Chapter 31 – The Moment Before the Storm
The night was heavy. Not the simple weight of darkness, but a suffocating, living pressure that seemed to press down on every leaf, every raindrop, every breath. The forest groaned under the storm. Pines bent like weary soldiers, their needles slick with rain, their roots sunk deep into mud that swallowed sound.
Jack's boots squelched against the soaked earth as he stumbled through the trees. His headlights had long since been swallowed by the forest road. He had driven until the path ended, then walked, as though some unseen hand dragged him to this place. The rain slicked his hair to his skull, ran down his leather jacket, and into his collar. He shivered—not from the cold, but from the memories gnawing at him.
He had tried to drown them for years. Whiskey, women, blood-soaked missions for the agency, the hollow laughter of a man pretending not to care. But they always came back. The screams. Always the screams.
His hand brushed against the pistol at his side. Familiar weight, familiar cold. But tonight, it didn't comfort him. Tonight, the gun felt useless.
Because he knew who was waiting.
Lightning split the sky, and for a moment, the forest clearing revealed itself in stark white. There, beneath the twisted pines, stood the silhouette he had dreaded and expected in equal measure. Tall. Still. Unmoving as stone.
H.I.M.
The rain streamed down his form, cloak clinging like a shadow made flesh. His head was bowed, but Jack knew. He knew those eyes were open, burning in the dark, fixed on him.
Jack's breath faltered. His throat tightened until it hurt. He wanted to turn and run—God, every bone in him screamed to turn back—but his legs refused. Perhaps it was fate. Perhaps it was guilt. Perhaps, deep down, he had come here because he wanted this.
"Finally."
The voice cut through the storm, deep and calm, as if the thunder itself spoke. It wasn't rage, not yet. It wasn't even hatred. It was something colder, something carved from grief long since hardened into steel.
"The dog who slaughtered a family… finally crawls back to his master."
Jack flinched. His hand instinctively touched his pistol grip, fingers trembling. His lips parted, but no words came.
And then it began—the flood of memory.
He saw it as clear as day: the warm glow of the house, the crackling fire, the smell of roasted bread. He had walked in dripping with rain, his boots leaving prints across the floorboards. He remembered the child's laughter fading into screams. The wife's desperate plea cut short by steel. The crimson splatter that painted his hands and face.
And then—the silence.
The silence that followed him for twenty years.
Jack's knees weakened. He clutched his stomach as bile rose in his throat. For the first time in two decades, he whispered, "I'm… sorry."
The figure lifted his head. Lightning cracked, and Jack saw them—those eyes. Not human anymore. Hollow pits burning with something worse than hatred. A void.
Suddenly, the distance between them evaporated. One moment H.I.M was twenty feet away. The next, he was there, a breath away. Jack staggered back, hand flying to his pistol, but the aura pressed on him like a mountain. He felt small, like a boy again, drowning in the gaze of something larger than life, larger than death.
"Sorry," H.I.M said, his voice razor-sharp, "doesn't bring them back."
Jack's lips trembled. Rain stung his eyes, but they didn't blur the tears that finally fell. "I… I can't take it back. I was young. Stupid. I thought it was a mission. I thought—"
"You thought," H.I.M cut in, "that orders justified everything." His presence thickened, crushing the air. "You thought their lives were yours to erase. You thought I would break."
Jack's hand moved before his mind caught up. He drew the pistol, leveled it with both hands, his finger trembling on the trigger.
The shadow before him chuckled. Low, guttural. The laugh of something that had shed humanity long ago.
And then—Jack's mind ripped open again.
He saw flashes. Not memories of his own, but echoes of H.I.M's. The aftermath of that night. The flames. The twisted corpses. The boy crawling from the ashes, face streaked with soot and tears. The vow whispered under the crackling fire: "I will never be human again. I will be something greater. I will become their judgment."
Jack gasped. His hands shook so hard the pistol rattled. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He was staring not at a man, but at the ghost he had created.
Lightning tore across the sky. Thunder boomed.
And then—they moved.
Jack pulled the trigger, muzzle flash painting the storm in brief fire. H.I.M blurred, cloak twisting like living shadow, eyes blazing. The air exploded with motion, with rage, with twenty years of unfinished history.
The forest bent under their clash. Roots ripped, trees groaned, rain turned to mist under the shockwaves.
The storm had begun.
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