As he reached the damp, shadowed spot where he had gunned down a soldier just hours earlier, he was met with a sight that stole the air from his lungs. Instead of the lifeless body, or even the possibility that the soldier's colleagues had retrieved it, something far more sinister awaited him. Only a bloodless, skeletal skull lay on the dark earth. Just hours ago, he had watched the man fall; now, only this macabre relic remained. He reached out with a trembling hand, tracing the clean, unmarred bone. A cold dread, unlike anything he'd ever known, seized him. For the first time in an age, true, primal fear took root in his heart.
This wasn't the work of wild animals. There were no gnawed bones, no scattered flesh, no torn uniform scraps. If a beast had devoured him, there would have been an acrid scent of blood, a gory trail leading into the dense undergrowth. But what lay before him was pristine, chillingly clean. Only a freshly picked skull, stripped bare with impossible efficiency. This was the unmistakable signature of something far more ancient and malevolent: a demon.
"So, there are demons in this forest too?" Kealen's thought echoed in the sudden, oppressive silence of the jungle. For a year and a few agonizing months, he had traversed these ancient woods, battling with the dangerous animals, starvation, disease, and the raw ferocity of nature. Never once had he encountered or even suspected the presence of such entities. Perhaps their incessant gunshots, their violent intrusion, had inadvertently awakened something dormant, something terrible lurking beneath the forest's pristine veneer. This was going to be brutal. Demons didn't fight like humans, with their predictable tactics and fallible flesh; nor did they fight like animals, driven by instinct. Their methods were arcane, their power absolute, their hunger insatiable. If they sighted you, your fate was sealed, your existence extinguished in an instant.
Kealen, the hardened survivor, felt utterly lost. He now faced a hydra of threats, each more terrifying than the last. He was already pitted against the ruthless miners and their heavily armed security, constantly evading the apex predators of the jungle, and now… a demon? It was an impossible trifecta, a horrific scale of danger that left him without a roadmap, without a single clue on how to proceed.
A sound of helicopter caught his attention. He raised up his head, his blood-shot eyes scanning the canopy. They were leaving. If he let them depart this cursed forest without him, he would be truly, irrevocably lost. He would be utterly alone, once more, facing awakened demons and relentless wild animals with no hope of rescue. The thought was a cold, sharp knife to his gut, a more immediate terror than the skeletal remains at his feet.
Driven by a primal surge of desperation, he set off in a frantic sprint, a desperate 'temple run' through the dense foliage. If he had to die, he resolved, let it be at the hands of his fellow humans, not some unseen, monstrous entity. It was simple: they would either take him with them, or they would kill him. Either path was preferable to what lay behind him. As he burst through the last curtain of leaves, nearing the clearing, he noticed something unexpected. The miners and soldiers were not packing up for departure; instead, they were rebuilding their crude huts. A quick scan confirmed his fear: only the pilot had apparently left, and he watched the helicopter vanished into the sky.
Without hesitation, Kealen stumbled into the open, dropping to his knees, his arms outstretched in a gesture of surrender and desperate supplication. "I am not an enemy!" he choked out, his voice hoarse with disuse and raw desperation, his face bowed in submission. "I've been trapped in this forest since last year. I lost my precious wife and son in a plane crash, and I survived, but I've been stranded here with no escape. Please, take me out of here!"
A hush fell over the camp. The soldiers, still grimy from the recent skirmish, and rough-hewn miners stared, their eyes wide with a mix of suspicion and disbelief. This was the phantom, the one-man who had killed one of their men and, has indirectly, caused the death of another, now groveling for mercy and aid.
"Who are you, Mr. man?" Commander Zain's voice demanded, stepping forward from the group. his face was etched with hard experience and weary authority, regarded Kealen with narrowed eyes.
"I'm Major Kealen," he rasped, lifting his head slightly, revealing a gaunt, dirt-streaked face etched with survival, "from the US military. I was being sent into exile in Pakistan, and it was en route that my plane crashed, stranding me here."
Commander Zain's expression hardened, a flicker of something akin to genuine shock crossing his features despite his efforts to conceal it. Rumors about Major Kealen of the US military were notorious – tales of his utter brutality, how he wasted lives without a second glance. A communiqué had indeed reached them, stating that Major Kealen was inbound, assigned to the Pakistan military. But their intelligence had also unveiled a covert operation: their own superiors had targeted Kealen for elimination, fearing the chaos he would unleash if he reached Pakistan safely. They'd bribed his pilot to crash the plane before they could get to Pakistan. And the pilot has done exactly the assignment which was given to him. And he had then been rewarded and extracted by a discreet helicopter, leaving Kealen and his family to crash with the plane into the alpha_09 forest.
He took a heavy-caliber rifle from one of his soldiers, loading the chamber with a decisive click. He began to walk slowly, purposefully, towards the kneeling Kealen. "I have heard many stories about you, Major Kealen," Zain's voice was low, laced with a dangerous calm that sent shivers down the spines of his men. "Tales of your legendary brutality, how you waste lives without a backward glance, your superhuman strength. I never imagined I would one day meet the myth face-to-face in such circumstances. But I can offer you this one swift act of mercy: I will spare anyone the effort of a casket or a burial. I will kill you right here and now, and the animals of this forest will feast on your body, just as they did on one of my men you so carelessly slaughtered."
Kealen's anger flared, a hot counterpoint to the demon-induced fear he'd just experienced. He had sent his companion tiger away from the clearing earlier, a silent order to stay hidden and safe; he couldn't risk the magnificent beast's life, or its innocence, in this human conflict. But if this man was truly going to kill him, Kealen resolved, he would fight for it. He would not die like a trapped animal, a fowl for the slaughter. He would earn his death, grappling with fate until his last breath. With a guttural roar, Kealen surged to his feet, abandoning all pretense of surrender. He lunged at Commander Zain, a wild blur of motion, a primal scream tearing from his throat. But Zain was faster, his finger already tightening on the trigger. Three rapid shots echoed through the clearing, sharp cracks that ripped through the humid air, each bullet finding its mark in Kealen's charging form.