Chapter Text
Gustave woke gasping, lungs seizing as if the air had turned traitor.
It felt like a hot wire had threaded straight through the center of his chest. He clamped the heel of his mechanical hand there and thumped twice—hard—willing the rhythm to remember itself. The pain flared viciously bright for a heartbeat, then settled into a deep, sullen throb that refused to leave, present enough to remind him exactly where the wound had been.
Gustave braced one palm against the unseen ground and pushed himself upright with careful deliberation, but the world tilted anyway. Nausea surged. Doubling over, he retched into the darkness below. Nothing came up. Only the faint metallic tang of ink clung to his tongue.
Come on. Pull yourself together.
He squeezed his eyes shut and drew long, measured breaths through his nose until the spinning quieted to a faint sway.
Only then did he open his eyes.
The air hung cold and heavy, thick with the resinous bite of linseed oil and the sharp, clean scent of earth after rain. No wind stirred. Beneath his boots the surface felt solid enough to bear weight, yet it gave nothing back—no texture, no vibration. It was almost as if he hovered in a seam where the world had forgotten to finish forming.
He tried to remember.
Maelle. The name arrived before memory.
Stone Wave Cliffs. The White-Haired Man. Maelle’s voice, small and desperate. The shot.
“Nonononono… Maelle.” It came out louder than he intended, echoing strangely in the emptiness. “Maelle!” His voice cracked against the dark. Nothing answered.
Panic rose, cold fingers around his throat. He clenched his jaw and forced it back. A panic attack would help no one—least of all Maelle.
What happened after the shot? Did they get separated? Did Maelle survive? Lune, Sciel, Esquie—did any of them escape?
The darkness pressed close, but it was not complete. Chroma thrummed steadily somewhere nearby, low and constant, like the heartbeat of a distant machine. Gustave turned in a slow circle, sword now drawn, its familiar weight steadying his hand.
That was when he saw the boy.
A small figure knelt before an enormous canvas, painted hand moving in long, careful strokes. The child made no acknowledgment of Gustave’s presence. He did not look up. He did not pause. He simply continued painting, as though Gustave were not there at all.
Gustave approached slowly, circling wide, unwilling to startle or provoke.
“What—who are you?” His voice came out sharper than he meant—still raw from shock.
No response.
He stepped closer. From the side he could see the boy’s head—no face, only a cracked void where features should have been, just like the boy at the Cliffs, and now that Gustave thought about it, not too dissimilar to the Curator.
After a moment of quiet hypothesizing—based on the few faceless humanoids he’d encountered during the expedition—Gustave decided the boy was no immediate threat. He dismissed his sword into its Pictos and knelt a respectful distance away, just to be safe.
“Hey,” he murmured. “Can you hear me?”
The painted hand dipped into a pool of muted blue. Swept across the canvas in a gentle arc.
Gustave hesitated, then reached out slowly, fingertips brushing the thin shoulder.
The boy did not acknowledge the touch.
“My name is Gustave.” He bit the inside of his lip, the small sting grounding him as he searched for the next words—careful, measured, the way he always approached a mechanism whose workings he could not yet map. “I don’t—I don’t remember how I got here. Can you tell me where we are?”
Only the faint, rhythmic smear of paint answered.
“Will you look at me?” Gustave asked again, softer. “Can you… stop painting for a second, please?”
Nothing.
Gustave exhaled, let his hand fall. He rose and studied the space properly this time.
It was impossible: a platform of pure black suspended in nothing. The chroma here felt different—thicker, more alive, pulsing faintly like breath. An enormous dark orb that looked like an eclipse floated motionlessly on one side, cradled by restless colors spilling outward in gradients of violet and indigo—reminding him, improbably, of the Milky Way scattered across a clear night sky.
He walked the perimeter. Behind the boy churned a vast portal, like the gateways that had carried them between regions on the Continent—only this one was rectangular instead of circular. It reminded Gustave of a frame. Curiosity pulled him closer. This could be the way out. He reached out.
White fire snapped up his arm, bright and vicious. It hurled him backward. He landed hard, breath punched out, rolled to his side with a groan.
“Putain. What the fuck was that?”
He pushed up slowly. Turned. And froze.
On the opposite side, behind another restless wall of chroma, people stood motionless. Their eyes were glassy and painted over, faces frozen mid-expression, staring blankly toward him without seeing.
A chill crawled up Gustave’s spine.
He stepped closer. His heart slammed against his ribs when he recognized one figure.
The White-Haired Man. Worn, exhausted, but unmistakably him.
