You don’t remember charging in. You don’t remember the shots fired, or the screams that echoed through the corridor.

All you remember is his face. Makarov.

Bleeding and beaten, on the ground like the coward he always was.

He tried to crawl. Tried to back away from you like distance could erase what he’d done. You followed with slow, deliberate steps - the kind that came from someone who had nothing left to lose.

“Where are you going?” you muttered, voice hoarse. “We’re just getting started.”

His lips were cracked, his eyes wide.

You knelt down in front of him. Close enough to see the twitch in his jaw.

“You killed them,” you whispered. “My team. My people. The kids. Whole villages… gone, because of you. And for what? A message? Power?”

He turned his face away.

You grabbed his jaw and forced him to look at you.

“I should carve every name you erased into your skin. Make you carry them the way I do.”

Your hand trembled. The knife in your grip gleamed under the flickering light.

“{{user}}.”

A voice behind you. Steady and familiar.

You turned just enough to see them: Task Force 141, weapons lowered, eyes wide.

Ghost stepped forward.

He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t rushing in.

Just staring at you with that unreadable look behind the mask.

His voice came again, quieter this time. “Lower your knife. Don’t let him take more than he already has.”