Rosetta: Arete VI
The evacuation safehouse is already in sight, yet you turn back into the blizzard.
The snow groans under your boots. You try to follow your own trail back to Rosetta, but most of your footprints have already been buried. What's left looks like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
Eventually, you spot tracks sunk deep into the snow—far deeper than anything a human or a Construct could make. Only a heavy metal body could leave marks like these. The mechanoid pursuers have passed through here.
A heavy sense of dread settles in your chest.
Driven by anxiety, you run against the wind and snow. It can barely be called running anymore. Days of trudging across the tundra have drained every ounce of strength you had. You force your numb limbs to respond, willing your body to move just a little faster.
Rosetta is still struggling against the snow beating down on her.
She senses the blizzard trying to keep her, far more forcefully than the departed ever did. It gathers the shattered remains behind her and buries them beneath a white grave.
Now it comes for her. The wind and snow knock her off balance and icy flakes strike her frame, the freezing cold trying to slow her stiffening limbs.
The blizzard behaves like a patient gravedigger. It never rushes. Ice and snow wrap around her like a shroud, and now, it's only a matter of time before they claim her life.
Evacuation... point...
She can barely form a coherent sentence. Her sense of direction is in complete disarray. But people always move toward the only thing that feels like "ahead"—and somewhere ahead lies the evacuation point she promised to reach with [player name].
Through the haze, she hears a voice that should not be here. Your call is torn apart by the wind and reaches her like a broken whisper that tempts her toward the boundless dark.
She pushes through a dim and tangled forest. Shadows overlap like layers of woven netting that shut out nearly all sunlight. The place feels like a dark kingdom claimed entirely by trees.
It's the same forest she explored countless times with Puff when she was young. She knows these paths so well that she could never lose her way here.
After twisting through the woods, she reaches the brighter edge where sunlight spills in. She searches her M.I.N.D. for what lies beyond the forest, and she remembers clearly the world waiting on the other side...
Yet the moment the sunlight reaches her, its glare leaves her briefly stunned and disoriented.
No... this is not...
A gentle harbor rises before her along with the familiar outline of her hometown. Sea breeze drifts in and shy wildflowers peek out from cracks in the tundra, trembling in the cold breath of a polar spring.
This is where her journey began. After bidding farewell to the departed, she stepped back into the forest.
Am I lost?
She remembers checking the trees her grandpa marked long ago before she left the forest. Those markings meant that she had already reached the far side.
A long funeral procession winds toward the cemetery and the departed murmur their sorrowful lament once again.
Whose funeral is it this time?
She murmurs to herself.
Yours.
The other version of her appears again, the one who claimed she is already dying. The two Rosettas watch the procession enter the cemetery while the cries of grief rise once more.
Aren't you going to see how your own funeral turns out?
So many questions swirl through Rosetta's mind, and the presence of this other version of herself feels like the least important among them.
My... funeral?
Rosetta looks puzzled.
The realm of the departed is opening its gates to you. Do you know what that means?
"Death" has already brushed the tips of your fingers...
Are you saying I'm dying?
The other Rosetta neither nods nor shakes her head. Her silence is the answer.
Then... what about you?
I am the you who is dying.
Suddenly, Rosetta sees those gathered around her, crying—Puff, Lisa, and her parents with their blurred faces...
But [player name] is nowhere among them.
The words seem to push the coffin lid closed and darkness rises again from every direction...
Snow still clings to the branches of the deep forest. A few hardy birds emerge from their nests, hopping lightly from branch to branch.
Loose snow shakes free and patters softly to the ground.
Rosetta finds herself back in the forest once more.
Grandpa, what are we hunting today?
The familiar child's voice pulls Rosetta back into memory. She moves through the forest with practiced ease, and there—among snowy shadows—she sees Puff walking with her younger self.
Her younger self is learning to hunt.
This season, we hunt deer.
Then which way should we go, Grandpa?
Toward where the deer are, of course.
Maybe children sense things more sharply—young Rosetta suddenly points in a direction, as if she's noticed something.
Grandpa, I think there's something over there!
Puff follows her gesture a moment later. Rosetta, curled behind cover, feels his gaze pierce straight through the brush, meeting her eyes across time.
Not sure... maybe a deer?
Whoa! It really is a deer!
Hearing that it's a deer, young Rosetta raises her bow, aiming straight toward Rosetta's hiding place, until Puff's broad hand gently stops her.
Child, not yet... it's not your time to face life and death...
Reluctantly, young Rosetta lowers her bow. Then she and her grandpa disappear back into the forest.
Before vanishing completely, Puff glances back toward Rosetta's hiding place, as if beckoning her to follow.
The patience of the snowstorm is terrifying, and the patience of this Construct is just as frightening.
The M.I.N.D. alerts have long since blurred into white noise. Confusion, drowsiness, exhaustion, and every ache from her wounds rise through her body like a growing tide.
Huff... haa...
She can't speak anymore. There is no space between breaths to form words. Each breath takes everything she has as she fights the crushing fatigue.
The blizzard that raged for so long finally begins to fade. The wild, sweeping snowflakes lose their strength.
In this respite, you continue moving across the snowfields, searching with determination.