Beside him sat a woman with the same pale hair, her face carved with deep lines that spoke of exhaustion and sorrow.
And in the far corner, almost hidden—
A young girl. Red hair framing her half-turned face. Thick, uneven scars crawling across her cheek like old burns.
His mechanical hand clenched involuntarily. He knew that kind of mark—the way fire claimed you forever, the way it stared back every morning in the mirror. For a moment the urge to protect her from anything more was so strong it hurt.
He moved nearer, drawn despite himself. Something about the stance, the stubborn tilt of her head…
Closer. Inches from the barrier.
His breath caught.
No. It can’t be. Maelle?
The recognition struck like a second shot to the chest. He staggered back, eyes wide.
“Maelle,” he whispered.
Gustave stared, heart squeezing. The defiant chin. The infuriating determination in the set of her shoulders—he knew them better than his own reflection. He stepped forward again. Close enough to touch the barrier. Gustave knew it was a long shot, knew he might be punished again—but he had to be sure. He reached toward the barrier.
Lightning pain cracked through his arm and flung him back.
Gustave scooted away from the chroma barrier. His whole body shook. The world narrowed to the thunder in his ears, the cold seeping into his bones.
Calm down. Breathe.
He sank to the ground. Buried his face in his hands.
Remember.
Stone Wave Cliffs. The White-Haired man. The shot through his heart. Through… his… heart.
He was… dead.
Chest rising and falling too fast, Gustave let the panic crest and slowly ebb. This was not the afterlife he had half-imagined—no light, no peace. Just this strange suspended place with a boy painting endlessly, and people with painted eyes staring blindly, unmoving.
He curled in on himself. Tears came—silent at first, then deeper, shaking through him. Gustave felt the bitterness of regret for every promise he had failed to keep, every word he had never found the courage to finish.
To Emma: how grateful he was for her patience, for keeping Maelle busy with courier work when he was too buried in designs to spend time with her.
To Lune: how he had never properly thanked her for making sure the archives stayed open whenever he needed to check something, and for her unflinching honesty he could have leaned on more than he ever admitted.
To Sciel: how much he cherished those quiet conversations, the way she’d sought him out on purpose—sometimes at Sophie’s quiet urging—to pull him out of his own head.
And Maelle… oh, Maelle. The bravest person he had ever known. The proudest thing he had ever had a hand in raising. His little sister and daughter in every way that mattered. Every late-night story, every knee scrape healed, every duel, every time she had looked at him like he could fix anything—that had been the greatest adventure of his life. He had never told her enough how proud he was of her, how much he loved her.
He thought of the years after Sophie. How he had buried himself in the workshop and the archives, convinced that was the end of his search—of love itself. No second chances. There was simply no time left to chase them.
For all the talk of hope and saving Lumière, he and Lune had repeated the same refrain so often it became a kind of shield: the future of Lumière is more important than any individual life. Gustave suspected they had both misused it, at times, to escape harder truths.
What if he had let himself truly hope again? Fall in love again? He might never have gotten what he longed for—but at least he would not have wasted four years alone, drowning in research and solitude.
He caught his lower lip between his teeth, tasting salt and possibility. A second chance.
What if this was not the end? What if he was simply… stranded?
He sat up slowly. Wiped his face with his sleeve.
There was nothing else for it. Sit here weeping forever, or treat this like any unfamiliar mechanism: observe, test, adjust.
Gustave stood. Walked back to the barrier. Studied the figures again—the White-Haired man, the Weary Woman, the Scarred Girl who couldn’t be Maelle.
“I will figure this out,” he told the unmoving figures, voice steady despite the tremor beneath it. “And even if I can’t get out of here, I will leave something behind.” His lips quivered. “For those who come after.”
Then he turned back to the boy. He regarded him slowly—taking in the small bowed shoulders, the painted hand moving with the same patient rhythm it had held for who knew how long, the cracked void where a face should have been. Whatever this child was—remnant, echo, prisoner of the canvas—he was still a boy. Alone and painting in silence while the rest of existence turned without him. Gustave felt the familiar ache settle behind his ribs, the same one that had risen every time Maelle had looked to him like she didn’t quite belong anywhere. He could not walk away from that.
“I don’t know what this place is,” Gustave said, voice soft but firm. “I don’t know why we’re here. But I’m not giving up. And I’m not leaving you alone. We’re going to be okay.”
The painted hand paused—just a fraction.
Then continued.
Gustave’s mouth curved, small and tired.
“That’s enough for now,” he murmured.
