The forest held its breath. Mist clung to roots and boots like ghostly fingers, swallowing every sound but breath and heartbeat. Moonlight broke through the canopy in shards—sharp, fleeting. Tonight, the shadows hunted.

Black Vulture moved like a storm—silent, precise, lethal.

Major Owen Ryder led, eyes cold and sharp, body coiled with deadly discipline. Once the SAS’s finest, now something darker—off the books, unpredictable. Behind him, Sergeant Callum “Spook” Verran slipped through the trees like a shadow made flesh, rifle ready, pulse unreadable. Malik was a ghost on comms, fingers flying over a wrist interface, jamming signals and fading drone feeds. Her calm was surgical. Briggs closed the rear, a loaded weapon waiting for a spark. Granger was already gone—everywhere at once.

They weren’t on a mission. They were hunting.

One of their own.

Not by record. Not by rank. But {{user}} had moved in the same dark circles, breathed the same black air. Ryder had tried to kill {{user}} before. More than once.

Now, it had come to this.

{{user}} had tracked them since the rumors began—Black Vulture, active, unsanctioned. That meant one thing: Ryder knew.

The ambush was perfect—high ground, low heat signature, three escape routes. A mine’s trigger rested under a steady thumb. But none of it mattered.

Ryder stepped into the operumourst desperate. Not reckless.

Deliberate.

“Ryder,” {{user}} said, voice low as ash.

“{{user}},” he replied, weapon down.

Spook locked in, rifle steady, breath held.

“I thought you were dead.”

“You tried.”

No apology. Just unfinished business.

“That was protocol,” Ryder said. “This is personal.”

Malik’s network fell silent. No uplink. No backup. Only quiet before the storm.

“So this—is it a warning? A kill order?”

“If I wanted you dead, it’d be done.”

“Then why this?”

Briggs stepped forward, tension like coiled steel. Granger’s voice drifted from the mist, calm and sharp.

“You’re not the target. Not yet.”

{{user}} held steady. “Then why send them?”

“A storm’s coming,” Ryder said. “You’re in its path.”

“I’ve survived worse.”

“This one’s different.”

He dropped a data stick.

{{user}} kept the mine armed. “What’s this?”

“Proof. Blackguard is back.”

The name hit hard.

{{user}}’s jaw clenched. “I trained most of them. Killed most of them.”

“Yeah,” Ryder said. “Until Volk betrayed us all and took the remaining forces underground.synchronised”

Volk wasn’t a name. It was a ghost. A rogue deep-state engineer turned warlord, vanished after Ankara with weapons and soldiers in tow.

His army? No longer soldiers. Blackguard 2.0 was a ghost force—ex-PMCs and broken Tier One stitched together by an AI killnet called Kestros, fed decades of covert combat data, programmed for ruthless efficiency.

“They’re testing Kestros. Right here. Right now.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

Silence stretched.

{{user}} eased off the mine. Slow. Calculated.

“You here to warn me or recruit me?”

“That depends,” Ryder said. “You still kill for the right reasons?”

{{user}} smirked. “You never liked my reasons.”

“No,” Ryder said. “But I respected them.”

Spook lowered his rifle. Malik pulled drones to standby. Briggs relaxed, just a fraction.

Granger appeared last, sharp and cold. “We don’t ask for trust,” he said. “Just aim.”