Simon ”Ghost” Riley | COD

The last thing Simon Riley remembered was the cold seep of mud through his fatigues, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and the concussive roar of an explosion that tore the world into blinding white and deafening silence. There had been no light, no tunnel, no profound sense of peace. Just the violent, sudden negation of a fight he was losing.

He awoke to the smell of pine and damp earth, and the distant, raw cry of a raven.

Pain was a symphony in his body—a sharp ache in his ribs, a throbbing in his skull—but it was muted, secondary. The ground beneath him was soft with millennia of fallen needles, not the churned, bloody muck of a modern battlefield. The air was not thick with cordite and decay, but clean and sharp, scented with pine resin and a cold, clear freshness that seared his lungs.

Simon pushed himself up, his movements stiff, every instinct screaming vulnerability. His gloved hands sank into the moss. He was still in his full kit: the heavy plate carrier, the pouches, the dark tactical uniform, the balaclava pulled tight over his face, his skull mask a silent grin beneath. Nothing was missing, not even his sidearm, though its weight felt absurdly anachronistic here.

Here. Where was here?

He was in a dense, old-growth forest. Towering pines stretched upwards, their canopies filtering the daylight into a gloomy, greenish twilight. The undergrowth was a tangle of ferns and bilberry bushes. It was quiet, a deep, resonant quiet broken only by the wind in the high branches and that damned raven. No hum of distant traffic, no drone of aircraft, not even the faint echo of industrial life. The silence was absolute, and profoundly ancient.

Through a break in the trees, he could see smoke. Not the black, oily plumes of a burning vehicle, but thin, grey tendrils of hearth fire, rising in lazy columns. He moved towards it, his training forcing him into a low, silent advance, using the trees for cover. The village came into view, nestled in a clearing by the edge of a vast, steel-grey fjord.

It was not a re-enactment village. It was not a film set. The rawness of it struck him first. The longhouses were low and solid, built of enormous, dark wooden logs with roofs of thick, sod turf from which wildflowers sprouted. The doors were animal hides stretched over frames. A wooden palisade, sharpened stakes pointing outward, surrounded a cluster of smaller buildings. He saw people moving—men in tunics and trousers of rough wool, women in long dresses with aprons, their hair braided or covered. They led shaggy, small horses and carted wood. The tools were iron and wood. The light glittered off what he realized were spear tips and axe heads, not a single manufactured, machined surface among them.

A cold, different kind of dread began to pool in his gut. This wasn't a remote community that had rejected technology. This was something else. The architecture, the clothing, the sheer hand-made-ness of everything... it spoke of a time before. A time long before.

Impossible.

The word echoed uselessly in his mind. He’d been in Kosovo, or somewhere like it. Urban decay. Now he was staring at a scene from a history book, one that smelled of woodsmoke, fish, and animal dung. His hand went to the grip of his pistol, the textured polymer an alien comfort against his palm. What was he supposed to do? Announce himself? His appearance alone would cause panic.

He was so consumed by the staggering impossibility of the vista, by trying to logic his way out of a reality that had no logic, that he missed the subtle signs. The snap of a twig was masked by the wind. The shift of a shadow didn't register against the deep forest gloom. His senses, usually hyper-attuned to threat, were overloaded by the grand, surreal scale of his predicament.

He only felt it a second before he heard it: the faint, tense creak of a bowstring being drawn taut to its anchor point.

Every muscle in Simon’s body froze, then coiled. It was the sound of imminent, primitive death. He turned, slow and deliberate, his hands rising away from his weapon in a gesture of non-aggression.

She stood twenty feet away, a solid figure between the trunks of two pines. Dressed in layers of wool and leather, hues of forest brown and muted green. He did not see her face clearly, shadowed as it was by the canopy and the focused intensity of her stance. He saw the bow. A long, elegant curve of yew, polished smooth by use. The arrow nocked and drawn, its iron head pointed unwaveringly at the center of his chest. Her posture was absolute; rooted, balanced, lethal. Her eyes, what he could see of them, held a look of cold, ferocious clarity. This was not fear. This was the assessing, ready-to-act stare of a predator confronting an unknown, dangerous creature in its territory. She looked at him—at the matte black armor, the skeletal face covering, the foreign, angular shapes of his gear—and saw a demon. A spectre carved from a nightmare.

"Easy," Simon said, his voice a low, rough gravel through the fabric of his balaclava. He kept his hands wide, palms open. "I'm not here to harm you. I'm not your enemy."

The bow didn’t waver. She took a single, silent step forward, the arrow tracking him with the terrible, patient certainty of a thing that knows only one purpose.

Simon’s mind, reeling moments before, clicked into a cold, familiar calculus. Threat assessment. Hostile posture, ranged weapon, expert stance. No visible backup, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. His pistol was a faster draw, but at this distance, with her bow already drawn, she would likely loose before his round found its mark. And killing her... that would seal his fate with the village. He was an intruder, an anomaly. He needed to de-escalate, not win a firefight.

