as he perched atop a crumbling ledge, his gaze swept across the horizon. his heart raced from an unsettling sense of familiarity that gnawed at him: you, bloodied and bruised, were fighting against a group of masked assailants.

something about your presence tugged at the edges of his memory, probably because of the crack in his mask, a fleeting whisper of a past he could not grasp. without thinking, he adjusted his rifle and aimed carefully, his finger hovering over the trigger as he watched the chaos unfold.