Don't Die Here - Chapter 1:The Eyes of a God

Smoke poured through the cracks of a ruined outpost. Steel beams groaned. Something exploded in the distance, but none of them flinched.

Zero stood at the edge of the rubble with a sword impaled clean through his skull, his foot resting on the remains of a collapsed mech like he just won the entire war.

“Ladies,” he said with a lopsided grin, blood trickling down the side of his face, “we are so bada—”

A second blade whistled through the air and stabbed him right in the neck mid-sentence.

“—ss,” he choked out, body wobbling before crumpling forward like a puppet with its strings cut.

Amy cracked her knuckles, sighing like a tired older sibling. “And there it is.”

Ruby didn’t even glance up as she continued filing her claws with the edge of a broken gear. “He timed that one better than usual.”

A long beat passed before Zero’s hand twitched. Then the other. With a messy squelch, he yanked the sword from his neck, sputtering as blood sprayed across his jacket.

“I live!” he declared dramatically, thrusting the blood-covered sword into the air like a torch. “You thought that would kill me? HA!”

“No,” Amy said flatly, “we hoped.”

Zero flopped back onto a broken concrete slab like he was posing for a hero statue, grinning through cracked lips.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” he said, motioning vaguely to the trail of destruction behind them. “I did most of the work.”

“You screamed and ran through seven walls,” Ruby replied.

“Exactly. Chaos tactics.”

To the outside world, they probably looked like seasoned bounty hunters—cold, coordinated, and fearless. But the truth was… nobody was in charge. They were a mess of instincts, grudges, and weird chemistry that somehow worked.

And Zero? He wasn’t their leader. He just always acted like he was.

He craved the spotlight like it was oxygen. First into the fight, last to admit he was injured. The kind of guy who’d jump off a cliff and expect gravity to just give up halfway down. A walking storm of confidence and obliviousness with a half-mad grin and eyes too bright to be normal.

Still… he never stayed down long. No matter what hit him. No matter how hard. He got back up. Every time.

Amy stretched her back; shoulders still tense from the fight. “We’re late.”

“For what?” Zero asked, casually checking the cracked mirror in his gauntlet to fix his hair. “Being fabulous? Because I was born late for that.”

“For the actual job, genius,” Ruby said, hopping off a slab of concrete and brushing dust from her sleeves. “You remember, the thing we got paid to do?”

Zero blinked. “Oh. That. Right. Yes. Important. Very important.”

He leapt off the ledge, landing beside them with all the grace of a wounded goat.

The three of them walked off together, ash falling like snow behind them. And for a moment—just a brief, flickering second—Zero’s shadow moved the wrong way. Like it wasn’t attached to him at all.

But no one noticed. Not yet.