Chapter 10: Chapter no.10 Death part 2
Read advance chapters of all my works or want to support me .
https://www.p.a.t.r.e.on.com/Adamo_Amet
....
Join us on discord :
https://discord.gg/DXv2nkTB
•••••••••••••••••••
Dalton's breath hitched as John's challenge echoed in the tense air. Time seemed to slow as both men stared each other down, the desolate battlefield their arena. Dalton, knowing John's prowess, understood this would be no ordinary confrontation. It was a battle against a man who had lost his anchors to sanity.
With a blink, the standoff shattered as John lunged to the side, an almost spectral blur against the fractured landscape. Dalton fired, the shots cracking the silence, but John was no longer where he had been. John's movements were predictive, eerily precise, as if he could see the trajectory of Dalton's intentions.
"John, this isn't you!" Dalton shouted, trying to reach whatever humanity was left within the shell of his former comrade.
But John was a specter of war, moving with lethal grace, his return fire not to kill, but to disarm and destabilize. Bullets clipped the ground near Dalton's feet, sending shards of rock and dust into the air.
Dalton pivoted, trying to keep up with John's fluid tactics. His training was excellent, but John was a tempest of violence and acumen, reading the battlefield like a maestro conducting a symphony of death. "I don't want to kill you, John!" Dalton pleaded, his voice strained over the sound of gunfire.
"You won't," John hissed back, the insanity in his voice unmistakable. He ducked behind a piece of rubble, the ghost of a smile still on his lips. Dalton approached cautiously, knowing any second could be his last.
In a sudden shift, John appeared from his cover, his sidearm raised, but Dalton was quicker this time. A shot rang out, and John's leg bucked under him as he was hit. Yet, even wounded, John's resolve didn't waver. With an animalistic snarl, he returned fire with a sharpshooter's precision, striking Dalton's weapon and sending it skittering away into the dirt.
Dalton looked at his empty hands, then back at John, now limping towards him. "John, please, don't do this!"
"You speak of pleas now? Where were the pleas when they died?" John's voice was a chilling monotone as he referenced his lost family, a window into the pain that had driven him to this precipice of madness.
Dalton backed away, his hands raised, but John was relentless. In a few swift motions, he closed the distance, the barrel of his gun pressed coldly against Dalton's forehead.
Dalton's eyes were wide, his breaths coming in ragged gasps, "John... you're better than this. Remember who you are."
John's hand was steady, his eyes empty of the man he once was. "I remember exactly who I am," John replied, the words dripping with venom. "And I am death."
The gunshot was deafening.
When the echo faded, John stood alone again, the smile gone from his face as he looked down at Dalton, another casualty in his war against the world. He looked at his own leg, the blood seeping through his fatigues, and for a moment, his façade cracked, a flicker of pain and perhaps regret, before the mask of the demon slid back into place.
John, his leg a mess of blood and torn fabric, staggered forward, the adrenaline and his unwavering resolve the only things keeping him upright. His squad was scattered across the battlefield, their positions given away by the desperate bursts of gunfire as they held off the remaining cartel members.
One by one, John picked off the enemies that threatened his team, each shot a whisper of death. He moved with a predator's precision, ignoring the fire in his leg, the spreading warmth of his own blood soaking through his uniform. His squad, trained to be the best, were formidable on their own, but with John, they were the hand of retribution itself.
But with each step and each pull of the trigger, John's strength waned. His vision blurred at the edges, his breaths shallow and ragged. The man who once felt invincible was being reminded of his mortality by the lifeblood escaping from him drop by drop.
The battle's tide turned as the last of the cartel fell, but so too did the illusion of John's endurance. He started to move towards the extraction point, his movements sluggish, his body no longer able to sustain the facade of indomitability.
Halfway there, his leg buckled beneath him, and he collapsed with the weight of his injuries and his actions bearing down upon him. John crawled, his fingers clawing into the dirt, leaving a trail of blood behind him. His vision dimmed, sounds of the battlefield receding into a distant echo.
John's body was grounded, prone on the battlefield, but his mind soared above, unchained, free-falling through his own memories. He thought of the lamb, its leg bitten, the pain in its eyes—a mirror of his own predicament. He had been that lamb once, prey to the world's cruelty, but he had transformed, become the wolf, become the predator that others feared.
Yet here he was, the wolf brought low, dying not unlike the lamb he had once pitied. He mused on the irony, how life had brought him full circle. The roles he'd played—the protector, the avenger, the executioner—all led to this solitary end.
With each labored breath, faces flashed before his eyes, not just the enemies but those of his own squad. Dalton's eyes wide with shock and something akin to betrayal, the finality of his own fall reflected back at John. Their faces, each and every one, were etched into the dark canvas of his closing vision, a gallery of the lives he had extinguished.
As the cold seeped into his bones, John couldn't help but let a grin etch across his face. It was twisted, not with joy but with the perverse acknowledgment of feeling truly alive at the precipice of death. Every life he had taken had screamed a silent question into the void: "Why?"
There was no answer, not really. He had sought meaning in supremacy, in control over life and death, but in the end, it was all just a distraction—a way to feel something in the numbness that had enveloped him after he had lost everything that mattered.
His laugh, a soft, pained sound, bubbled from his throat, not quite making it past his lips. It was laced with the grim acceptance of his fate, the knowledge that he had lived as he died—on the edge, where every moment was a sharpened blade against the skin of existence.
So, John went out with that grin, a testament to his last breaths that were not of peace but of that raw, terrible clarity that comes when one stares into the abyss and finds it staring back. His life, a tapestry of triumphs and sins, was ending as a crimson stain on the earth, no more significant than any other—but for a moment, he had felt like a god. Now, he was just a man, and the lamb and the wolf lay down together in the dark.
— New chapter is coming soon — Write a review
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone