Jack arrived at his apartment door and turned the key. The lock clicked with a heavy, hollow sound that echoed through the small, dark hallway. He stepped inside, greeted by the stillness of a home that had been too quiet for two years.
There was no one left but him. Once, it had been him and John, a duo that defined "home" for Jack. Now, it was just four walls and a layer of dust that felt like a burial shroud.
Jack walked over to the side table and picked up a framed photograph. It was a picture of him as a young boy standing next to John. He took his sleeve and wiped the dust from their faces. He remembered the noisy days when John was still around—the constant scolding for petty mistakes, usually when John was trying to teach him the intricate ropes of water pipes or mechanical repairs. John had been a hard teacher, but Jack had been a strange student. Even as a child, he felt a weird maturity, like he was an old soul trapped in a small body. He had never felt the urge to play with the other kids; he'd rather sit on the stoop and watch them like he was studying a different species.
The only exceptions were Tavros and Kenlil. They were a problematic bunch from the start—stealing runic components, setting pranks, and letting the air out of the steam-carriages' tires just to hear them hiss. Jack remembered the time they'd tried to peep into the women's section of the bathhouse. John had caught them and scolded Jack publicly, dragging him home by the ear while the neighbors watched. But the moment they were behind closed doors, John had given him a silent, mischievous wink, as if he were proud of the trouble his boy was making.
To the rest of the block, John Sterling was a broken man—a secretive, hard-drinking veteran who spent his nights crying in his room. But to Jack, he was the only anchor he had.
If it weren't for his past, John might have lived longer. He had been a soldier of the Republic once, and the war had never really let him go. Jack still remembered the last words the old man had whispered to him, his voice a raspy ghost of its former self: "If it wasn't for you, Jack, I would've done it years earlier."
As a child, Jack hadn't understood. But after John died, after Jack found the hidden trunk filled with military memoirs and yellowing photographs of men who never came home, the meaning became crystal clear. The weight of losing friends was a wound that never closed. Now, Jack was preparing to follow those same footsteps. He wanted to understand why they did it—why they sacrificed their lives for a country on the other side of the continent just to watch their brothers die in the mud.
Sighing, Jack walked into John's room. It remained exactly as it had been on the day he died. John had always hated it when Jack tried to organize his things; he liked the chaos, the smell of grease and stale liquor, the dirty clothes piled in the corner.
Jack's eyes scanned the room, landing on the small items that told the story of a soldier's life: a heavy combat knife, a coil of rope, a unit patch illustrating a demon's head biting a knife, and a set of dogtags with a deep scratch across the name, leaving only the first letter: J. There was even a tarnished medal that looked like it belonged to a Grendheich officer—a trophy or a reminder of a kill.
Then, he saw it. The photo album.
John used to make Jack kneel for hours just for touching that book. It was the one thing that was strictly off-limits, the vault of the old man's secrets.
"Make me, old man," Jack whispered, his voice cracking slightly as he picked up the heavy leather book.
He looked around the room, half-expecting John's ghost to manifest and cuff him upside the head. He almost wished it would. Anything to see his father one more time.
Jack sat on the edge of the unmade bed, a small smile playing on his lips, and opened the album.
Upon opening the first page, the name of the unit was displayed in bold, hand-drawn letters: Special Task Force Group: Demon Slayer.
Jack snickered, shaking his head. "I didn't think the old man was a part of some special task force."
The other side of the page was a group picture, but the men didn't look like elite commandos. They were ragged, dirty, and standing in the middle of a dense, humid jungle. Jack's eyes softened when he found a young John in the back row, his arm wrapped around a fellow soldier, grinning so wide it looked like his face might split.
Jack flipped the page. The photos showed a different side of the war—men digging trenches in the mud, cutting down massive trees to clear a path. Another flip showed a blur of motion; it was a picture of John and a buddy being chased by a completely naked fellow soldier through the camp. A prank, likely. Then there were the quiet moments: hanging out and drinking around a fire, or a photo of a soldier passed out drunk with obscene drawings all over his face while John stood over him, making a peace sign and smirking at the camera.
A few pages later, however, the tone turned drastically.
The candid smiles were gone. The photos now depicted a plain, open field choked with smoke and explosions. Bolts of raw energy arced through the air as soldiers ran toward an enemy hidden in a haze of fire. The next shot was of their own wounded, laid out in a line, their faces hollowed out by shock.
Then came the horror.
A photo showed a man with dark red skin and a single, protruding horn, wearing a green camo uniform. On his lapel sat a bronze star over two bars—likely the equivalent of a lieutenant. John was in the frame, taking a 'selfie' with the enemy while the man lay unconscious or dead on the ground.
A few pages later, a bunker port was being engulfed by a flamethrower. In the following shot, small, blurry figures were captured running away from the fortification while being burned alive. The final photo in the sequence was John himself, holding the heavy nozzle of the flamethrower. He was hosing out a bunker port, his face twisted into the expression of a complete psychopath.
Jack's smile faltered. He sighed, shaking his head. "Though I knew him as a rough man, I never thought of him as a total psycho."
Suddenly, Jack's stomach let out a loud, hollow growl.
"Oh, shit," he muttered, closing the leather book. "I think we skipped lunch earlier."
He set the album down on the unmade bed, his mind still reeling from the images of his father in the fire. "I guess I'll watch more of your achievements later, old man."
Leaving the ghosts of the Demon Slayers behind, Jack stood up and headed for the kitchen.