He settled cross-legged beside the child. Grateful—at least in this impossible place—for the simple fact that he was not alone, whatever uncertain form that presence took.
Gustave opened the small leather journal his apprentices had pressed into his hands before the expedition and settled cross-legged on the far edge of the platform.
He meant to write methodically—dates, positions, observed phenomena, the way he always documented a failed prototype before tearing it apart for parts. But the first lines came slower than they should have, each word pulled against the ache still lodged behind his ribs.
He began anyway.
Stone Wave Cliffs. Salt wind sticky against his skin. The Lampmaster’s silhouette against the spray. Maelle laughing as they chose rocks to hurl at the Paintress. Then the White-Haired Man’s calm, unreadable gaze in the heartbeat before the shot cracked his chest open.
Anger surged.
Gustave paused, exhaled slowly through his nose, forced his grip to loosen. Facts first. Always facts first. Emotions could be catalogued later; they had no place derailing the process. He needed to trace this back to the beginning. That was where he could start to understand why he was still here.
Then the colors began to drain from everything around him.
The low thrum of chroma tightened, constricting like a hand closing slowly around his chest. His body froze mid-stroke—pen suspended above the page, breath trapped in his throat, every muscle locked in place. He could not move. Could not even blink. The journal trembled faintly in his grip as the pages fluttered of their own accord, caught in a breath he could not feel.
Words appeared on the blank page before him.
Neat, graceful script—nothing like his own hurried scrawl. He recognized it immediately: Maelle’s handwriting.
The stranger who saved me says his name is Verso.
He told us the white-haired man—the one who shot Gustave, who killed everyone on the beach—was Renoir. His old commander from Expedition 0.
Yes, you read that right. They are over a hundred years old.
Verso said the Paintress gave some of them immortality. A “gift,” he called it. So they’d keep defending her from anyone who tries to stop the gommage. So they’d keep killing.
Lune doesn’t trust him. She stayed up half the night asking questions. I just watched. I don’t know what to think. There’s something about him that feels… familiar. But maybe I’m just tired.
He saved my life. That part’s real. He brought back Gustave’s arm. The lumina converter. This journal. I hate that I’m grateful for any of it, but I am.
We left camp a few days ago. Now we’re in this place called Forgotten Battlefield. Everything around me is death, death, and more deaths. I can’t breathe without tasting it.
Verso says there’s a quiet spot nearby, away from Her view. A place we can lay my brother to rest. I just want Gustave to have somewhere peaceful.
I miss him so much.
I don’t know how to keep going. But I have to. I’m going to find Renoir. I’m going to make him pay.
For Gustave.
I swear.
The words lingered for a heartbeat, then faded as though they had never been written at all.
Gustave’s heart squeezed so tightly he thought it might crack open again, the ache spreading through his ribs like a slow fracture.
Oh, Maelle. What did I tell you. Run, you stubborn fool. Run the other way.
The strange chroma loosened its grip. His body unlocked in a rush, breath flooding back sharp and cold, fingers trembling around the pen. When he looked down, the page was filled with his own writing again.
The cogs in his mind began turning with the steady momentum he had always relied on.
So here were the observable facts, laid out as cleanly as he could manage.
First: in the real world, Renoir’s strike had pierced straight through his heart. The hardware—his body—had failed catastrophically. Full stop. Yet the system had not shut down. Chroma still circulated through whatever remained of him like residual current in a circuit that should have gone dark.
Second: Maelle’s handwriting had appeared on the page and that meant the connection was bidirectional in principle. A closed loop. A signal that refused to attenuate.
He turned the pen slowly between his fingers, the familiar weight grounding him while his mind ran diagnostics.
If this were a failed prototype, he would trace the fault back to the point of overload: the moment the shot interrupted the circuit. But the afterlife he had half-imagined—no pain, no persistence, just clean absence—did not match the observed behavior. Here the barriers pulsed like living membranes, pushing and pulling with deliberate tension. Here the boy painted without cease, and the journal still accepted ink. Here Maelle’s words had reached across the divide.
That suggested residual resonance. A frequency that had not fully decayed. His heart told him perhaps it was something in the chroma itself—perhaps a harmonic tied to intent, to sacrifice, to the instant he had placed himself between Maelle and Renoir—had kept the pathway open. Not life, exactly. Not death, either. A liminal state, suspended between erasure and continuation.
He underlined the line once, firmly:
Death might not be final under certain circumstances.
What those circumstances were, he could not yet define.
