Rolf—POV

By the time the alarm bells rang, Rolf was thoroughly drunk.

Not falling-down drunk—his body's conditioning prevented that—but impaired enough that his judgment was compromised, his reflexes slower than they should be.

The celebrations shattered into chaos. Soldiers grabbed weapons, ran toward defensive positions, organized response to threats that were suddenly very real.

Rolf stood on unsteady legs, trying to process what was happening.

The information filtered through his alcohol-fogged mind with frustrating slowness.

Baggen grabbed his arm. "Come on! We need to—"

"I need air," Rolf interrupted, pulling free. "Need to… think. Clear my head."

"Rolf, there's an assault happening! This isn't the time for—"

But Rolf was already moving, stumbling toward the outpost's outer sections, away from the organized chaos of military response.

He needed space. Needed to breathe. Needed to be away from the celebrations that had become crisis, away from the reminder that his squadmates were Academy candidates who would survive tonight while he—

The thought spiraled. He pushed through a side gate—one of the minor exits used for patrol access—and stumbled into the outer perimeter.

Darkness pressed close here. The soul-force lamps had died, leaving only dim emergency lighting that flickered uncertainly.

Rolf leaned against a wall, breathing hard, his fireball ability core humming in his chest like a second heartbeat.

I should go back, he thought. Should help with the defense. Should do something useful.

But the bitterness paralyzed him. What was the point? He'd fight tonight, survive or die, and if he survived he'd wake up tomorrow still excluded, still left behind, still—

Movement in the darkness.

Rolf's combat instincts kicked in despite the alcohol, his body tensing, fire coalescing in his palm.

Two figures emerged from shadows—young, maybe late teens or early twenties, wearing the nondescript clothing of laborers. But their eyes held fanatical certainty, and their hands gripped weapons with practiced ease.

A clear sign of who they were, Covenant agents. Fledgling-rank, probably, he couldn't tell at the moment , but they looked trained and committed.

"Hmmm… another victim identified," one said—a female voice, cold with religious conviction. "You shall be welcomed to the great one's embrace lost soul."

Rolf realized with sudden, sharp clarity that he'd left his weapon back at the barracks. In his drunken need for air, for space, for escape, he'd walked into the outer perimeter unarmed.

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

The Covenant agents spread out, flanking him with coordination that suggested prior training.

Rolf's fireball was his only weapon—and fire cores were loud, bright, tactically disadvantageous in situations requiring subtlety.

But subtlety was already gone.

He conjured a fireball—baseball-sized, roaring with heat and light—and hurled it at the female agent.

She dodged with practiced ease, the fireball sailing past to explode against a wall behind her.

Her companion circled right, blade gleaming in the brief illumination.

Rolf conjured another fireball, threw it at the male agent. Same result—easy dodge, wasted energy.

But the light from the explosions gave him something.

Brief illumination and a momentary advantage.

He conjured a third fireball—larger, brighter, positioned between the two agents—and detonated it deliberately close to their faces.

Not to hit them. To blind them.

The flash was brilliant, overwhelming, leaving temporary afterimages burned into their retinas.

Both agents staggered, blinking desperately, their vision compromised.

Rolf, not leaving anything to chance,charged.

There was no finesse or technique. Just raw desperation channeled into momentum.

He crashed into the female agent first, tackling her to the ground with all his drunken weight. They hit hard, her blade skittering away across stone.

At this point, gender wasn't a thought in Rolf's mind. Just survival. Just kill-or-be-killed mathematics that reduced everything to simple brutality.

His fingers found her face, fumbling for purchase. Found her eyes—soft, vulnerable, protected only by thin eyelids.

He dug in.

She screamed—high, piercing and awful screams. Her hands clawed at his arms, trying to break his grip, but alcohol and adrenaline had given him strength beyond normal capability.

His fingers pushed deeper, feeling tissue rupture, feeling the horrifying give of eyeballs collapsing under pressure.

Skull fucking, some distant part of his mind thought with sick humor. Actually skull fucking her.

Behind him, he heard movement—the male agent recovering, coming to help.

Rolf didn't have time to turn. He felt, more than saw the blade coming for his neck.

He twisted desperately, and the strike that should have killed him instead buried itself in his shoulder—a deep, agonizing, blade scraping bone.

Pain exploded through his system, but he couldn't stop. Couldn't release. Had to finish this first.

The female agent's struggles weakened. Stopped. Her screaming cut off mid-shriek.

At this point she wasn't breathing anymore.

Rolf yanked his fingers free—with horrible wet sounds, horrible sensation—and turned sharply, hands sticky with blood and worse things.

The male agent was there, blade raised for another strike, face twisted with rage and horror at his companion's death.

Rolf's gore-covered fingers found the agent's face, shoved into his nose—not deep, just enough for contact—and he called on his fireball core with desperate fury.

Internal combustion. Flash-heat channeled directly into soft tissue.

The agent's head exploded.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

Brain matter flash-boiled. Pressure within the skull spiked beyond tolerance, bone failing in a fraction of a second. Structural integrity collapsed.

The head detonated like overheated ordnance.

The headless body collapsed, blood fountaining from the neck stump.

Rolf stood there, covered in gore, shoulder bleeding heavily, breathing in ragged gasps.

