"A dying father"

February 1st, 2026

South Africa - 9:05 PM

The humvee rumbled across the uneven dirt road, its tires crushing loose gravel beneath as the convoy cut through the wild terrain of northern Mozambique.

Towering trees swayed gently in the hot breeze, their shadows flickering across the cracked windshield like ghostly fingers. Inside the lead vehicle, Captain Ray Shigeyoshi sat in the driver's seat, his silver eyes fixed ahead, scanning every tree, every hill, every unnatural silence.

His left hand rested on the wheel, the other near his sidearm. The air smelled of dry earth and gasoline. The humidity clung to his skin, but it was not the heat that made him sweat. It was the phone call.

Earlier..

Before they rolled out.

Ray's heart had skipped. His fingers froze around the phone. He hadn't heard anything about his father in years. He didn't want to. But something about the way the doctor looked made him press the phone to his ear.

"Who is this?" Ray asked.

"This is Dr. Ayaka Mori from Sankai Private Medical. I'm afraid I have some difficult news. Your father, Shinjo Shigeyoshi, is dying from..."

Ray didn't speak. Didn't blink.

"Liver cancer," the doctor continued. "He was diagnosed last year. But he refused treatment until a few months ago. I'm sorry to say, it's far too late."

Ray inhaled deeply through his nose. The familiar anger stirred. Of course the old bastard waited too long. Of course he did.

"When?" Ray asked, voice low.

"He doesn't have long. Maybe a few weeks. Perhaps days. He insists he wants to see you. One last time."

Ray closed his eyes, letting the wind slap at his face through the rolled-down window of the humvee. Back in the present, the scent of sweat and dust replaced the sterile memory of hospital wards.

He felt something.

But it wasn't clear. It wasn't grief.

It wasn't love.

It was a strange, aching emptiness.

His father. A drunk. A tyrant. A man who used to yell at his mother until her tears became silence. The same man who threw Risa out, forced her to leave an eleven-year-old boy behind with broken promises and a shattered heart. And now, he was dying.

Ray should have cared more. He should have. But he didn't.

A voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

"Captain. We're here."

Ray looked up. They were approaching the last known location of the missing recon unit - a narrow forest passage near a ravine, marked on their map as a probable cult expansion zone. Several other humvees stopped behind them, raising clouds of dust into the air.

Ray stepped out, boots crunching on dry earth. The sun was dipping behind the trees, casting an amber hue over the foliage. He clicked on his radio.

"Arms up, eyes peeled, and get ready to move, gents," he said, voice steady.

Around him, his squad mobilized with military precision, rifles raised, eyes sweeping the treeline.

But even now, with potential ambush lurking in the shadows, his mind flickered back to the phone call.

"He wants to see you."

"He insists."

Ray scoffed internally.

The same man who handed him a photograph of Risa hugging another man and told him, "Your mother betrayed us. She left you. She doesn't love you." That night remained a nightmare - a bleeding wound that had never truly closed.

He had believed it. For years. Hated her for it. Cursed her for leaving.

A soldier ran up beside him. "Sir, we found shell casings. Fresh. At least a day old. Looks like there was a firefight."

Ray nodded. "Spread out. No one strays from formation."

As his squad pushed deeper into the jungle, the vines and brush thickened. The stench of burnt rubber and blood hung faintly in the air. Minutes later, they stumbled across wreckage - two military-grade jeeps, overturned and riddled with bullets. The smell grew stronger. Flies buzzed.

Then came the bodies.

Three of them. Freshly killed. Young faces. Too young.

Ray crouched beside one, checking the name tag. Private Jenkins. Barely nineteen. Shot in the neck and chest.

Ray clenched his jaw.

He remembered being that age. Training in the States. Fresh hope, fierce ambition. He remembered wondering if Risa had ever thought of him when he was still a kid. If he remembered if Shinjo would've become a father to him, would he be the same man as of today?

He looked up, eyes hardening.

"Fan out. Search the perimeter. Keep your eyes open for survivors - or anything resembling this cult."

His men moved with discipline, but Ray felt the tension. He always felt it before something went wrong. A gut pull.

A whisper from his instincts.

As he stood over the bodies of the young soldiers, the words of the doctor rang again:

"He would like to see you one last time."

Ray wasn't sure he wanted to. Wasn't sure he could.

The boy inside him still longed for a mother's embrace and a father's approval. But the man he had become? He had killed to survive. Led missions deep into cartel territory. Saw evil up close and personal. And yet, the pain of being abandoned - that pain still lingered. That boy had never really healed.

And now, the man who helped break him… was dying.

He took a breath. Long and quiet.

"Captain," one of his men said over the radio. "You'll want to see this."

Ray moved fast, pushing through the trees. When he arrived, they were standing around a crude wooden symbol - painted in blood - hung on a tree with hooks.

Matriarch's Promise.

Ray's hands curled into fists.

"We're not just here for revenge," he thought. "We're here to stop something monstrous."

He keyed his radio.

"Mark the bodies. Prep them for extraction. Stay sharp. We're not alone."

He glanced once more at the crimson symbol.

And for the first time in years, he found himself thinking:

Maybe seeing his father again... wasn't about forgiveness.

Maybe it was about closure.

He didn't know yet.

But he knew one thing.

He wasn't leaving this jungle until he finished what he came to do.

And maybe - just maybe - he could finally bury the ghosts of the past.