The rain hit Keith's face like cold slaps—bitter, relentless, and personal. Each droplet stung like a punishment, tracing down his skin in jagged lines. The air carried the harsh taste of ash, as if the world had been set on fire and only smoke remained. It clung to his tongue, coated his throat, and made him feel like he was choking on the remains of everything he used to believe in.
He crouched low behind a cracked concrete pillar, ribs rising and falling with uneven breaths. His fingers were trembling, but not from fear. Adrenaline. Exhaustion. Rage. Around him, the server farm—once a humming fortress of light and information—lay in ruins. Scorched wires hung from the ceiling like gutted veins. Screens flickered on shattered frames, blinking one last time before dying for good. The scent of burnt plastic and fried circuits poisoned the air.
This wasn't a battlefield.
This was a graveyard.
And he was one of the bodies still pretending to be alive.
Somewhere in the distance, metal creaked. Boots splashed through puddles with mechanical precision. Trained. Disciplined. Five, maybe six of them. They moved like sharks—circling, waiting for the moment to strike.
Keith didn't move.
Not yet.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The sound echoed unnaturally loud in the silence, and for a moment, it felt like a bomb counting down. But it wasn't.
It was just his old, scratched-up watch—the only relic of his past that hadn't betrayed him.
Twenty-one years old.
And what did he have to show for it?
Blood under his nails. Scars that never healed right. A heart that beat too fast when he heard gunfire. A soul drowning in ghosts.
He wasn't just running.
He was being hunted.
By the people who made him.
A glint of light ahead. A faint reflection on gunmetal. Keith ducked instinctively and rolled behind a toppled server rack as bullets ripped through the space he'd been crouching in. The sharp crack-crack-crack of suppressed rifle fire sliced the silence.
Shards of plastic sprayed across his arm. A few were embedded into his jacket. His ears rang, but he didn't scream.
He never screamed.
Screaming was weakness. Noise. Waste.
They weren't trying to kill him. Not yet. That would be too clean. Too easy.
No—Ghost Ops never went for the easy end. They wanted him broken. They wanted answers.
Interrogation. Torture. Public execution if it came to that.
He was a loose end.
And they were the scissors.
He remembered the moment he realized they had abandoned him.
It wasn't when the missions stopped coming or when the encrypted comms went dead. It wasn't even when the money vanished from his accounts overnight. It was the morning he woke up to find his face on a burn notice, listed as "compromised." The organization he had bled for and killed for had decided he was expendable.
Just like that.
No explanation. No trial. No last conversation with the people who had become his family.
Ghost Ops wasn't a family. It was a machine. And Keith was just another part they had decided to replace.
He had tried to call Thorne, tried to call anyone, but the lines stayed dead. His safehouses turned cold. The passwords changed. The faces of people he trusted turned away when they saw him coming.
He had become a ghost in the world, unseen and unwanted.
All because he refused to pull the trigger on Josh.
All because he believed for a moment that they were more than tools.
"Keith Skyshard!" a voice called out, sharp and unmistakable. It echoed across the ruins like thunder.
"Come out. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
His blood froze.
That voice.
He knew it like a scar.
Thorne.
His old handler.
The man who taught him everything. Who molded him into something useful? Who told him he was born to survive what others couldn't?
Who taught him how to lie, kill, and vanish—and never flinch?
The same man who shot Josh.
Keith's throat tightened. The rain around him faded, replaced by memory. Drenched nights blurred into one another. But Zurich stood clear.
A safe house. A rare moment of peace. Josh was bandaging Keith's arm, the scent of cheap antiseptic in the air. The windows fogged with rain. They'd been laughing—about nothing, about everything. Josh always had that kind of magic in him.
"You worry too much, old man," Josh had joked. Keith was barely four months older, but Josh never let him live it down.
They had dreams. Stupid ones. Beautiful ones.
A crappy apartment in the suburbs. Loud neighbors. Takeout boxes piled in corners. A cat with anger issues. Josh wanted to call it "Murder Mittens."
Keith never admitted it, but he wanted it too.
Keith closed his eyes.
But the darkness wasn't empty.
Memories tore through him.
Ghost Ops had rules. Rules Keith once believed in. Take the mission. Complete the objective. Leave no witnesses.
But that was a lie.
Keith and Josh had stumbled onto something they weren't supposed to see—data hidden in encrypted files, missions that were never logged, and operations that smelled of politics and power plays. Names of people too powerful to touch, hidden inside missions disguised as ghost hunts.