I won, he thought with fierce, primal satisfaction. I fucking won.

Pride swelled in his chest—the kind of pride that came from defeating enemies against odds, from proving his capability despite disadvantage, from surviving.

Then he heard it.

Clicking. Chittering. The sound of chitin on stone.

Rolf turned.

And saw them.

Ants. Soldier-class Crawler ants, emerging from darkness with mandibles clicking in synchronized hunger.

Not two. Not three.

Dozens.

-----

Rolf tried to run.

His legs—compromised by alcohol, weakened by an adrenaline crash, injured from the tackle and blade strike—gave out immediately.

He collapsed, shoulder screaming protest as he landed on his injured side.

No. No no no. Not like this.

He tried to push himself up, to crawl, to do anything except die here in the darkness like discarded meat.

His hands found purchase on stone. He dragged himself forward, inch by agonizing inch, leaving a blood trail that the ants followed with unerring precision.

Behind him, clicking grew louder. Closer.

Rolf looked back, trying to assess—

And realized he couldn't feel his legs.

There was no numb or tingling feeling there, Just… absence.

He looked down and saw why.

They were gone.

Both legs, severed at mid-thigh by mandibles he hadn't even felt in the chaos. Just gone, consumed, leaving stumps that pumped blood with each desperate heartbeat.

Existential dread didn't begin to describe what flooded through Rolf's mind in that moment.

Not just fear of death—everyone feared death.

This was something worse. The knowledge that he was going to die here, in a shitty outer section of a forgettable outpost, killed by mindless insects, his body consumed and forgotten.

No glory. No recognition.No meaning.

Just meat. Just protein. Just another casualty in a grinding war that wouldn't even note his passing.

"Help!" he screamed, knowing no one would hear, no one would come. "HELP ME!"

An ant's mandibles found his torso—massive, powerful, designed to shear through chitin and bone with equal ease.

They bit down on his abdomen, piercing through clothing and flesh and into his liver.

The pain was beyond description. Beyond comprehension. Like being burned and stabbed and crushed simultaneously while remaining conscious enough to experience every microsecond of agony.

Rolf screamed until his voice broke.

The mandibles withdrew, taking chunks of his liver with them. He felt his internal organs shift, felt something vital rupture, felt heat spreading through his abdomen that meant internal bleeding on a catastrophic scale.

Another ant joined the feeding.

Its mandibles found his intestines—still connected, still functional—and began pulling them out with horrifying efficiency.

Like noodles, his alcohol-fogged mind thought with sick, detached humor. Slurping up my guts like fucking noodles.

He screamed and screamed and screamed.

Mandibles found his stomach. His kidneys. His lungs as the feeding became frenzied, multiple ants now converging on the easy meal.

Rolf's consciousness fragmented, pain overwhelming his ability to process sensory input.

He saw flashes:

His squad's faces when they'd been selected. The pride and excitement and guilt.

The private's lessons about his fireball.

Baggen telling him to slow down on drinking. Wisdom he'd ignored.

The female Covenant agent's face as he'd killed her. The horror and pain before death took her.

And somewhere, distant and fading, alarm bells still ringing across Vester, calling soldiers to defense against threats that wouldn't pause for individual tragedy.

At a point, Rolf screamed no more.

Not because the pain stopped.

But because his lungs were gone, consumed, leaving nothing to power vocal cords that no longer functioned.

His vision darkened.

His thoughts scattered.

And the last thing Rolf felt—beyond pain, beyond horror, beyond all the bitter resentment —was profound, crushing regret.

Not for the drinking. Not for leaving his weapon behind. Not even for walking into the outer perimeter alone.

But for wasting his last hours on jealousy instead of gratitude.

For spending his final Clear Light's Eve drowning in what he'd lost instead of celebrating what he'd had.

For letting bitterness poison the time he'd had left.

I wasted it, his dying mind whispered. All of it. Wasted.

Then nothing.

Just darkness.

Just consumption.

Just another body among hundreds that Clear Light's Eve would claim.

The ants continued feeding, methodical and efficient, reducing Rolf to protein and nutrients that would fuel the colony's expansion.

They didn't care about his jealousy, his bitterness, his dreams.

They didn't care that he'd been one year too old for the Academy selection.

They didn't care that he'd fought bravely against Covenant agents or that he'd proven his capability in his final moments.

They just fed.

And somewhere above, in the chaos of Vester's three-way battle, no one noticed one more casualty.

No one marked the moment the recruit, Rolf stopped existing.

No one would remember that he'd died alone, consumed by creatures that operated on pure instinct, his last moments filled with agony and regret.

The machinery of survival turned.

Indifferent to individual tragedy.

Patient with mass death.

Inevitable.

Rolf had wanted meaning. Had wanted recognition.

Instead, he got what Vester gave most soldiers eventually:

Anonymous death in service of survival that would continue without him.

His body was consumed completely before dawn light .

Not even bones remained.

Just a blood stain on stone that rain would eventually wash away.

And the war—the grinding, eternal war against the Shroud—continued without pause.

Because it always did.

Because it always would.

Because individual lives, however bitter or brave, were just fuel for a machine that would never stop consuming.

The sad death of a nobody.

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