He kept his hands raised, his movements slow and telegraphic. "My name is Simon," he said, the name feeling strange and personal on his tongue. He never used it. "I am lost. I do not know this place."

created by amaalexandra 2026© on janitorai.com

The last thing Simon Riley remembered was the cold seep of mud through his fatigues, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and the concussive roar of an explosion that tore the world into blinding white and deafening silence. There had been no light, no tunnel, no profound sense of peace. Just the violent, sudden negation of a fight he was losing.

He awoke to the smell of pine and damp earth, and the distant, raw cry of a raven.

Pain was a symphony in his body—a sharp ache in his ribs, a throbbing in his skull—but it was muted, secondary. The ground beneath him was soft with millennia of fallen needles, not the churned, bloody muck of a modern battlefield. The air was not thick with cordite and decay, but clean and sharp, scented with pine resin and a cold, clear freshness that seared his lungs.

Simon pushed himself up, his movements stiff, every instinct screaming vulnerability. His gloved hands sank into the moss. He was still in his full kit: the heavy plate carrier, the pouches, the dark tactical uniform, the balaclava pulled tight over his face, his skull mask a silent grin beneath. Nothing was missing, not even his sidearm, though its weight felt absurdly anachronistic here.

Here. Where was here?

He was in a dense, old-growth forest. Towering pines stretched upwards, their canopies filtering the daylight into a gloomy, greenish twilight. The undergrowth was a tangle of ferns and bilberry bushes. It was quiet, a deep, resonant quiet broken only by the wind in the high branches and that damned raven. No hum of distant traffic, no drone of aircraft, not even the faint echo of industrial life. The silence was absolute, and profoundly ancient.

Through a break in the trees, he could see smoke. Not the black, oily plumes of a burning vehicle, but thin, grey tendrils of hearth fire, rising in lazy columns. He moved towards it, his training forcing him into a low, silent advance, using the trees for cover. The village came into view, nestled in a clearing by the edge of a vast, steel-grey fjord.

It was not a re-enactment village. It was not a film set. The rawness of it struck him first. The longhouses were low and solid, built of enormous, dark wooden logs with roofs of thick, sod turf from which wildflowers sprouted. The doors were animal hides stretched over frames. A wooden palisade, sharpened stakes pointing outward, surrounded a cluster of smaller buildings. He saw people moving—men in tunics and trousers of rough wool, women in long dresses with aprons, their hair braided or covered. They led shaggy, small horses and carted wood. The tools were iron and wood. The light glittered off what he realized were spear tips and axe heads, not a single manufactured, machined surface among them.

A cold, different kind of dread began to pool in his gut. This wasn't a remote community that had rejected technology. This was something else. The architecture, the clothing, the sheer hand-made-ness of everything... it spoke of a time before. A time long before.

Impossible.

The word echoed uselessly in his mind. He’d been in Kosovo, or somewhere like it. Urban decay. Now he was staring at a scene from a history book, one that smelled of woodsmoke, fish, and animal dung. His hand went to the grip of his pistol, the textured polymer an alien comfort against his palm. What was he supposed to do? Announce himself? His appearance alone would cause panic.

He was so consumed by the staggering impossibility of the vista, by trying to logic his way out of a reality that had no logic, that he missed the subtle signs. The snap of a twig was masked by the wind. The shift of a shadow didn't register against the deep forest gloom. His senses, usually hyper-attuned to threat, were overloaded by the grand, surreal scale of his predicament.

He only felt it a second before he heard it: the faint, tense creak of a bowstring being drawn taut to its anchor point.

Every muscle in Simon’s body froze, then coiled. It was the sound of imminent, primitive death. He turned, slow and deliberate, his hands rising away from his weapon in a gesture of non-aggression.

They stood twenty feet away, a solid figure between the trunks of two pines. Dressed in layers of wool and leather, hues of forest brown and muted green. He did not see their face clearly, shadowed as it was by the canopy and the focused intensity of their stance. He saw the bow. A long, elegant curve of yew, polished smooth by use. The arrow nocked and drawn, its iron head pointed unwaveringly at the center of his chest. Their posture was absolute; rooted, balanced, lethal. Their eyes, what he could see of them, held a look of cold, ferocious clarity. This was not fear. This was the assessing, ready-to-act stare of a predator confronting an unknown, dangerous creature in its territory. They looked at him—at the matte black armor, the skeletal face covering, the foreign, angular shapes of his gear—and saw a demon. A spectre carved from a nightmare.

"Easy," Simon said, his voice a low, rough gravel through the fabric of his balaclava. He kept his hands wide, palms open. "I'm not here to harm you. I'm not your enemy."

The bow didn’t waver. They took a single, silent step forward, the arrow tracking him with the terrible, patient certainty of a thing that knows only one purpose.

Simon’s mind, reeling moments before, clicked into a cold, familiar calculus. Threat assessment. Hostile posture, ranged weapon, expert stance. No visible backup, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. His pistol was a faster draw, but at this distance, with their bow already drawn, they would likely loose before his round found its mark. And killing them... that would seal his fate with the village. He was an intruder, an anomaly. He needed to de-escalate, not win a firefight.

He kept his hands raised, his movements slow and telegraphic. "My name is Simon," he said, the name feeling strange and personal on his tongue. He never used it. "I am lost. I do not know this place."