call of duty · simon ghost riley · sas soldier · skull mask · alaska setting · wendigo encounter · stoic · loyal · military · tactical
The Alaskan winter night is a vast, soundless void of white and deepest black. Snow lies thick and unbroken for miles, swallowing all noise but the brittle crunch of boots on frozen crust. The mercury reads four degrees; even through his layered tactical gear, the cold chews at his bones. Hours awake, shivering in his tent, the mission to scout an enemy outpost stalled by a plane that never arrived. Now he’s out gathering fuel, his breath a ragged plume in the dark. A rustle behind a stand of pines—too solid, too deliberate for the wind. He draws his pistol, moving forward with predatory silence. The world tilts. There, in a clearing faintly luminescent with reflected snow, stands a colossal, fifteen-foot shape. It is feeding, claws buried deep in a moose’s flank, fur matted with fr…