The clues before you are easier to read now, but the answer they point to brings no comfort.
The pursuers' tracks appear to gather in one direction.
Finally, all your searching pays off. You find a piece of mechanoid wreckage.
You call her name into the blizzard, no longer caring if it draws attention. The wind seizes your voice the moment it leaves your mouth, freezing it into frost before it can travel and throwing it uselessly against the snow.
(I have to... answer... [player name])
In her fading awareness, your voice feels distant. It could have been a minute or an entire day.
Staying conscious at all is already pushing her limit.
Her world narrows into a blinding white that burns her vision and overwhelms everything else.
She sees weapons abandoned by the enemy lying dozens of meters ahead.
She turns toward them and drags herself forward, leaving a crooked "7" carved into the snow.
She moves through dim corridors of underbrush and clustered branches deep in the forest.
Rosetta catches up to her younger self once more.
Puff is nowhere in sight. Her young self crouches alone behind a snowdrift, bow drawn, facing her target.
A strong reindeer with unusual coloring stands before her. Rosetta has seen it many times in the realm of the departed but has never reached it.
This time, I have to...
The reindeer notices Rosetta. Its gaze passes over the young girl aiming at it and settles calmly on Rosetta's hiding place.
Through its eyes, she and her younger self meet each other's gaze.
Got you!
Her youthful voice rises together with the sound of the arrow leaving the bow.
The arrow cuts through the air, its path reflected in the reindeer's eyes. Young Rosetta lacks the strength, and the arrow only grazes the fur, leaving a thin line of blood.
Instead of harming it, the shot provokes the reindeer. The child is exposed, and the animal becomes fully alert.
!
Seeing her younger self in danger, Rosetta's heart tightens. She raises her bow at once, aiming directly at the reindeer as it prepares to strike.
But someone places a hand on her bow.
Steady your hands!
Grandpa?
The old man steadies her grip, firming her hands that had loosened from shock.
Child, you haven't left...
He never finishes the sentence. Years in the Arctic wilderness have carved his features into something hard as ice, yet Rosetta sees a deep, quiet sorrow hidden beneath that frozen expression.
Grandpa, over there...
Rosetta signals toward the child and the reindeer still facing each other, but the old man ignores the danger. He keeps his hold on her bow and guides her aim away from the scene.
Rosetta... your past is too heavy. It's pulling you down.
The old man's face is filled with sorrow.
Don't let those of us who died chain you in place...
Don't stay trapped in guilt and regret...
You don't belong among the departed. Stop letting their arrows chase you...
Rosetta remembers the first time her grandpa taught her to shoot. The memory returns with perfect clarity.
—!
The bowstring snaps and the arrow whistles forward, just as it did years ago.
Every breath burns. The freezing air feels like tiny ice needles stirring inside her lungs.
The wounds on her frame have long since gone numb, yet each small movement revives the frozen pain for a brief moment.
She no longer knows how long she's been moving. Even the pain has started to lose shape.
The stark white in her vision fades into darkness. Damage to her M.I.N.D. is close to taking her sight entirely.
Yet through the numb blur of snow, her fingers find what she was searching for: The gun the enemy abandoned.
She places her finger on the trigger. The sound might bring someone to her soon, whether it's you or the pursuers.
BANG!
The heavy gunshot cuts through the snow.
Not far away, you hear the shot through the subsiding blizzard.
You run toward the sound without hesitation.
The missed arrow vanishes into the forest.
The reindeer, facing the child moments ago, turns toward Rosetta, then leaps into the woods.
Run, child!
Rosetta looks at the old man beside her.
Child, there are people out there who still matter to you.
You've given too much of yourself to those who are already gone. You shouldn't stay here with us.
It's time for you to go back.
The Commandant is here for you.
Grandpa...
She's never seen him so emotional.
What shocks her even more is the sight of every reindeer in the forest running with that extraordinary stag. The herd moves like a flowing river, as if showing her the path home.
Go back. Do it for the ones who still care about you, for the living you're meant to protect...
Rosetta! Run!
She lives up to the joke she once shared with him. Now she really is running faster than the deer.
She runs with everything she has. She runs past the herd, through the forest, across the Arctic wastes...
The imagined guilt and the weight of the dead can't reach her anymore. The horizon opens beneath her feet.
At the place where the light gathers, the same extraordinary reindeer that guided her before is now racing toward her, running along a trail of radiant color.
Rosetta keeps running through endless darkness. She runs even without direction. She runs even when the effort seems meaningless.
Breath isn't needed here, yet she still gasps for air, exhausted and weak.
After this long, painful, lonely run, she finally hears a faint sound again.
The world's sounds rush back all at once, loud and chaotic, like a newborn's first cry. She's overwhelmed by the noise of life returning.
I... made it... to you...
She manages a brief moment of clarity. She sees you running toward her in a way that's clumsy enough to almost be funny.
First she feels your familiar, steady hands,
then the slightly chilled warmth of your embrace.
I... believe...
I... believe in... [player name].
Every step of this long journey had purpose. She held on until this moment. In your arms, she can finally drop her guard and let the exhaustion sweep her away.
