Darkness…
Darkness…
It covers my surroundings—my chest—gushing with the blood of my own body.
How?
They lied to us.
They deceived us all!
My vision blurred as death crept closer. I could see those bastards smiling—laughing—at the murder they had just committed.
They brought us low-rankers down here just to steal the points for themselves, to rank up…
To them, we were nothing but objects. Tools. Disposable.
They took everything from my friends—valuables, gold, jewelry, even the gems we had collected from the dungeon.
To them, the act of adventure was nothing but a sick joke.
That bitch—and her bastard of a boyfriend...
“Fucking rats!”
“AH—”
“FUCKING BASTARDS!” I shouted… Yet they didn’t even glance back at us.
I watched my friends—killed like monsters—while our blood began to glow faintly around us.
I knew what was happening.
We had entered the Tomb of the Undead. Our unfortunate bodies… would be converted into the blood of the Gadiam.
Sixteen years of life, wasted.
Born into poverty, raised by a single mother, clawing through hardship just to die like this. For nothing.
I tried everything. I fought with everything I had…
But in the end, I lost it all.
In this moment of darkness, I wondered—who was I?
A nobody. A forgotten soul. Homeless once, then lifted by a fleeting glimpse of hope… only to be drowned again in cold blood. My friends. The monsters.
The last of my strength…I used it to turn to face the statue behind me.
A stone maiden, kneeling, hands clasped in prayer.
Something about it felt familiar.
Nostalgic.
Yet… foreign.
Then, I saw someone approaching.
A man dressed in some kind of uniform. Not like an adventurer. He didn’t even look like he belonged here.
A soldier?
His gear… his presence… it was different. His steps grew louder, closer.
My vision was blurred. My body is numb. I raised my hand toward him—
But he didn’t take it.
The man was silent. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but as he knelt beside me, I got a better look.
An unknown man, but something about him… felt familiar.
Then, he muttered something.
To me.
“Remember who you are…”
His face and voice... I began to remember…
========
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In the distance, constant flashes of artillery bombardment lit up what was once a proud Ukrainian city. Explosions hammered the earth, shaking the very air.
Soldiers cloaked in camouflage moved silently through the creaking woods, blending into the shadows.
A small tent stood a few miles from the front line. I sat inside, the canvas barely shielding me from the cold. From the expired rations the army had given me, I took a small coffee drink—bitter, gritty, barely warm.
But it was something familiar.
“Bastards have me operating in a shithole like this, and they can’t even give me a decent meal…”
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As I muttered that, the scream of a jet tore through the air overhead. The screeching roar made some of the soldiers nearby—mostly the green ones—drop into cover, flinching, not understanding that it was one of ours.
“They give us shit men, and they expect things to go smoothly. Fucking morons…”
The special operation hasn’t gone as expected. It’s been a year and a half, and our forces down in the Kherson Oblast haven’t made much progress. Most battalions are just firing artillery at the Ukrainians from a distance. So far, we’ve been losing armoured vehicles faster than we can replace them. And with recent reports coming back from the Kremlin, Alexander’s starting to worry his units will be handed even more obsolete gear to go up against a force that’s better equipped.
If I said that out loud, my ass would probably be killed by the man himself. But then again, expecting anything to go right in the Russian Federation is like expecting a Hellcat not to get stolen in a Miami parking lot.
As the artillery barrages from afar began to slow down, one of my colonels appeared from behind—a commander of a subordinate unit under my force.
“Major General! I got intel from one of my companies—they reported killing some foreign fighters, mostly Americans, near Kherson. I need permission for additional equipment and ammunition for the offensive, but I’m—”
“I know,” I snapped, cutting him off.
“The situation doesn’t allow us to make a move or take the offensive. The fucking bastards back in Moscow haven’t done shit to help us. We take whatever scraps they throw at us. Even then, the Wagner conscripts are doing most of the heavy lifting. For now.”
I looked back down at the map of Kherson Oblast. Surprisingly, Ukraine hadn’t made a major push in the past few months. The city of Kherson had been bombed repeatedly and even flooded, yet Ukraine kept fighting hard over it. The situation was going grim for the few officers still holding this position.
I turned toward the colonel and gave him a tired smile.
