The Last Hunt
The Last Hunt
The year was 2035, a time when whispers of prophecy and dread swept across the world like the first stirrings of an ominous storm. Governments had grown increasingly authoritarian, driven by a united global agenda that sought to extinguish dissidence. Among those targeted were Christians, their faith marked as a dangerous relic from an unenlightened age. The harbinger of this persecution was a man named Erik Malstrom.
Erik was a mid-level bureaucrat in the Global Peace Authority (GPA), a sprawling, faceless organization tasked with ensuring compliance with the New World Charter. Officially, he was tasked with monitoring public behavior and rooting out subversive elements. Unofficially, Erik was a man consumed by his own hatred for Christians. He saw their refusal to conform as an affront to the unity and progress of humanity. To Erik, they were not just dissenters; they were enemies of the new order.
Erik's demeanor was cold, calculated. He had an uncanny ability to make people squirm with his piercing gaze. It was said that he had studied the methods of the East German Stasi, perfecting the art of psychological warfare. Surveillance was his weapon, and his network of informants grew like a malignant web. No church gathering, no Bible study, no whispered prayer escaped his notice. In his mind, Erik believed he was righteous, a crusader against ignorance.
One of his primary targets was a small house church in Stockholm. The group was led by a quiet but resolute man named Pastor Daniel Kjellberg. Despite the risks, Pastor Daniel and his congregation refused to abandon their faith. They met in secret, their gatherings cloaked in the silence of night. Erik had been watching them for months, biding his time, savoring the moment when he would bring them down.
One evening, Erik and his team stormed the house where the Christians were meeting. Armed officers dragged men, women, and children into the streets. Erik’s voice was calm but laced with malice as he interrogated Pastor Daniel.
“You’ve been warned. The old ways are dead,” Erik said. “Your faith is a disease, and I am the cure.”
Pastor Daniel met Erik’s eyes, his voice unwavering. “You cannot cure what is eternal, Erik. You fight against the light, but the darkness will not prevail.”
Enraged, Erik had Daniel and several others imprisoned. The pastor’s words haunted Erik, but he drowned them out with propaganda and the accolades of his superiors. He believed he was purging the world of chaos, but the chaos within him grew louder.
The persecution intensified. Christians were denied work, their homes were confiscated, and they were branded as extremists. Erik reveled in his success, believing he had broken the back of the resistance. Through increasingly brutal crackdowns, Erik scattered the flock. Many Christians renounced their faith under torture, while others disappeared into the shadows, their faith tested to its limits. Families were torn apart, communities shattered. Underground churches that had once thrived now operated in constant fear, their numbers dwindling.
Yet, Christianity did not die entirely. A remnant of believers clung to their faith, surviving by fleeing to remote areas or hiding in plain sight. They communicated in whispers, their faith burning quietly but fiercely. Erik saw this as a challenge. To him, survival was defiance.
Natural disasters struck with unprecedented ferocity. Famine spread like a shadow across nations. War erupted in regions once considered peaceful. The world seemed to be unraveling, and Erik’s confidence began to falter. He saw the chaos as proof that humanity needed his iron hand more than ever. Despite his efforts, the resistance would not fully disappear, fueling his growing obsession.
One night, Erik had a dream that shook him to his core. He stood before a vast abyss, the sky above him torn asunder. A voice thundered, neither angry nor gentle, but filled with indescribable authority.
“You fight against Me, Erik Malstrom. The time of reckoning draws near.”
Erik awoke in a cold sweat. He dismissed the dream as a product of stress, but its memory lingered. His grip on reality began to slip as reports of supernatural phenomena spread: mass disappearances, inexplicable signs in the heavens, and a growing belief among Christians that the prophesied Great Tribulation had begun.
The final breaking point came during an operation to raid another underground church. As Erik entered the room, he froze. The Christians were not cowering. They were praying, their faces filled with an unearthly peace. For the first time, Erik felt fear—not of them, but of the power they seemed to invoke. He stormed out, leaving his officers to finish the raid. His orders were merciless: scatter them, silence them, break them.
The Great Tribulation descended like a storm. Governments crumbled, the global economy collapsed, and humanity was plunged into the darkest period in its history. Erik, once a man of power, became a shadow of himself. Yet he refused to yield, consumed by a desperate need to eradicate the faith he could no longer understand.
The divide between Erik and the Christians grew insurmountable. Their resilience infuriated him, their hope a glaring contradiction to the despair he saw consuming the world. Erik doubled down, orchestrating even more brutal crackdowns. His soul, already darkened, seemed to plunge further into an abyss of hatred.
As the Tribulation deepened, Erik’s actions became more unhinged. Reports of his atrocities spread, and even his colleagues in the GPA began to question his sanity. Yet Erik pressed on, convinced that he was humanity’s last line of defense against what he perceived as madness. To the Christians, he became a symbol of the world’s rebellion against God—a living manifestation of the darkness prophesied to rise in the end times.
By the final days of the Tribulation, the Christians had fled to the wilderness, their homes abandoned for the desolation of forests, mountains, and caves. Drones patrolled the skies, Erik’s orders ensuring that no stone was left unturned in the hunt for these "extremists." The Christians lived in constant fear, their fires carefully concealed, their voices silenced to avoid detection. They communicated in hushed whispers, passing down prayers like hidden treasures.
Erik, meanwhile, remained in the city, surrounded by the ruins of civilization. His every effort to locate the Christians seemed to feed his obsession. To him, they were not just rebels; they were ghosts haunting his every failure. The drones returned empty-handed, the wilderness swallowing his quarry whole. Frustrated and enraged, Erik took to the streets, shouting commands to an army that had grown weary of his relentless crusade.
“You will not escape! Your God has abandoned you!” he screamed into the night, his voice echoing through the empty streets. But his words were met only with silence.
The Christians had become phantoms in his world, their faith and resilience an enigma he could neither destroy nor comprehend. Erik’s hatred burned brighter than ever, but it consumed only himself. Alone in the desolate city, with drones patrolling skies devoid of prey, Erik realized he had become a relic of his own obsession, trapped in a labyrinth of darkness he had built with his own hands. The heavens darkened, the earth trembled, and Erik’s shadow stretched endlessly, a man forsaken by both the light he fought against and the darkness he served.FORCETOC