Josh had wanted to expose them.
Keith had wanted to protect him.
But in Ghost Ops, protection didn't exist. Only loyalty.
Keith refused the order to put a bullet in Josh's head. He refused to sell out the only person who still believed in him.
And that made Keith expendable.
They called him compromised.
They called him a liability.
They didn't just send him to die.
They erased him.
Bank accounts emptied. Files wiped. His face removed from databases, his name scrubbed from operations. Friends who once called him brother stopped answering calls. Missions disappeared, leaving him stranded in foreign cities with nothing but the clothes on his back.
His own agency had abandoned him.
Then Thorne came.
No noise. No footsteps.
Just a door flying off its hinges.
Then silence. Followed by one clean gunshot.
Josh collapsed mid-laugh, blood soaking into Keith's shirt.
No goodbyes. No last words.
Just betrayal.
Keith had lost it after that. He didn't remember the kills. Just the blood. The screaming. The confusion. A blur of instinct and pain.
He only remembered Josh not blinking anymore.
Now, Thorne was here to erase the last witness.
"We know you're in here," Thorne called again. "This ends tonight."
Keith's hand curled around the combat knife strapped to his side. The blade was worn, dull along the edges. No bullets left. No tools. No allies.
Just him.
And a decision.
He leaned slightly to peek through the gap in the shattered server racks.
Three soldiers ahead. Two more flanking. Tactical pattern. Close formation. Moving in rhythm. They weren't amateurs.
They were Ghosts.
Just like him.
His breath fogged as it left his lips.
He didn't fear death.
He feared meaninglessness.
That all the years of bloodshed had been for nothing. That Josh died for nothing. That there was never going to be a cat named Murder Mittens.
A soft click nearby.
A safety being flipped off.
Showtime.
Keith stood, no hesitation. His legs screamed in protest, but he pushed forward. Sprinting into the open. He was fast—too fast for a clean shot.
But not fast enough.
A single muzzle flash lit the darkness.
The impact slammed into his side like a truck. Pain exploded through his ribs, white-hot and unforgiving. He gasped, staggered, then collapsed to one knee, hand pressed against the wound as blood poured between his fingers.
Boots splashed toward him.
Thorne appeared through the haze, a dark silhouette under the pouring rain. His rifle aimed steady. His eyes are empty.
"It's over," he said. "You were compromised. This was the only way."
Keith met his gaze. He didn't speak at first. Couldn't.
Not from pain.
From disbelief.
"You killed Josh," he finally rasped.
Thorne's expression didn't change.
Not even a flicker.
Keith let out a dry laugh. It cracked in his throat.
"Was he compromised too?"
No answer.
The silence said enough.
Keith's vision blurred. The cold seeped into his bones. His strength was leaving him.
And still, he saw it.
That damned apartment. That dumb hoodie Josh loved. The glow of cheap LED lights. The warm smile of a future that would never come.
He closed his eyes.
And waited.
Then—light.
Not from above. Not from a weapon.
From within.
A golden radiance burst from his chest, brilliant and alive. It tore through the storm like a second sun, blinding and impossible.
Thorne flinched, shielding his face.
The light wasn't fire. It didn't burn—it sang. It pulsed with something ancient, something holy. Keith felt it resonate in his bones, in the very marrow of his soul.
The pain in his side dulled.
The cold faded.
He couldn't move—but he didn't need to.
The light did everything.
[ATTENTION: SUBJECT KEITH SKYSHARD SELECTED.]
The voice wasn't sound.
It was the truth.
Symbols bloomed in the air—glowing runes spinning in impossible geometry. They burned with a silver-blue flame, humming with power beyond comprehension.
[YOU ARE AMONG THE CHOSEN CHILDREN OF SKY.]
[WELCOME TO THE LEGACY GAMES.]
Keith's heart slammed against his ribs.
He wanted to scream. Or breathe. Or understand.
But before he could do anything, the light engulfed him.
The world vanished.
Rain. Pain. Thorne.
Gone.
He fell—not through space, but through something deeper. Time? Memory? Dreams?
Colors twisted. Thoughts unraveled. The boundaries of his body dissolved.
And then—
Stillness.
No sound.
No rain.
Just… peace.
Keith opened his eyes slowly.
The world was silent.
Yet he could feel it.
Power. Watching. Waiting.
He sat up.
He was no longer on Earth.
He wasn't even sure he was in the same universe.
But one thing was clear:
This was the beginning of something far greater than survival.
Something that would define not just his life—but his legacy.