If a character's wounds reach 0, they develop the Internal Bleeding physical condition at Severity 2 and are considered to be bleeding out. Characters who are bleeding out immediately fall unconscious and will die in a number of hours equal to their Grit, unless the Internal Bleeding condition is successfully treated or they are Stabilized with a Difficulty Score of 3 plus the number of physical conditions they have test.
Stabilizing a bleeding out character will restore them to consciousness and grant them 1 wound, but it does not remove the Internal Bleeding condition.
Characters die if they either bleed out or accumulate negative wounds beyond their Grit. A player can prevent death and persist by spending a Chronicle Point, but this results in the character gaining two conditions and leaves them one wound away from death. If the character takes any additional damage after this, they either die or must spend another Chronicle Point and gain an additional two conditions. This process can continue until the player exhausts all their Chronicle Points.