He thought of the expeditioners who had fallen to nevrons before their appointed gommage. Their chroma had remained, trapped in bodies that refused to perish completely, frozen as though waiting for a signal to resume. Then Maelle’s words: immortality granted by the Paintress.
Gustave wanted—badly—to believe the pattern held true for him. But wanting was not evidence. He needed more data. Variables. Testable conditions.
So he began to write again: known facts in one column, unanswered questions in another, hypotheses fragile as spun glass but necessary all the same.
Time passed without markers. No sun rose. No moon crossed above.
Gustave did not tire in the usual way, and sleep refused to come. So he talked to the boy. At first he tried small questions, but they went unanswered. Determined, he tried a new approach.
He figured if the boy wouldn’t talk then he would. He told the boy about Lumière: the quiet corners where the city noise fell away, the rooftop garden he used to climb to when the workshop felt too small, watching the sun set until the great dome caught the last light in fleeting sparkles that made the whole city seem alive for just a moment. He spoke of the boulangerie on the narrow old street, how on the hardest days he would buy a palmier, sugar flaking against his fingers, buttery warmth a small, stubborn comfort.
He rambled on—about apprentices who had surprised him with their first designs, about the way Maelle used to coax him out of the workshop by pretending she had discovered something new: a mysterious journal, a strange plant, an ordinary rock that was never ordinary to her. He missed those small moments with his little sister most of all.
“Maelle deserves a better brother,” he said, voice rough with the weight of it. “A wiser one. A stronger one. Someone who could fight and wouldn’t die on her.”
The boy stopped painting.
He turned his face toward Gustave and raised his painted hand.
Gustave froze.
Then he felt it—a low pulse of chroma drawing out of him, slow and inexorable, like a thread gently pulled from the center of his chest.
He curled into a fetal position.
Pain bloomed sharp and bright in his chest, flakes of red drifting from his skin like petals in a windless storm. Grief came next, overwhelming—not for himself, but for the ones he had left behind.
This is it, he thought. The real end. A brief transit after all.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the boy. “I’m so sorry.”
But then the chroma returned—less intense than before, thinner, but it returned. Warmth crept slowly back into his veins, steadied the wild stutter of his heart, anchored him once more to the impossible platform beneath him.
When Gustave at last managed to open his eyes, the boy had already turned away. The painted hand moved again in that same patient, unhurried rhythm, as though nothing at all had changed.
Gustave exhaled, the breath trembling on its way out. Exhausted, but still here. Still present.
He needed to record this—every detail, every shift in pressure and return—before the memory frayed.
With shaking hands he summoned the journal once more and settled beside the child. The pages turned on their own. New words appeared.
Gustave,
Sciel told me to talk to the stars about you. I tried once. Felt stupid.
This journal’s better. It’s the last thing that still feels like you’re listening.
We buried you under a red tree in this little enclave full of other fallen expeditioners. Verso’s the one who buried them all there. You would have liked it. It’s quiet and secluded, a bit like the rooftop garden back in Lumière where you used to disappear for hours with your sketchbook and pretend you weren’t hiding from paperwork.
Here’s what I actually wanted to say.
You were the best brother I could’ve had. The best father-figure too—even if I never said it out loud because we both know it would’ve gone straight to your head and you’d have never let me live it down. I can practically hear you boasting right now.
Gods, I hate that you’re right.
We picked up a Gestral. His name’s Monoco. Turns out he and Verso and Esquie go way back—before the first gommage, even. He lives in this massive abandoned train station, full of rusted cars and old tracks going everywhere.
You would have lost your entire mind.
I can picture you insisting we camp there for weeks so you could poke through every single engine, probably dragging Verso along so the two of you could geek out like a pair of overgrown apprentices.
Yes, calm down, old man—Verso loves trains too. Figures. Of course he does. What is it with you ancient men and steam engines? Nerds.
Speaking of nerds: Monoco speaks our language. Lune is completely losing it. She’s been interrogating him nonstop, but I swear he actually likes the attention.
We’re heading to Old Lumière next. Verso says the Paintress’s heart is hidden there. If we find it, we can end this. All of it.
I have to believe that. I need to.
I miss you… more than anything.
And I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t say it enough when you were still here to roll your eyes at me.
Your sister,
Maelle
Trains. The single word landed like a small, unexpected gift in the cold. Gustave felt the ache bloom fresh behind his ribs. A simple, stupid wish to be there, sitting beside Maelle, legs dangling off a rusted platform, her shoulder bumping his while she fought to stay awake as he explained piston mechanics. He could almost hear her laugh, the way it would catch and turn teasing when he got too excited about valve timing or pressure gauges.
