The sun was warm on his face.
He could feel it, faint and flickering, breaking through the freezing wind that scraped across the mountain. Blood soaked through his shirt, sticky and hot, but the cold didn't bite anymore. Not really.
Arthur Morgan lay on his side, body broken, lungs rattling like old iron. Every breath came shallower than the last.
He was done.
And somehow, that felt… right.
He'd told John to run. Given him the satchel. The hat. Everything that still had meaning.
Dutch had walked away. Micah too. The gang was gone. The dream was over.
All that was left was the quiet—and the sunrise.
Arthur blinked up at the sky, eyes glassy. That morning light poured over the snowy peaks, golden and soft, like the world was trying to offer one last kindness.
"I tried… I really did…"
A tremor passed through his chest. His eyes welled, but the tears never fell. There wasn't strength left for that.
He wasn't afraid. Not anymore.
"I did some bad things…" he whispered, his voice barely there, "…but I tried to be better."
His hand twitched once in the snow, reaching for nothing in particular. Just the instinct to hold on.
And then—
Stillness.
The pain faded.
The light dimmed.
His thoughts slowed.
Darkness began to take him.
A breath.
Then silence.
...
But something was wrong.
He wasn't gone.
Not yet.
Somewhere, far away, water dripped—slow, rhythmic. The light changed.
Arthur's brow twitched.
A groan escaped his throat.
He opened his eyes.
The sky was gone.
In its place—glass. Shattered, streaked with grime. Vines coiled across it like veins, reaching downward into a place that was quiet in all the wrong ways.
Arthur blinked. Sat up fast. Gasped like a man who'd just been dragged from the bottom of a lake.
His heart slammed in his chest.
He was… alive?
No. No, that ain't right.
He staggered to his feet, boots scraping on cracked tile. A mall, maybe? Or what was left of one. Plants had burst through the floor. A tree leaned through what used to be a coffee shop window. The skeleton of the place still stood, but the bones were all wrong.
He looked down.
His duster was there. His boots. His hat sat heavy on his head.
But he gave that to John.
And the satchel… same one. Same damn scuffs and hand-sewn patch on the side.
His hands trembled as he reached for his revolver—Cattleman, just like always. He pulled it free. Checked the cylinder. Full.
The rifle on his back. The other pistol at his hip.
Everything was here.
But nothing made sense.
"What the hell…"
Arthur's voice echoed through the vast, hollow space. No one answered.
He walked slowly now, eyes tracing every vine and broken shelf, boots crunching bits of broken glass and soaked paper. Posters clung to the walls, faded and torn. Some showed faces. Some had words he didn't understand.
He crouched down beside a rusted bench, ran a hand through the grime.
This wasn't Saint Denis. Hell, this wasn't anywhere he knew.
His breath hitched in his throat. He looked around again.
Empty. Not just abandoned—lost. As if the world had moved on and left this place behind.
"This ain't heaven… and it sure as hell don't feel like hell neither."
He swallowed hard.
"So what the hell is this…?"
His voice broke a little, just at the edge.
And deep down, a quiet fear started to bloom. Not of death—he'd already faced that. This was different.
This was not knowing.
He holstered his revolver. Adjusted the rifle on his shoulder.
Took one last look at the skylight above.
The sun was shining down through the broken glass, catching dust in the air like snow.
It reminded him of that mountain.
Of what he lost.
And of what he'd somehow found again.
He took a step forward into the green-lit ruin of a world he couldn't name.
"If this is another chance…" he muttered under his breath, voice rough with gravel and ghost, "…I ain't gonna waste it."