The world returned to Major General Kaelen not as a clear picture, but as a blinding shriek of pain. His eyes snapped open, fighting through a haze that tasted metallic and dusty. He tried to rise, pushing up onto his elbows, but a raw, agonizing protest erupted from his ribs and left leg, forcing a choked cry back down his throat.
He was lying among thick, damp moss and broken branches. Overhead, the canopy was dense, filtering the sunlight into sickly green shadows. This was a forest, a strange, alien landscape he did not recognize. A sensation unfamiliar to the decorated soldier, clawed at his chest.
Kaelen forced himself to a kneeling position, his breath hissing through clenched teeth. His clothes were shredded and soaked with drying blood, and beneath the tattered remnants of his shirt, he could feel the sickening crunch of bruised muscle. He had been unconscious for God knows how long, surviving purely by chance, a miracle that no scavenging animal had located his broken body yet.
The last coherent memory was a violent jolt, the shriek of tearing metal, and the sickening plunge of the plane. He had acted on primal instinct, slamming his shoulder against the emergency door and leaping just before the fuselage disintegrated, landing with a crushing impact that had mercifully stolen his senses.
He didn't know if his family had survived the catastrophic crash, or if they were still trapped in the wreckage scattered miles away.
He had to get out and make some move, possibly to find his way out of here.
Kaelen was a man built for resilience, forged in the crucible of conflict. He had served the US military with a brutal efficiency that was legendary and, ultimately, his undoing. Only last month, he had received his final discharge papers, concluding his career as a Major General with a stain of disgrace.
Kaelen had been a General Commander of unwavering resolve, a man who saw the world in shades of absolute black and white. He was fearless and devoid of political deference; if Kaelen found a target guilty, he pulled the trigger, regardless of influence or command structure.
He had accrued numerous warnings over his career to cease unauthorized executions of "victims" orders that contradicted his own strict, unyielding moral code of justice.
He never obeyed. His transfer to overseas, a forced relocation to Pakistan for a consulting position was meant to be his administrative exile, a final attempt by the brass to keep him quiet.
That relocation had brought him here, to this cold, anonymous forest, far from the wreckage and the fate of his wife and son.
Summoning the fierce, cold discipline that had made him a general, Kaelen dragged himself upright. The world swam for a moment, but he locked his knees, ignoring the searing pain radiating from his hip. He took a staggering step forward, leaning heavily on a dead tree trunk.
He needed elevation. He needed direction.
He forced his gaze up through the chaotic canopy, searching for a break in the trees, a hint of sky, or smoke, anything that implied civilization.
And that's when he saw a wolf Standing still on an outcrop of wet rock, barely twenty yards away. Its coat was matted and dark, its posture rigid. It wasn't sniffing the air, it was simply standing, its pale yellow eyes locked directly on Kaelen. It hadn't heard him, it had smelled the blood.
A cold dread sliced through the General's adrenaline. He stood petrified, the calculations of a seasoned warrior running uselessly through his mind.
No sidearm, no knife. Nothing but tattered cloth, bruised bones, and the fading memory of strength. He was too weak, too heavy with internal damage to attempt a sustained run or a serious fight. He stood there, balancing the odds, calculating the angles of the terrain, the speed of the predator, against the agonizing limitations of his broken body.
The wolf didn't wait for the mental gymnastics to conclude. A low, guttural growl vibrated across the damp ground, and then, with an explosive surge of muscle driven by the raw scent of vulnerable prey, the wolf launched itself forward.
Kaelen's military training had drilled one fundamental rule into his core. Retreat meant death, but desperation overruled protocol. He had no option but to run.
He threw the last vestiges of his strength into a desperate, lurching sprint. The pain in his leg screamed, threatening to buckle him, but Kaelen pushed harder. The General's mind shut down the input of panic and replaced it with a single, brutal oath.
Giving up is an offense.
He would run until the animal dragged him down. He might be broken, unarmed, and disgraced, but if this wolf was going to kill Major General Kaelen, it would have to earn every bloody, painful minute of the struggle. He would run until his lungs burned, and when the wolf finally caught him, he would make the predator suffer for the meal.
He looked back and saw the wolf getting closer to him. He had already concluded that this was his final moment on earth, but he was taught to fight with the last drop of his blood.
Just as if God said that his time was not up yet, Kaelen spotted a heavy, gnarled branch lying near a moss-covered rock. He grabbed it quickly. The hungry wolf was rushing to devour him. He swung the branch hard, catching it on its head, and the wolf yelped, feeling the pain but not giving up. The blow made it stumble and get up immediately, it then leaped to catch Kaelen. He gathered all his strength and swung the branch again. This time around, the wolf was already weakened, and as it fell, it tried to get up, but Major Kaelen didn't give it a second chance. He continued striking it until the wolf breathed its last breath.
Kaelen dropped the heavy branch, his own body shaking with exertion and pain. He stood panting, the metallic taste in his mouth now mixed with the coppery tang of his own blood. He had survived. The primal instinct that had saved him from the plane crash had served him again.
He looked at the fallen wolf, a creature of raw power brought low by a broken man. A strange sort of respect flickered within him. This was a dangerous world, and he was in it, alone and vulnerable.
He needed to assess his situation more thoroughly. The forest was still dense, the light fading. He needed shelter, water, and a clearer understanding of where he was. The thoughts of his family, however, remained a gnawing ache that no pain could quite extinguish. He had to find them, or at least find out what happened.
With a grim determination that had always been his hallmark, Major General Kaelen took a step, then another, deeper into the silent, indifferent woods. The journey had just begun.