Tuberculosis had ravaged this man's body. His face burned with a sickly flush, his lips cracked and bloodstained.
At this moment, the very air was a knife, twisting cruelly in his lungs. Every breath was pure torment.
Arthur lay sprawled on the ground, his body broken, his strength bleeding out through countless wounds.
Arthur's vision blurred as darkness closed in. He knew this darkness was death.
But just ahead, a gun lay on the ground!
Grab it! Just grab it!
Even though he was nothing but a dying flame, if he could reach that gun, he could take the traitor behind him down before his final breath.
That gun meant a bullet in his enemy's body.
Even on the brink of death, even in such weakness, his conviction did not waver.
A gun had never betrayed him. The West's finest marksman would use the last bullet of his life to settle things with the traitor called Micah Bell.
The ground was jagged with sharp stones, cutting Arthur's body to shreds.
His hands were torn and ruined, fingernails ripped up from the strain, pale flesh exposed beneath.
Behind him, the traitor stirred. Their fight on the cliff had ended in a fall.
Though Arthur had been the first to regain consciousness, his condition was far worse than Micah's.
He had to be faster.
The agony tearing through his body meant nothing. Maybe there were still many things left undone in his life—
but right now, all he wanted was to kill that damned traitor.
This hatred had to end. Arthur would cut it off with his own life, refusing to let it spread further.
Finally, his hand brushed the gun.
Relief nearly swallowed him whole, darkness rushing up to take him. He sucked in a ragged breath, forcing it back.
He gathered his remaining strength. Just as he was about to close his fingers around the weapon, about to seize the chance to end it all—
His hand was crushed under a boot.
Black riding boots, tailored trousers—Arthur knew at once who it was.
The man who had roamed the West, whose presence now filled Arthur with such violent turmoil that he lacked even the courage to lift his head—
The cause he had fought for, clung to all his life—was wrong.
His heart sank into the abyss, betrayal crushing him under its weight.
Faces of those who had died for the gang flickered past one after another...
And now, all of it seemed pitiful, pitifully absurd.
Life's cruelest joke was that the man he saw as a father had led him, step by step, into ruin.
"It's over... Arthur. It's all over."
The voice above carried strength, but to Arthur it sounded like the final denial of his entire life.
With great effort, he lifted his head. His body rolled onto his back. Dutch's face filled his fading vision.
"Oh, Dutch..."
The man before him had chosen a traitor when the gang had splintered apart.
Arthur's head sagged, all strength gone.
He couldn't understand. What had happened to Dutch?
That traitor had been with them only two years, yet had caused so many deaths.
Why?
As the gang's leader!
Why stand beside a traitor? Why trust him?
Forcing words out through the fire in his chest, Arthur rasped,
"He's a traitor, Dutch... you know it as well as I do."
Micah Bell staggered closer.
His right arm hung limp, likely dislocated in the fall.
Now, among the three of them, Dutch alone would decide how it ended.
"Dutch, he's sick. He's lost his mind. He's dying, rambling nonsense."
Micah's words came quick, trying to win Dutch to his side.
The Pinkertons—their hunters—had already closed in.
If he could stand with Dutch, his risks would be far less.
Arthur and Micah both waited for Dutch's answer. Silence pressed down, broken only by Arthur's ragged breaths.
"Dutch, I gave you everything... truly..."
Arthur stared at Dutch, at the turmoil in his face.
And suddenly, he understood.
Some truths only reveal themselves at death's door.
Perhaps Dutch had always known who was loyal, who betrayed.
Perhaps he simply didn't care. To him, traitor or loyalist—it didn't matter.
Dutch had once roamed the West, imagining himself at the top of the food chain, reveling in his power to control it all.
But the wheels of time had crushed his dream to dust.
The loss had driven him mad. He cast aside everything—principles, morals, feelings—things he once prided himself on.
He turned everyone around him into pawns for his shattered dream.
Dutch walked away without looking back, the chatter of that traitor following after.
Though they left in different directions, Arthur knew—they were the same kind.
No one spared him a thought. A dying outlaw, left on the ground, was nothing.
The cliffs, the horizon, the pale white sky at dawn. In the east, at the edge of the world, crimson light followed the rising sun, spilling across the treetops below.
With a final effort, Arthur propped himself against the rock face. The warmth of dawn could no longer reach him; death had him in its grasp.
He swallowed back the blood filling his throat and pulled a letter from his coat with trembling hands.
It was battered, nearly soaked through with his own blood.
A farewell letter from the woman he loved—a final parting.
For the gang, he had refused her plea to run away together, cutting her from his life completely.
Gripping it tightly, he tore it apart piece by piece.
The Pinkertons would likely find his body. He could not risk leaving anything that might bring harm to her.
Outlaws like him were never meant for love.
Clutching the scraps, Arthur flung them into the abyss.
In the distance, footsteps approached. The Pinkertons were coming.
Mad dogs who never let go once they sank their teeth in.
But none of it mattered now. The darkness of death spread across Arthur's vision, terrifying yet strangely calm.
This was death—some feared it, others accepted it like an old friend.
"Heh... fate..."
Arthur mocked himself inwardly.
Death seeped into him like lukewarm water, wrapping him entirely.
The footsteps grew closer, but they no longer mattered.
"Yes... this is fate."
A man in a sharp black suit and tall hat stood before Arthur's corpse.
He looked nothing like a Pinkerton. His attire was immaculate, and his words, incomprehensible.
"I've come to say farewell, old friend.
You don't know me, and truthfully, I don't know you either.
But I must speak for fate—never blame it.
There is no fate in this world. Nothing is predestined. Everything is born of your choices."
On the cliff, no living soul remained. Facing Arthur's corpse, the man seemed to be speaking directly to it.
Though no sane man would talk to the dead.
Muttering, he stepped closer, removed his hat, and gave a solemn bow.
"In any case, farewell, friend.
May you write a new destiny."
For any man, true darkness comes when thought ceases.
When it closes in, when death is near, even the strongest will fills with sorrow.
Life's collapse cannot be undone. Who dies without regret?
But Arthur's death was strange.
Blindness was normal. But knowing he was blind—was not.
Though surrounded by blackness, foreign memories and emotions kept pouring into his mind.
For a moment, he felt like he had become someone else.
A timid, silent soul.
A life filled with violence and scorn, tossed aside like a rag doll for others to abuse.
The drunken fists of his father.
The sneers of classmates.
The gaudy-haired punks surrounding him in an alley.
And he never resisted. As though by shutting himself off, the darkness within him would vanish.
So he simply watched. Watched the fists strike him, listened to the venomous words, endured being stripped and dumped onto the street.
He watched as the violence grew worse—fists turning into clubs, then into furniture hurled at him; insults into spit on his skin.
The world's malice flowed like water, always sinking lower, until it pooled on those trapped at the very bottom.
...