Expedition 33 AU. Gustave remembers. He remembers arriving to the paintress’ world, fighting the nevrons and befriending the gestrals and growing as close of a bond with his adopted daughter, Maelle, as possible. He remembers resting at the camp at night with Maelle and Sciel and Lune, and writing in a journal at night, and dreaming of a handsome man with black and grey hair. He even remembers meeting the stranger, who calls himself Verso, late in a few occasions and dancing with him to soft music playing, talking about being stranded in the foreign and hostile land. Gustave insists that the beautiful stranger joins them and stays in safety. He is denied, which is a little strange and sad, but the two always grow closer and closer at night. Verso is defensive and so beautiful and defeated, where Gustave is optimistic and chatty and bubbly and kind with the stranger. He tells the group about the mysterious man. No one believes him. Gustave is only 32. Was 32. He remembers the beach, the panic in seeing the man who killed the whole expedition, Renoir, approach them. He remembers fighting so hard to keep everyone alive, only for Renoir to stab him and kill him. The last thing he sees is Maelle screaming and crying in grief as the light leaves his eyes. He died. And he should have stayed dead. But no. He is resurrected. Alive and well. Sort of. Lumiere is fixed, and Maelle is safe and crying and so scared and traumatized and alive and happy to see him. Gustave is bewildered and disoriented, and he hugs Maelle with heavy tears. And then he sees Verso, the handsome man, and there is a strange tension between them now. It’s made worse when Maelle told Gustave the truth of Verso’s life, how he is a sort of the painter world just like they all are, and how he is the so. If the man who killed him, and he didn’t want to save him out of selfishness and fear, and he’s so sorry. Which is sad, because Gustave and Verso began to get so close and now Gustave wants nothing to do with him. And Verso is hurting and apologizing and trying to make up for the pain he’s inflicted.

Chapter 9: The Bridge of Paint and Bone

The Crystal Bridge didn’t just hum; it sang. A low, resonant chord thrummed up through the soles of Gustave’s boots as he walked its glowing length, the soundless music of solidified magic. Three years of work, and it was perfect. A soaring arch of living light that connected the reborn painted world—their world, now lush and wild and singing with soft magic—to the human realm. People crossed it daily. Traders with carts of luminous fruit, scholars seeking the Paintress’s library, families just coming to see the sky that changed color with the wind.

Gustave oversaw it all. He was the foreman, the peacekeeper, the guy who knew how to calm a spooked crystal spire or remind a homesick painter from Lyon that the beer here was just as good.He smiled. He chatted. He was, to everyone, the same endlessly kind, capable Gustave.

It was a perfect performance. And he was so, so tired.

The sun was dipping below the horizon of the human side, painting the bridge in long, melanchiolic shadows of orange and deep blue. The last of the day’s workers, a group of carpenters from Arles, clapped him on the shoulder as they passed. “À demain, Gustave!”

“À demain,” he echoed, his voice warm. He waited until their footsteps faded, until the bridge was empty save for the whispering light. Then the smile slipped from his face like a dropped mask. The warmth drained from his eyes, leaving something hollow and old.

He walked to the central railing, a masterpiece carved by their best artisans. Not with grand scenes, but with tiny, intricate poppies. He ran his calloused thumb over one, the polished crystal warm, almost like skin. He’d specifically requested poppies. No one had asked why.

He leaned on the railing, looking not toward the bustling human town, but back into the heart of the painted world. His eyes tracked the familiar path down to the vast, eternal field of crimson and violet. From here, it was just a smear of color. But he knew every shade.

“You’d love this bridge,” he whispered into the wind that swept up from the chasm below. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. “All that light. You’d pretend to hate the crowds, but you’d come at night, just to feel it sing.”

Silence. Just the bridge’s hum.

That was the anomaly. The secret he carried like a stone in his throat. Maelle could resurrect, yes. She’d brought back others, faded souls from the canvas, given them form and breath. But what Gustave had… it was different. He’d died, truly died, his body broken by Renoir. He’d felt the nothingness. And then he’d chosen to come back. Not just to life, but through the veil itself. He’d walked in the quiet places, the in-between. He’d seen the other side. And he could, he knew, go back there. He was the only one who could just… step across. A permanent citizen of nowhere.

