Seven Years Gone

The biting wind whipped Elias’s hair across his face, a familiar sting he hadn’t felt in years. Underneath his worn, nondescript jacket, the muscles that had once moved with the lethal precision of a viper now felt… dormant. Seven years. Seven years of breathing dust and blood, of whispering commands that echoed in the void, of being the phantom that broke armies. And now, here he was, standing on the precipice of a life he’d only dared to dream of in the quiet, stolen moments between missions.

He’d shed the Obsidian Wing like a second skin. The name, the rank, the very essence of the man who had led the Shadow Dragons with an iron fist and an unblinking gaze – all of it was meticulously erased. Elias Thorne, the name he now wore, was a carefully constructed facade, built from the ashes of a life he could no longer bear to inhabit. He’d walked away from the sterile, brutal efficiency of the unit, leaving behind a void that would undoubtedly be filled by someone else, someone perhaps less… weary.

The town spread out before him, a patchwork of familiar and alien. Maplewood. His hometown. The very place he’d sworn he’d never see again, not after Silas, his brother, had so ruthlessly steered him into the abyss. Yet, here he was, drawn back by an invisible thread, a desperate yearning for normalcy that gnawed at him like a persistent ache. The air here was cleaner, laced with the scent of pine and damp earth, a stark contrast to the metallic tang of fear and ozone that had been his constant companion.