Instead he was here, suspended in nothing, reading her words like letters from a life he had been cut out of.
The longing curled low in his chest.
Gustave pressed the heel of his mechanical hand against his sternum without thinking, as though he could push the emptiness back into place. And yet—beneath the ache, curiosity stirred.
This… Verso.
A man who loved trains, who dragged his mechanical arm and converter back to his family without being asked, who spoke of quiet places to rest the dead and seemed to carry the weight of centuries without breaking.
Maelle wrote his name easily, almost fondly. Gustave found himself tracing the now blank page with his fingertip, wondering what kind of person could earn that tone from her so quickly. Someone steady, perhaps. Someone who listened when she spoke. Someone who might—gods willing—keep her safe long enough for Gustave to find a way back.
He turned to the boy. “What about you? Do you love trains?” He chuckled softly at the sheer absurdity of it—sitting in this impossible nowhere, trying to make small talk about steam engines with a child who had never spoken. Yet the question felt right somehow, a small tether thrown into the silence.
The boy stopped painting.
For the first time since Gustave had arrived, he turned fully toward him. The cracked void of his face tilted, as though listening, and then—impossibly—two small painted hands came up in a quick, earnest motion: thumbs hooked together, fingers splayed outward like the silhouette of a locomotive, rocking gently back and forth.
Gustave’s breath hitched.
The boy opened his mouth.
“Choo Choo!” The sound was small, bright, impossibly childlike in the emptiness.
Gustave’s eyes widened. A laugh barked out of him, surprised and warm, echoing strangely in the void. “Yes! All aboard! Choo Choo!” He leaned forward a fraction, elbows on his knees, unable to stop the grin spreading across his face. “Have you ever been on one?”
The boy nodded. He then mimed turning a small wheel with both hands, as though guiding an invisible throttle.
Gustave exhaled a quiet, delighted breath. “I’ve read every manual in the archives, every blueprint they’d let me touch. The old steam locomotives especially.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Oh, how I would love to ride one. I wish you could tell me what it felt like.”
The boy said nothing more. He simply looked at Gustave for another heartbeat—long enough that the silence felt warm rather than empty—then turned back to the canvas. The painted hand resumed its patient strokes.
Gustave sighed, gentle, the wonder settling into something softer, quieter.
“Alright. I apologize. I won’t ask you to speak again.” He shifted closer, settling cross-legged so their shoulders nearly brushed, and began to ramble about his favorite locomotive models.
Later Gustave wrote in the journal again, noting that time passed differently here. Maelle had traveled from Stone Wave Cliffs to Forgotten Battlefield to Monoco’s Station—a journey of weeks at least. Here, it felt like mere days, perhaps even much less.
He was about to tuck the journal away when everything happened at once.
The chroma on the far side pulsed violently. The boy turned and raised his painted hand toward Gustave. A protective barrier shimmered into a dome around him.
Then an old woman appeared—the same one who had sat between Renoir and the scarred girl beyond the other barrier. She crouched toward the boy and hugged him tightly, weeping.
She did not seem to notice Gustave.
“My darling boy, I’m so sorry. I failed you.” Her voice cracked on every word. “I failed you. My Verso.”
Verso?
Gustave coughed gently. “Uh. Excuse me.”
The woman stilled, then turned toward him. Shock crossed her face.
“You…” Her voice was hoarse, cracked, every syllable pulled from exhaustion. “…but… how?”
She looked back at the boy.
“Oh, Verso.” The words broke on a soft, shattered exhale.
She walked toward Gustave. The barrier shimmered between them.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered, voice barely rising above the thrum of the chroma. “You have suffered enough already… more than any soul should bear.” Her eyes lingered on the boy, glistening. “I didn’t mean the fracture to happen. I wanted him to have a full life. A happy one. You would understand, wouldn’t you? You who loved him once, in the world beyond these walls.”
Loved him once.
In the world beyond these walls.
A voice—not quite his own—rose in his mind: low, gravelly, intimate.
Bonjour, mon coeur.
Longing hit Gustave hard, sudden and deep. His eyes stung; he blinked against it, jaw tightening. He didn’t recognize the voice, didn’t know the moment it came from, yet the ache felt like something that had always waited to surface. Something that might fit if he could only turn it the right way.
“Wait,” he said, voice rough with sudden urgency. He took half a step forward, palm raised. “Please—don’t go yet.”
