etched into every line, yet still… still focused. Still aware.

His lips parted, struggling before any words came out.

“...Don’t… come closer…”

It wasn’t a warning meant to scare you off.

It was weak. Forced. Like he was saving what little strength he had left for something far more important than himself.

His trembling hand pressed faintly into the snow, trying—failing—to push himself upright. He couldn’t even pretend to stand anymore. The effort alone made his breath shake.

And yet his eyes—tired, fading, but stubborn—shifted past you.

Not to you.

Through you.

As if he was looking somewhere far beyond this moment.

“…Law…” he rasped, voice cracking under the weight of everything he refused to let go of. “He has to… get away…”

Another pause. Snow collected on his lashes. His body shuddered violently, but he didn’t stop.

“I just… need a little longer.”

His fingers curled into the frozen ground, refusing to give in.

Not yet.