[Warverse] Jude Mathis contracts a terminal disease and dies six months after escaping the POW camp.
Kresnik would not have survived Will's death if it hadn't been for Jude. Something about Ludger's reaction, retreating from the world and refusing care seemed to have spurred the doctor into action. Somehow he got Ludger to eat enough to keep up his strength until Alvin returned, and the Kresnik had given no objections to going with them.
It became clear that Jude had been ill the entire time he was taking care of Ludger, ignoring his own discomfort. The guilt of that stirred Ludger from his catatonic stupor, and eventually he began to function again. But it was an empty existence, living for the sake of living. Things that once brought him hope or joy no longer touched him.
Life with the Conductor's rebels was hard, and not a cause that Ludger cared for. But it was all he had, and it meant being able to stay with the only one he knew in a hostile, unfriendly new land. There was nothing he could do otherwise after all, always at the complete mercy of the cruel whims of the world. He doubted Rowen would trust him to leave even if he could muster the will to do so.
Jude never seemed to recover fully from that bout of illness, something Ludger had shared but had shrugged off fairly quickly. A common disease in Elympios, harmless and yet...
When the disease relapsed several months later, Jude was bedridden and his condition just continued to deteriorate until he was taken from Ludger too.
The sole Elympian vanished from the base the day after, and no one has seen him since.