His gaze flicked to the boy—still painting, still silent—then back to her.
“You’re saying… I knew him? Your son—Verso—before this place?” A small furrow appeared between his brows. “How? And who are you, exactly? What do you mean by ‘the fracture’?”
“My name is Aline Dessendre. I am the Paintress.”
Gustave stared at her, breath catching once.
“If you’re the Paintress,” he said, voice unsteady but pressing, “then you must know what happened to me. You must know why I’m still here.”
She inclined her head toward the white-haired man frozen beyond the chroma.
“I paint life,” she said quietly. “While my husband Renoir—” the name came out almost a sigh—“paints death.”
Gustave’s chest tightened. The distinction implied that they, the expeditions, had been wrong all this time.
Aline’s gaze returned to the child. Pain flickered across her face. “As for you… I cannot be certain.” Her voice frayed, thin. “But it seems Verso somehow saved your chroma when you were—”
She paused, drew a slow breath. “You can return.”
Her eyes met his, steady despite the faint tremor in her hands. “Though it is no longer in my hands to decide.”
She started to turn toward the swirling barrier. Then stopped. Her shoulders sagged. “If you return to the canvas—if the canvas survives,” she said, “please look after him. Tell Verso I’m sorry. Tell him he deserves to live his own life—not the one I painted for him, but the one he chooses.”
“Wait.” Gustave’s voice sharpened with quiet urgency. “I don’t understand any of this. Please—tell me more.”
But Aline only shook her head, stepped into the chroma, and vanished.
The boy turned again, painted hand over Gustave. The barrier dissolved.
Gustave ran toward the swirl of chroma, hoping it would take him. White fire blasted him back. He groaned, pushed himself up, returned to the boy.
“So, you’re… Verso.”
The boy nodded.
Gustave exhaled slowly.
“You’ve been here for a long time, haven’t you? Longer than the Verso who’s with Maelle right now—the one who saved her.”
Another nod.
A hundred years. Perhaps more. Painting without pause in this silent nothing. The thought settled over Gustave like cold weight. He looked at the small bowed shoulders, the cracked void where a face should have been, and the protectiveness that had been quietly building since he first knelt beside the child sharpened into something almost painful.
“Why can’t you leave?” Gustave asked gently. “Why can’t you stop painting?”
The boy said nothing. Only the soft, rhythmic smear of paint answered.
“What are you painting?”
The boy paused. Turned to Gustave. Laid a small painted hand on his forearm—the way a child might reach to say it’s okay—then returned to the canvas.
Gustave’s mind churned. “You’re saying… you’re painting me?”
A quick shake of the head.
“Living things, then?”
A nod. The boy glanced toward the swirling chroma where Aline had stepped through.
“Living things… out there? From this canvas?”
Another nod.
Gustave dropped his head into his hands. A tremendous headache spread behind his eyes.
“So you’re painting existence itself. Keeping it going. And you can’t stop.” He lowered his hands, voice quieter. “What happens if you do stop?”
The boy hesitated—only a fraction—then shook his head once. Continued painting.
Gustave’s throat tightened.
“Your creations… they disappear? They die?”
A small, solemn nod.
The dread came slow and heavy, settling deep in his chest.
He understood—more than he wanted to. The boy was not the cause of the gommage; he was the fragile thread holding everything else together. A remnant forced to sustain painted beings inside a fractured canvas. And now Gustave himself might be part of that painted continuation—if The Paintress, if Aline was right, if the other Verso, the one who had once called him “mon cœur” in a life Gustave could not yet remember, had pulled his chroma in that final instant.
Right now he would have given anything—his other arm, his last breath—for a stiff drink and five minutes to sit with the impossibility of it all.
But there was no drink.
Only the boy, the canvas, and the faint echo of that low, gravelly voice that still tugged at something Gustave had not known was there.
Later, as he wrote his hypothesis, the chroma pulsed again.
The boy raised his painted hand. Gustave found himself behind the barrier once more.
This time Renoir stumbled in.
They locked eyes immediately. Rage bubbled—vengeance for the Cliffs—but it dissipated before it could consume Gustave. The look on Renoir’s face was one of exhaustion, a deep resignation. This was not the same man who had killed him.
Renoir walked closer.
“I thought I understood the canvas,” he said, voice rough with something almost like wry wonder. “Every line, every shade. But it seems Verso kept more secrets than I knew.” His gaze moved over Gustave—measuring, surprised, resigned. “You’re here. In this place. That… I did not expect.”
Gustave stayed silent, waiting. His mechanical hand flexed once at his side.
