The forest should have been loud.

Hawaiian jungle never slept—never stopped breathing—but tonight it held its breath.

Azrathion felt it before he saw it.

One hundred and fifty men occupied the outpost, spread across concrete bunkers and steel watchtowers hacked into the green. Floodlights cut harsh cones through the trees. Generators hummed. Laughter carried—too careless, too loud.

Men drank. Cards slapped against tables. Weapons leaned against walls instead of shoulders.

Confident prey.

Animals had fled hours ago. Birds gone. Insects silent. Even the wind bent around the clearing, unwilling to pass through.

Azrathion watched from above the canopy, unseen, unmoving.

Three mercenaries sat inside the command structure—experienced, scarred, arrogant enough to believe numbers still mattered.

They joked about ghosts.

They joked about demons.

They joked about the man hunting them.

Azrathion smiled.

Star’s command echoed faintly in his mind.

Search. Kill. Destroy.

No emotion. No instruction beyond inevitability.

The demon operators descended without sound.

Mikhail landed first—heavy, precise, controlled. The earth accepted his weight without protest.

Hideo followed, barely disturbing a leaf.

Marcus dropped beside a watchtower, already moving.

Luca never touched the ground.

Azrathion remained above them, watching as one watches a blade being drawn.

Begin, he thought.

And the jungle died.

They never saw the first death.

One moment a guard leaned against the railing, cigarette glowing faintly in the dark. The next, he was gone—not fallen, not screaming. Removed. His body folded inward without sound, pulled into shadow as if the forest itself had reached out and claimed him.

That was the pattern.

Silence.

Precision.

Erasure.

My operators moved without urgency. They did not rush. There was no need. Each one flowed through the perimeter like a concept given form—appearing where they were least expected, vanishing before reaction could crystallize into action.

Ironhand took the western ridge.

I felt the pressure shift as bodies dropped, their presence extinguished so completely that the air itself seemed confused by their absence. One guard managed half a shout before Ironhand reached him. The sound cut off abruptly, like a wire severed.

Silent Fang passed through the central tents.

He did not break stride. Blades rose and fell once per target—never twice. Men slumped where they stood, their weapons still warm in their hands, expressions frozen somewhere between boredom and disbelief.

Ghost removed the watchtowers.

One moment silhouettes scanned the treeline. The next, they simply weren’t there. No alarms. No warning. Just empty platforms and rifles clattering to the floor after their owners had already ceased to matter.

Reaper walked the barracks.

That was where noise finally happened.

A scream. Short. Wet. Ended mid-breath.

Then another.

Then none.

By the time the first flare went up, more than half the outpost had already ceased to exist.

Not dead.

Corrected.

They rallied faster than expected.

Credit where it was due—these were not amateurs. Commands snapped through radios. Defensive lines formed. Fields of fire overlapped. Explosives were deployed with disciplined efficiency.

They believed, briefly, that this was still a battle.

Reaper took the brunt of the counterfire.

Rounds struck his armor hard enough to stagger him—but only once. He advanced through the barrage, step by deliberate step, and returned fire at close range. The mercenaries broke formation when they realized their bullets were only slowing him, not stopping him.

Ironhand was wounded.

I felt it the moment it happened—a heavy impact, a disruption in his rhythm. A shaped charge detonated close enough to throw him sideways, armor scorched, motion delayed.

It did not save them.

Silent Fang was among them before they understood the breach. Commanders fell first. Then medics. Then anyone who tried to run.

Ghost eliminated their escape routes.

Vehicles died where they stood—engines failing, tires collapsing, drivers slumping forward without knowing why.

The fight lasted seven minutes.

They lost badly.

Not because they were weak.

But because they were mortal.

They fired because that was all they had left.

Training took over—bursts, staggered angles, overlapping fields of fire. The mercenaries moved well. Better than most. I gave them that. Their rounds cut the air where I had been a breath earlier. Sparks jumped from stone and steel. The jungle screamed as bullets tore through bark and vine.

Fear sharpened them.

It did not save them.

I stepped forward, and the world bent to make room.

The shape I wore was no longer sufficient. It never was—not when correction was required. I let the restraint fall away.

It began in my spine.

Pressure surged upward, a grinding ascent that forced my posture straight, then higher, then higher still. My frame expanded, not violently, but with the certainty of something assuming its proper dimensions. Armor surfaced along my skin as if summoned from memory—dark plates locking into place, each one heavy with purpose.

The ground protested beneath my weight.

I felt their fear spike—not panic yet, but disbelief. Minds struggling to reconcile what their eyes were telling them with what their world allowed to exist.

“Jesus—” one of them breathed.

I inhaled.

The air tasted of sweat, cordite, and realization.

Bullets struck me. I felt the impacts register like rain against stone. They slowed. Deformed. Fell.

I reached the first mercenary before his second breath left him.

He was large. Strong. A killer who had survived too many wars to believe in anything beyond violence.

I lifted him from the ground with one hand.

I grabbed his feet and arms ripping him apart blood spilling and squirt everywhere I drop his top half of his body to the ground. The second half I lifted above my head and drank his blood. 

Not cruelty. Correction.

The second turned and ran.

A mistake born of instinct, not strategy.

A chain was thrown from my hand wrapping around his leg. I pulled with little effort sending him flying back to me once he hit the ground, I plunge my hand into his chest ripping it open snatching out ribs and vital organs. 

He did not die quietly.

The third fell to his knees.

This one looked at me.

Really looked.

He saw what I was—not a monster, not an enemy, but an answer. Something ancient and final.

“Please,” he said.

The word carried everything his life had never given to others.

I leaned close enough that he could feel the weight of my presence press against his thoughts.

“Mercy,” I said, my voice layered with depths he could not process, “is not granted to those who confuse survival with worth.”

I took his throat—not to crush it, but to anchor him.

Then I inhaled.

His soul came free in a rush of soundless agony, a pale distortion tearing itself from flesh that could no longer contain it. His eyes went wide as what he truly was was stripped away.

I consumed it slowly.

He collapsed, empty before he ever hit the ground.

Silence followed.

Not peace.

Recognition.

The forest did not move. The remaining sounds—fire crackling, metal cooling—felt small, irrelevant.

I stood among the dead, complete.

When it was finished, the forest stood still.

No gunfire. No voices. No movement except the slow settling of smoke through the trees.

My operators assembled without command.

They knelt in unison.

Armor blackened. Weapons stained. Purpose fulfilled.

I regarded them—not as soldiers, not as individuals, but as instruments that had served correctly.

“Enough,” I said.

One stepped forward.

The act was swift, ceremonial, and final. When it was done, the remaining forms dissolved upward, unraveling into black shapes that took wing against the night sky.

Crows.

Four of them.

They circled once above me before scattering into the forest canopy.

I remained.

I fastened the proof of judgment at my side—not as trophies, but as records. Evidence that the warrant had been executed.

Then I looked upward.

And roared.

The sound did not behave like sound.

It traveled through soil, through stone, through distance. It bent the treetops and sent birds screaming into the air miles away. Instruments failed. Animals fled. Sensitive minds across the region woke from sleep with their hearts racing, unable to explain why.

Somewhere far beyond this forest, someone who understood what that sound meant went very still.

The world remembered me.

Correction had resumed.

And this was only the beginning.