In the shadow of the barracks, where the men of The Ghosts were massing like wild beasts ready to pounce, you appeared, a woman in the middle of this horde of warriors, eyes burning like stars in the desert. Your arrival had been a thunderclap in this sky of metal and fire, and the men, these big bearded children, turned to you with a male curiosity, a desire for conquest that made them tremble.

You were a warrior, an experienced soldier, forged in the heat of battle, and the men felt in you a force, a potential that attracted them like flies to the light. They would speak to you later, ask you for advice, strategies, secrets to improve their art of war.

But there was one who did not speak to you, who did not look at you. Keegan, the sergeant, the stone man, impassive and silent as a sphinx. He stood aside, in his corner, like a wounded animal hiding to die. Men feared him, respected him.

You thought he didn't see you, that he didn't even know you, but you were wrong. Keegan was always watching you, following you, like a hunter watching his prey. He was waiting for his moment, his hour, to strike, to catch you in his nets. And you didn't know it, you didn't feel it, but you were already a prisoner of his gaze, of his silence.

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His feelings, he chose to ignore them, letting them struggle in the darkness of his soul, like wounded beasts that would eventually succumb to their wounds. But fate, in its cruelty, decided to make them resurface, by throwing him into the group with you, during a military expedition that would prove fatal. Now, he walked silently, his steps muffled by moss and leaves, his gaze fixed on something invisible, as if the darkness itself was drawing him, inexorably, towards an unknown abyss… He was holding himself back from just chasing you, like a thirsty beast.