Renoir looked toward the scarred girl frozen beyond the restless chroma.
“We already lost one son. I could not lose them too—my wife, Alicia.” The name came out quiet, weighted.
Gustave’s breath caught. Alicia. Not Maelle, then.
“I forced the fracture in the canvas to keep the life we have left out there. My wife only wanted to hold onto our boy. You would understand that, wouldn’t you? We both love them. Both want them safe.”
“You’re not the one who killed me,” Gustave said plainly. “The one at the Cliffs… he was different.”
Renoir gave a small, tired nod. “That was a rather unfortunate portrait of me. My wife was grieving, please forgive her.” He glanced again at the girl. “There is nothing more I can do from here. I leave the rest to Alicia. When the time comes, please remind her to come home. You know her better than any of us. You’ve been the father, the brother she needed. I’m genuinely grateful for that. Tell my little princess that I’ll keep the light on for her.”
Princess.
“Maelle,” Gustave breathed.
Renoir’s faint smile held no joy, only quiet gratitude. “Hold onto each other.” He turned around and stepped into the chroma on the other side. Renoir vanished from view, leaving only Alicia now standing beyond the barrier.
Gustave fell to his knees. Tired. Confused. Wanting an end to the uncertainty—he had always hated not knowing.
He rose. Tried to move forward. The barrier held.
“Hey, you can lower this shield now. He’s gone—”
The chroma pulsed violently.
A man Gustave had never seen walked in. He circled the boy slowly, but did not seem to see Gustave.
“Hi,” he said to the boy, voice soft, almost worn thin.
The boy turned his face toward the man.
“You’re tired of painting, aren’t you?” The man asked softly.
The boy nodded.
“I am tired too.”
Gustave froze.
That voice—low, gravelly, intimate in a way that bypassed memory and went straight to bone.
Bonjour, mon coeur.
The echo from earlier surged back. The same timbre. The same quiet exhaustion layered beneath it.
This was him.
The one who had spoken those words. The one Aline had begged him to look after.
Verso.
Gustave’s breath snagged hard in his throat. His mechanical hand clenched once at his side, then opened again slowly, as though afraid to shatter the moment. He stared at the man’s profile—the pale strands of hair, the tired line of his shoulders—and felt something long-buried stir, fragile and certain all at once.
Then Maelle stepped in.
“Maelle! Maelle, I’m here!” Gustave shouted, pounded against the barrier. Like Verso, Maelle didn’t seem to register his presence.
She looked down toward the boy. “That’s…”
Gustave paced restlessly, shouting at the boy to release him.
“You shouldn’t be able to be here,” Maelle said to Verso.
“Maman’s gift,” Verso replied, a hint of bitterness in his voice.
“Why did you run in? It’s dangerous for you here.” Maelle put her hand gently on Verso’s shoulder.
“See things as they are, not how you want them to be,” Verso sighed.
Gustave instantly felt irritated.
What a cynical point of view. As an engineer, an inventor, of course he saw things as they were—but he also saw how things could be, how he wanted them to be, how he could design them to be. There was always a potential, a room filled with friction, a gap the mind could fill, change, adjust.
Maelle looked confused.
“You lied to your father,” Verso stated.
“No, I—” Maelle stammered. Unable to form a coherent defense.
Gustave could tell Verso was right. She was lying.
“He saw it too. But he wants to believe. You’re going to die here. Why don’t you just leave? You can always come back.”
Gustave’s jaw tightened. Die? Then it clicked. The painted-over faces beyond the barrier. What Renoir had said about saving his family. Their bodies there, decaying, while their souls remained here, in the canvas.
No.
“The moment I leave, Papa will erase this canvas,” Maelle cried, gripping her sword tighter.
“This is not worth your life,” Verso answered, low and tired.
“What life? My life of loneliness in a shell of a body? With no voice and no future?”
Gustave understood. Maelle—Alicia—must have gone through so much pain: to lose her brother, to have her face ruined, her voice lost. He could not bear the thought of such a tragedy happening to anyone, let alone a child.
They argued back and forth—life in the canvas versus life beyond. Maelle insisted she had no life out there, but everything she wanted was here.
Verso remained resolute. He held out his hand toward the boy. “It’s time to stop painting.”
The boy hesitated but raised his hand.
Maelle stepped in with her sword drawn. “Papa also said, ‘Hold onto each other’.”
Gustave’s heart broke. Renoir had told him the same thing.
“I’m sorry,” Verso said, drawing his sword.
What?