“Maintain your battalion’s position. You should feel lucky if they send you a T-62 M. Meanwhile, I’ll be busy arguing with the Kremlin about why we desperately need more ATGMs and heavier firepower…”
The Colonel had no reason to protest—not in agreement, but because he was aware of the truth. The unit we were assigned to was a logistical nightmare. Supplies were in disarray, and whatever equipment we had was second-hand, salvaged from rusty reserves just to keep this mess going. No one ever thought the Russian Federation would proceed with launching a special military operation against Ukraine. But here we were.
I never thought we'd be fighting them—Ukrainians. To me, they were family. People who, like us, had fought to create something after the fall of the USSR. Now, they werecaught between foreign agents like us and the corruption in their parliament. Each time I think about it, I feel like a traitor.
The guns never cease. It's far, incessant—a symphony of devastation without a goal. We're not defeating an enemy who killed our folk. We're not eradicating a genuine threat. We're simply bombing another emerging nation, spawned in the ashes of a decaying empire.
And in the quiet between volleys, my mind drifts back to Chechnya, to Syria, to Afghanistan—wars with blurred lines and blood that stained everything. I find myself wondering, not for the first time, am I still fighting for anything good? Or is this just another war without purpose, where the only thing I can count on is more blood?
“Always wondered if I was fighting for the good…”
That thought vanished the second I heard the distant whistle carried by the wind.
Artillery. Incoming.
“Wait… since when was I able to hear that?”
Survival instincts kicked in. I shifted my head and stepped out of the tent—just in time to glimpse a figure. Someone—just off the tree line.
Then nothing.
Then the sky howled.
BOOM.
“SHIT!”
“WATCH OUT!”
A soldier knocked me to the ground. The blast came less than a second later. The guy who’d saved me... was gone. Shredded. Blood and shrapnel splattered across my gear, my face. His body parts were just... everywhere. I was in shock, trying to make sense of what had just happened when it hit me—we’d been discovered.
The Colonel, just out of sight, took cover behind a shallow foxhole, his eyes darting. I started to crawl toward him, the earth still trembling beneath us.
Then I saw it.
Movement along the treeline.
“!!!”
No...
Men. Swift, precise. Yellow tape wrapped around their wrists—Ukrainian agents. Suppressed firearms. They’d cut in under the cover of the artillery. A flawless hit.
I watched—uselessly—as their commander raised his rifle and shot the Colonel. Clean. Efficient.
I spun around as more officers hit the ground around me. Time seemed to slow. The commander’s gaze locked with mine, his eyes vacant, serene amidst the chaos.
Fury boiled over.
“Motherfucker!”
Then, silence came… And reality struck.
“ARGH!”
A searing pain shot through my head, dragging me back to the past—memories of my life, the people I knew, the soldiers I commanded. The veins in my skull pulsed violently, and my hands went from clutching my stomach to my head. The pain came from every direction, crushing me.
“I REMEMBER!”
I looked back at the man, and for a moment, it felt like looking at myself. The bastard standing there was the same one from the world before—before I was reincarnated into this hellhole. He wore the same shit I used to wear, right down to the gear I had on before that surprise ambush killed me and my whole unit over in Ukraine.
The pain I was enduring began to fade, and with it, the faces of the people around me—the friends I had there—vanished. Gone, like dust in the wind. I found the strength to rise from the blood-soaked floor. The man himself made me look at him again. A balding man with a hole in his 6B47 helmet, he smirked and muttered a word.
“I shall take a post here from now…”
He said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Alexander Bakhin! Let the world know our pain!”
I wasn’t some nobody raised by a whore of a mother in a dirt-poor family who died in some fuck-off dungeon because I was an idiot. NO! I was Major General Alexander Bakhin, commanding the 35th Combined Arms Army! A major player in this unit, tasked with taking on those Ukrainians—it makes sense why I’m here. I didn’t survive... I was a fool for not realising it sooner, not recognising my past all this time.
But seeing my past self here, an illusion, gave me more hope for the future I should now pursue. I turned, and everyone was gone. Maybe that weak summoning wouldn’t have been so useless if I’d understood what I could do with it.
I shouldn’t have given up this far when I’d remembered everything. But knowing those bastards got away with this—I'll make them pay. I turned my gaze toward the very man who had awakened my memories. He was gone. Just like that. And with him, everything I needed to understand what I should do next.
I saw the destroyed, half-broken steel claymore lying on the ground. I took it, stepping forward toward the entrance.
A glance behind me made me remember... Even with the old memories of my past self, I could still recall what my new self had endured. I couldn’t forget what I’d done here—there would come a time when I would need to face it all. Seeing my sweetheart and my good man die... a single tear fell as I turned away.
