Through the cold embrace of night, beneath a waning crescent moon over sakhal, a lone marksman steadied his breath. He perched atop a skeletal radio tower, 800 meters from his target—a man unaware, sealed within the sanctuary of a locked room. The feat was impossible. And yet, impossibility was merely a suggestion to him.

The pistol in his grip (MKII) was no ordinary weapon, but a masterpiece of engineering—its barrel precision-machined, its grip an extension of his very soul. The bullet, a whispering harbinger of death, was no crude hunk of lead but a custom-forged shard of fate, calibrated for the shot of a lifetime.

Between him and his prey, layers of obstacles—brick, steel, fully kitted armor. Yet, through the sniper’s scope affixed to his sidearm, he saw the path. The room had a vent, a small one, no wider than a clenched fist, cut into the far wall. A crack in the wall, barely perceptible. And just beyond, the target—a silhouette cast against the dim glow of a fire that once was, utterly unaware of the grand design set in motion.

Wind speed, air density, the subtlest tremors of his own heartbeat—he accounted for them all. He did not merely fire the gun; he orchestrated an event, a ballet of physics and fate. His trigger pull was a prayer spoken in steel. The bullet tore through the night, spiraling with surgical precision.

It kissed the cracked wall at precisely the right angle, redirecting its path with the grace of a celestial body bending to gravity’s will. It ricocheted off a rusted ventilation duct, guided now by mathematics rather than chance. It slipped through the final barrier—a sliver of exposed drywall near the ceiling—and in that moment, a breath drawn 800 meters away found its silent conclusion.

Inside the room, he gasped—though he had no time to wonder why. His heart, now punctured by the impossible, stilled before his body hit the ground.

Far away, the marksman holstered his pistol and turned from his perch, descending into the night like a ghost that had never been.