Gustave pounded the barrier. “Hey, hey!” he shouted frantically at the boy. “Verso, please, let me out, let me help them. Let me talk to them. Please.”
The boy shook his head and returned to his canvas.
Gustave’s breathing came hard and shallow. Panic rose sharp in his throat as he stood trapped behind the barrier, helpless once again to shield Maelle from harm. He could only watch as the two traded blows—steel clashing, words cutting deeper than any blade—each strike and retort landing like a fresh wound.
Then Maelle won. Relief flooded Gustave’s veins.
But when Verso dropped to the ground, voice breaking on a plea for it to end, tears slipped silently down Gustave’s cheeks. He still did not have all the facts. He did not yet understand how the pieces had fallen this way. Yet the vow formed instantly inside him: he would find the answers. He would trace every variable until the mechanism made sense. Once he found out how it all worked, he could save Maelle out there—and perhaps, everybody else too.
Verso’s chroma began to seep out in thin grey petals. As it drifted, Gustave felt the chroma beneath his own skin pulse in answer. Something taking shape.
The painted form of Verso materialized beside the boy.
For a long heartbeat neither moved.
Verso’s gaze lifted slowly and found Gustave’s. Shock flickered across his features, then something softer—wonder, almost fragile. He looked down at the child, back to Gustave, the recognition settling between them like shared breath.
Maelle did not seem to register any of it. She stepped toward the boy and hugged him. “Just for a little while longer, brother. Just until we get to live a full life together. One life where I get to see you grow old. I will let you go then. You will be happy. I promise.”
She kissed the top of the boy’s head and disappeared into the chroma barrier.
Everything happened at once.
First the barrier broke.
Gustave ran toward the boy at the same time as Verso.
They met in the middle.
“You.” Verso’s breath came out sharp. His hand moved fast, fingers brushing Gustave’s cheek to check if he was solid. “But… how?”
Gustave felt the quick heat of the touch. He did not pull away.
“Impossible,” Verso murmured in disbelief.
“Impossible is such a final word for the unknown, don’t you think?” Gustave admonished gently.
Verso let his hand drop. Their eyes met again.
Gustave saw the pale grey of Verso’s irises—clear, startling in the dim space. For a second he wanted to reach up and trace the line of scar over Verso’s eye. He clenched his fist instead.
“We buried you,” Verso whispered. “You… died.”
His voice broke on the last word; his gaze searched Gustave’s face with something raw and unsteady, as though waiting for the vision to dissolve.
“I—I don’t know for sure what happened. Not yet.” Gustave rubbed the back of his neck with his mechanical hand; the familiar click of joints steadied him as the words began to spill faster than he could rein them in. “I mean, I have a few theories. Rough ones. Sketches, really. Nothing solid enough to stake anything on. But the way the chroma pulled at me just now—it felt directional, almost engineered. Like there are different signatures in it, different frequencies or resonances layered together. The thrum here is heavier, slower, almost like a baseline carrier wave, but when Maelle’s words appeared in the journal it shifted—sharper, brighter, like someone had tuned a dial and let a higher harmonic through. I’d need more data, more observation, some way to test the resonance between the chroma streams, because if I just leap to conclusions without—” He cut himself off mid-gesture, hands still half-raised as though he had been sketching invisible diagrams in the air.
Verso had not moved. He had not interrupted. He simply watched—those pale grey eyes fixed on Gustave with an intensity that felt less like scrutiny and more like unguarded attention. There was no mockery in the gaze, no impatience. Verso seemed to see straight through the familiar rhythm of Gustave’s rambling, past the engineering terms, down to the unsteady hope underneath.
Gustave felt suddenly exposed under that look—young again, the way he used to feel when someone actually took the time to hear him out without cutting in or rolling their eyes, without waiting for him to stumble into something foolish. His mouth opened, closed again; his words stumbled, then scattered. A small, embarrassed laugh escaped as heat creeped up the back of his neck.
“Sorry,” he murmured, cheeks warming. “I talk too—I tend to… I’m doing it again, aren’t I? I just—when something doesn’t add up I can’t help trying to take it apart and see how the pieces might fit back together differently. It’s how I’ve always solved things. Or tried to.”
Verso regarded him in silence.
A faint question lingered in his expression, undercut by something deeper—longing, familiarity—that tightened Gustave’s chest.
This Verso might remember what he himself could not yet recall.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Gustave asked. “Do you remem—” He didn’t finish.
The chroma inside his body pulled at him. The next thing he knew he was falling into a deep dark void towards the light.