Some debts can't be paid. Some fates can't be rewritten. But I tried.
The first time he saw Arthur die, it was raining.
The gang had already fractured, Dutch was spiraling, and the Pinkertons were closing in. Arthur—his brother, his anchor—collapsed beneath the weight of both the bullet wound and the sickness eating at his lungs. Wyatt tried to pull him to his feet, screaming through the storm, but Arthur only smiled with tired eyes.
"Let me go, brother."
The lightning flashed, and time jumped.
He was on the mountain again. Different moment. Same ending.
Arthur dying in the snow.
Wyatt tried again. And again. And again.
He rewound time—though not of his own will, not truly. The coin in his pocket pulsed with a strange energy, caught in the vortex of fate. With every failed attempt, every desperate lunge to change destiny, he was thrown back into another broken scene.
Arthur coughing blood behind the church.
Arthur clutching his chest as they rode.
Arthur collapsing by the tree.
Each time, Wyatt moved faster. Drew earlier. Fought harder. Begged louder. But no matter what, the outcome never changed.
Arthur Morgan died.
And Wyatt watched the man who had become his first true family in this world crumble into the dirt again and again and again.
Even as I was losing hope I kept trying
gunfire. A cough. Louder than it should've been. Wet. Sick. Familiar.
Arthur's cough.
I blinked.
We were riding together. The sun barely cresting over the trees, steam curling from the horses' breath. Arthur glanced at me with a familiar tired smirk, his gloved hand raised to his mouth.
He coughed into his sleeve.
Blood.
No. No.
My heart jackknifed in my chest. I looked around, recognizing the terrain, the wagons, the smoke of freshly burned tracks. This was the aftermath of the Cornwall train heist.
But… we'd done this weeks ago.
I looked down. My hand was clenched, shaking.
The coin sat in my palm, red-hot.
Not now. Please, not now.
The world flickered.
Then I was in Wapiti.
Rain Falls stood over Arthur, laying a hand on his shoulder. Arthur's face was pale, gaunt, lips dry and cracked. His eyes—once sharp as a hawk's—had dimmed, weighed down by something deeper than illness.
"You are dying," Rain Falls said, gently. "But you still have time."
I tried to move forward. To speak. To scream.
Nothing left my throat.
I wasn't in the moment—I was watching it.
Trapped.
The coin buzzed again. Loud. Sharp.
Another fracture.
Now we were in Beaver Hollow. Dutch pacing like a rabid dog, talking about betrayal and futures and Micah whispering poison behind him. Arthur was barely standing, one hand gripping his ribs, his other clenched around my shoulder.
"You don't owe him anything, Arthur," I said, trying to shake him.
He coughed again. "I know. But I still gotta see it through."
"You don't," I insisted. "You can walk away. Now. With me."
He looked at me. Quiet. Sad. Brotherly.
"I don't get to walk away, Wyatt," he murmured. "Not anymore."
And then—
Gone again.
Over and over, it kept happening.
Different places. Different days. Sometimes weeks apart, sometimes mere hours.
But always the same result.
Arthur dead. Arthur dying. Arthur saying goodbye.
Attempt 20:
I warned him. The second I saw the signs—the blood, the cough—I tried to tell him. Tried to steer him away from Saint Denis, from chasing after Dutch's ghost. He laughed it off. Called me "melodramatic."
And he still died.
Attempt 21:
I told Dutch. Shouted at him. Begged him to stop this madness, to see what he was doing to Arthur—what he was doing to us. Dutch turned on me like a snake. Pushed me out of the gang for "sedition."
Arthur still died. Alone.
Attempt 22:
I left with Arthur. Got him on a horse. Rode south. We didn't look back. For a day, maybe two, I thought I'd won.
But the Pinkertons found us.
Arthur coughed blood and fought like hell—but he wasn't fast enough anymore.
He died in my arms.
Attempt 23:
I tried changing things earlier. Saved Jenny Kirk. Stopped the Blackwater ferry. I altered everything. Butterfly effect be damned.
But it was like fate pushed harder the more I fought.
Every step forward became a slide back down into hell.
I was unraveling.
I stopped sleeping. My mind frayed at the edges. My powers—Time Lag, the coin, my strength—they felt like mocking gifts.
And still, I kept trying.
One more run, I kept telling myself. Just one more.
And every time… I watched him die.
Sometimes in the dirt, sometimes in peace.
But always… gone.
On what must've been the hundredth loop, I snapped.
The coin glowed so bright I could barely see. My vision turned white, then red, then something in-between.
And I screamed. I screamed like something primal. A sound not meant for human throats.
I won't let this happen.
Not like this.
Until…
The sky split.
A fracture in the world—like broken glass through which poured not light, but darkness. Reality trembled. And the coin in his pocket burned.
Not with heat, but with purpose.
The final moment played out once more—Arthur, dying, breathing ragged, holding out his hat with a half-smile. Wyatt didn't take it. He clutched his hand instead.
"I tried," he whispered. "God, I tried so many times."
Arthur blinked slowly. "Ain't your fault."
But this time… the world responded.
With a groan like collapsing mountains, the air around them shattered. The earth trembled, and time—reality—unwound itself. The snowy mountaintop broke apart into swirling dust, and everything Wyatt had come to know began folding inward, collapsing like a dying star.
His body burned. His veins filled with something ancient. The coin exploded with light—and then darkness.
Then the voice came.
"You have broken the cycle. This world is no longer whole. You have taken it into yourself."
Wyatt staggered in the void, floating, drifting between the shards of what used to be Red Dead's world. Snow, and horses, and laughter, and pain—all of it unraveled and drawn into him like smoke.
"This is the power of crimson inheritance. You are not meant to walk cleanly through time or change fate. You are not a god. But you are something that can devour them."
"From now on… blood binds your strength. Bloodlines will feed your growth. Powers, curses, blessings—they pass in the blood, and you… will inherit them."
He screamed—not from pain, but from the unbearable grief of it all. The coin no longer hummed gently. It throbbed, glowing deep crimson with the energy of an entire broken world.
And then… silence.
When he awoke, the ground beneath him was no longer snow. No more hoofprints. No more pine. Just scorched stone and a rust-red sky.
He sat up slowly, wind sweeping past him like whispers in a language he didn't understand.
His hands trembled.
His hat—the one Arthur gave him—was still there. So was the coin, now cold again. And the faded photos he'd taken with the gang: Dutch laughing beside Hosea, Sadie grinning with blood on her cheek, Arthur standing just off-center, serious and kind.
Everything else… gone.
He was alone in a new world again