Chapter 2 – "How Did We Get Here?"
The wind returned first.
It rolled in from the sea, brushing ash from the ruined grass, shifting the smoke like a curtain lifted from a stage that had seen too much. The battlefield was silent, the drifters gone. No more movement, no more Gates. Just the aftertaste of something ancient—and watching.
Karl stood atop the tank, his rifle lowered, his eyes distant.
Ilisha crouched beside the corpse of a creature—its smoke body collapsing into silver dust. She didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
Because in moments like this, silence was memory.
---
Karl – Five Years Earlier
Somewhere in Djibouti – Black Site Echo-3
He was thirteen the first time he killed someone. It wasn't in battle. It was a test.
The man had been tied to a chair, face bruised, coughing blood. "Enemy combatant," they said.
The instructors had been watching. Observing how the diplomat's son would handle pressure. He wasn't supposed to pull the trigger. He was supposed to hesitate, flinch, show humanity.
But Karl didn't flinch.
He didn't feel rage, or fear, or even regret.
He felt... expected.
The man had looked at him—not with fear, but recognition. Like he knew Karl from somewhere older than memory.
"Your eyes," the man whispered, just before the shot. "I've seen them… in fire…"
Bang.
Later, Karl sat in the concrete silence of his cell, staring at his reflection in the broken mirror.
"How did I get here?" he asked himself aloud, but no answer came. Only the faint hum of unseen machines.
And in the corner of the mirror—just for a second—he saw wings.
Not angelic. Not demonic.
Something else.
---
Ilisha – Three Years Earlier
Somalia – Jungle Between War Zones
She was fifteen. Her body carried twenty scars. Her knives, thirty kills.
She never remembered her mother's face. Her earliest memory was fire. Her second was pain.
The third was victory.
They called her "Frost Wolf." The girl who moved without sound. The blade that never missed.
She hadn't spoken in weeks. Hadn't needed to.
That night, she sat alone atop a wrecked APC, just her and the stars—before her extraction to South Africa.
"Are you afraid of what you are?" the voice asked.
She didn't turn. It wasn't real. It never was. But the voice always came at the edges of sleep.
"No," she whispered. "I'm afraid of what comes next."
The sky above her shimmered faintly. Just once. Like something peeking through a crack in the firmament.
And for the first time, Ilisha felt cold in her soul—not from fear. But from recognition.
The world was waking up.
---
Back to Present
"Hey," Ilisha said softly, still watching the horizon.
Karl didn't respond at first. His eyes were fixed on the rift's fading embers.
"Feels like we've been walking toward this our whole lives, doesn't it?" she continued.
Karl finally spoke. "We weren't walking. We were placed. Every step, every lie, every scar... led here."
"And now?"
Karl's voice was steady. "Now we write the part they didn't plan for."
A shriek echoed from somewhere deep inland.
They both turned to look—no fear, just readiness.
Behind them, the survivors of the 9th Recon began moving, following orders, following them.
---
Cut to: Dream Fragment – Karl's Mind
He stood on an ocean of glass.
Above him, three suns spun like dying stars.
He saw a child—himself—floating in red water. And above the boy, two silhouettes:
One draped in wings of gold, faceless but burning bright.
The other shadowed, crowned with horns, a voice like thunder made gentle.
The two argued in silence.
And the boy in the water... smiled.
---
Back to Present
Karl blinked.
"More rifts are coming," he said.
Ilisha nodded. "Let them."
He looked at her—really looked. Not the weapon. Not the blade. The person.
"Glad it's you here."
"Glad it's you."
And for a moment, before the next storm, the two most dangerous teenagers in the world stood still—just long enough to ask the question they already knew the answer to:
"How did we get here?"
Together.