The battlefield was deathly still.
Snow covered the Russian plains, the silence of the sound of distant gunfire and soaking the ground in red and gray. Aelric Greene lay prone atop a crumbling rooftop, his breath is whispering in the icy wind as he tightly gripped his sniper rifle with trembling hands. He had been waiting for hours, eyes fixed through the scope, tracking every single detail in the distance.
His mission was simple. Infiltrate the enemy base, eliminate their general, and extract whatever information he could carry. But war was never simple, and orders from his own general always came laced with venom.
"How long does it take?" Aelric muttered under his breath, his voice barely a whisper, lost in the frost.
The enemy lines remained quiet. Too quiet.
Then—a flicker. A sudden glint of light across the ruins. His instincts screamed. The unmistakable gleam of a sniper scope catching the pale sun.
He froze.
There was no time to move. No time to pray.
The shot came like thunder.
Glass shattered. Metal cracked. Pain bloomed.
The bullet pierced through his scope and into his skull.
Darkness surged forward, devouring everything. Cold spread through his body like ink in water. The last thing he saw was the blur of blood and snow. His world turned crimson.
As his mind unraveled, he understood the betrayal.
His general had leaked his location. Set him up to die. It wasn't the enemy who had hunted him, it was his own side. Aelric was never meant to return. He had grown too competent, too respected, too dangerous. A threat to power.
"But it's all over now," he thought as his pulse faded. "Let it end."
Then came the cold.
It wasn't the cold of the Russian winter, it was deeper, unnatural, like the void itself had hands that wrapped around his soul.
His thoughts turned to his sister.
He saw her face. Pale. Fragile. Her body frail in a hospital bed, fighting a sickness that never relented. He had promised her he would return. That he would pay for her treatment. That he wouldn't die like their parents.
Aelric's heart twisted.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the void.
Then, nothing.
But death was not the end... or is it?