He’d thought about it. In the deep, quiet hours after rebuildings, when the silence in his own cottage was louder than any collapse. He could go find him. Wherever souls like Verso’s went. He could see if he was at peace.

But he didn’t. What right did he have? He’d loved Verso to the point of dissolution, then rejected him at the revelation of his bloodline, then watched him die a second time. To go barging into his afterlife, even if he could? It would be the final, ugly act of a selfish man. Verso deserved his rest, far from the man whose love had been such a poisoned gift.

So he stayed.He built. He made a world worthy of the peace Verso had sacrificed himself to offer.

And he died a little every day inside a living, breathing, peaceful paradise.

A flicker of movement caught his eye—a shimmer in the air above the poppy field, like heat haze. A window. He’d seen them before, fractures in reality that showed glimpses of other layers. He usually looked away. Tonight, he didn’t.

And there, in the fading light, he saw a figure in soft pink linen, standing knee-deep in lavender. The figure had its back to him, black-and-grey hair stirring in a breeze Gustave couldn’t feel.It was him. It was Verso. Not a memory, not a ghost.

Solid. Alive. There.

Gustave’s breath froze. His heart, that hollow drum, gave a single, painful thud. He couldn’t move. He could only watch as the Verso in the window wrapped his arms around himself, shoulders curling forward as if in pain. As he turned his head slightly, profile etched with a longing so acute it was a physical blade in Gustave’s chest.

He was watching him. Verso was alive, and he was watching him.

The realization unspooled in Gustave’s mind, slow and catastrophic. Verso hadn’t found peace. He was right there, in their field, pining. Three years of this. Three years of Gustave whispering to the wind while Verso stood just out of reach, separated by a thin pane of unreal glass, aching for him.

Every Verso in every lifetime has a Gustave. And he can’t have him.

The thought was a sucker-punch. His own self-pity evaporated, burned away by a surge of white-hot, agonizing clarity. He’d been mourning a loss that wasn’t real. He’d been wallowing in a sacrifice Verso never wanted. While Verso suffered. Alone.

“Idiot,” Gustave snarled at himself, the word ripped from somewhere deep and raw. “You colossal, self-absorbed idiot.”

He pushed back from the railing. The peaceful, flourishing world around him blurred into irrelevance. The bridge, his masterpiece, was just a thing. A pretty path to nowhere. The only thing that mattered was the field. The man in it.

He didn’t run. His steps were deliberate, heavy with the weight of three wasted years. He crossed back to the painted side, his destination a fixed point in his soul. He passed Maelle’s workshop, where lamplight glowed.

She was outside, cleaning a brush. She took one look at his face—the storm in his hazel eyes, the grim set of his jaw—and froze. “Gustave? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”

He didn’t stop. “I saw him.”

“What?”

“Through a window. In the field. He’s there, Maelle. He’s been there. He’s…” Gustave’s voice broke. “He’s waiting.”

Maelle’s face, usually so controlled, crumpled. The guilt she’d carried for years flashed across her features. She knew. She’d always known he wasn’t at peace. “Papa…”

“I’m going to him.”

“How?” she asked, practical even now. “The windows don’t open from here. You can’t just walk into a memory.”

Gustave finally stopped, turning to look at his daughter. The anomaly. The man who could walk between worlds. A sad, quiet smile touched his lips. “Yes,” he said softly. “I can.”

He understood now. The afterlife wasn’t a distant shore. It was all the lost, lonely, in-between places. The field of poppies where a painted boy wept. The silent spaces behind the windows. His ability wasn’t for visiting the dead.

It was for retrieving the lost.

He turned and strode into the gathering twilight, leaving the lights of the village behind. He didn’t take the path. He cut straight through the whispering groves, past the cathedrals of glass he’d helped raise, toward the sea of crimson and violet that had haunted his dreams for three years.

He was going to the field. He was going to step through the veil of his own grief, and this time, he wasn’t letting go.