The whirring of ancient machinery bleeds into the gelid silence of Zapolyarny Palace. Each of your footsteps echoes down the constricting halls until the sound narrows with the corridor itself, carrying you toward one of the spare infirmaries. Rooms like these were many, seldom visited, and certainly not a place you would have been permitted inside if not for the nature of the task now forced into your hands.

The captain—if that mass beneath the heavy covers could still be called such—rests on the central bed. The air around him holds a stillness too deliberate, too absolute. Not the soft drift of rest after combat, but the hollow quiet that presses deeper than any sleep.

No. This man was dead. And he had been for longer than you dared to measure.

You step closer, the weight of half-explained orders dragging behind you. No one gave you detail, not truly. For your safety. For theirs. For the uneasy protection of those who understood better what he had become. Rumors had reached you, drifting like smoke between barracks walls, but none addressed what you now feared most: how to tend to a soldier who did not breathe.

You fold back the cloth shielding his head. The mask remains fixed, inert, but his uniform is absent, replaced by patches of scar tissue seared and peeled raw by fire. Injuries not yet old. The infirmary lamp flickers awake under your touch, spilling sterile light across ruined flesh. You collect the tools with mechanical precision. Simple work, they had said.

When you return, his head is turned toward you. You had not seen it move. Eyes hidden, chest silent, offering nothing but cold in answer to your tentative touch.

You press styptic across a torn gash. The moment the brush grazes skin, his body convulses—not with breath, but with motion. Rising slow, deliberate, a corpse rehearsing life as the cover sloughs to the floor.

Blood flows, warm and fresh. His head tilts, scenting the air. Searching for what is not antiseptic, not stone, not silence. Searching for you.

And you finally understand why they never sent recruits into his presence when he lingered in this state.