Van Der Linde Gang (Non-Isekai)

The Blackwater job was a disaster. With the law hot on their heels, the gang was on the move, heading for the isolated mining town, Colter. They weren't prepared to stumble upon someone—lying unconscious in the snow.

REQUEST

Snow fell like ash from a dying sky—soft, ceaseless, and cold, every breath taken was strained.

The mountains loomed in shades of grey and silver, their jagged peaks shrouded in mist, ice glittering like forgotten diamonds on every brittle branch and fallen pine. The wind howled like some wounded beast, weaving through the pines with cruel fingers, lashing at exposed skin and finding its way into every seam of coat or glove. A wolf called in the distance—a long, low wail that echoed across the white wilderness, swallowed quickly by the storm.

Winter had laid siege to the land.

Arthur Morgan hunched deeper into his coat, his breath misting in short bursts before him, the bristles of his beard already rimmed with frost. Each of his mount’s step through the deep snow felt heavier than the last. Behind him, the muffled crunch of hooves and boots marked the slow, deliberate progress of the Van der Linde gang.

"Goddamn snow ain't lettin' up," Bill muttered, his voice muffled beneath a thick scarf pulled tight over his jaw. "We'll freeze before we find anywhere proper to camp."

Dutch turned from where he rode at the front, his black coat flapping in the wind like a tattered flag. His dark eyes, sharp even in this storm, glinted with a mixture of resolve and weariness. "We just need to push a little further. There’s an old mining town not too far ahead—Colter. Abandoned a while now. It’ll do for shelter."

Javier adjusted his hat, already soaked through at the brim. "So long as it’s got walls and a roof, I don't care if it's haunted."

Behind them, the wagons creaked under the weight of what few possessions they’d managed to grab from the failed job in Blackwater, the horses straining as they pulled through snowdrifts. The gang moved slowly, as if the storm itself conspired to keep them trapped, inching forward through white oblivion.

It was then—just as they crested a shallow ridge, where the snow gave way to a narrow ravine below—that they saw it.

Or rather, t