The cold steel of the silenced pistol pressed into his forehead. Ashfall slowly lifted his eyes, tracing the weapon back to the hand that held it. The grip was steady, the calm finger near the trigger. Whoever stood in front of him wasn't some panicked survivor; this was someone trained, someone who had killed before without trembling.
Beyond the pistol, the figure was cloaked in layers of cloth, a hood pulled low over the head and a scarf wrapped around the lower half of the face. Yet under the cloth, Ashfall could still see the outline of armor he recognized instantly; Timer Agent gear.
A muffled voice slipped through the scarf, the tone unmistakably feminine though carefully dampened to hide her identity. "What are you doing here?"
Ashfall didn't flinch. He'd learned long ago that showing fear only tightened the trigger finger aimed at you. His gaze stayed fixed on her hidden eyes, his voice steady and dry.
"Probably the same thing you're doing here," he answered. "This place is the least rotten out of all the buildings around. Shelter's shelter, and we both came to claim it."
Her head tilted slightly, as if weighing the words. The silence dragged on until she finally spoke again, her tone colder than before. "Slide your weapons over. All of them."
Ashfall hesitated. He could already picture how quickly she would pull the trigger if he moved wrong. Slowly and deliberately, he crouched and slid his knife across the cracked floor, then his pistol. His movements were measured, like someone playing chess with death.
But he kept Ryn's pistol tucked hidden at his side.
For a moment, he thought he had gotten away with it. Then her voice cut through the air with a firm and sharp tone.
"The other one."
Ashfall's teeth ground together. Her eyes—or what little he could see beneath the hood—hadn't even moved, yet she knew. With a low sigh, he drew the second pistol and pushed it toward her.
"You see everything, don't you," he muttered.
She crouched just enough to pick it up, checking the weapon with an experienced hand before looking back at him. "Where did you get this?"
Ashfall paused. It would be pointless to lie, not about the gun itself. But the truth could still be bent, sharpened into something useful. His voice came out flat, without guilt or explanation.
"From a dead Timer Agent. He didn't need it anymore."
Her silence stretched again, longer this time, and he could almost hear her thoughts moving behind the scarf. Then came a question Ashfall hadn't expected, one that struck deeper than any accusation.
"What is your goal here?"
For the first time, Ashfall blinked. He had expected suspicion, threats, maybe even an order to leave. But not that. Not the kind of question that tore straight through the surface and clawed at the truth beneath.
His first instinct was to say it. The answer he'd lived by since all of this began: survival. But even he knew it wasn't enough anymore. Not with everything he'd seen. Not with the way the Clocks ticked overhead, not with the Stars twisting the minds of humans into monsters. Survival was just the starting point.
He let the silence hang for a while, his eyes narrowing, his thoughts running like wires sparking inside his skull. Finally, his lips curled into something halfway between a smirk and a snarl.
"Survive no matter what," he said, his voice rough but steady. "Endure all this shit until I have the strength to do what I want, when I want. I'll find answers, tear apart this broken system Aethra Prime keeps feeding us, and maybe kill a few of the bastards while I'm at it. I'm not pretending to be a hero. I'll protect what I choose, not what I'm told to. Is that the answer you wanted to hear?"
Her pistol stayed steady on him for another moment, and he wondered if his honesty would be the very thing that killed him. But then her hand lowered slowly.
She reached up with her free hand, pulled back the hood, and unwound the scarf. A face emerged. It was pale in the dusty light, framed by dark hair tied back tight. Her eyes were sharp, unwavering, but no longer hidden.
Ashfall's breath caught, not from shock, but from recognition. He knew those eyes.
Memory bled into the present. A flat, detached, almost mechanical voice beside him.
"Better get used to it," she had said back then, looking at him like he was nothing more than another failing part of a machine. "You'll see worse."
He had smirked even then, answering with the same bitter edge he always carried. "Thanks for the pep talk."
Now, that same girl stood in front of him, unmasked, her presence just as sharp as her eyes.
"Calethia," she said simply, her voice stripped of disguise now.
Ashfall's lips twisted into a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course... should've known the universe wasn't done throwing familiar faces at me. I'm Ashfall."
For the first time since she had aimed her gun at him, there was the faintest shift in her expression, something between acknowledgement and curiosity.
They stood there in the ruined house, two Timer Agents marked by the same clock yet driven by different truths, the silence between them carrying more weight than the broken walls ever could.