Reach. 2524.

Before the glassing, before the heroics, before the songs of sacrifice—there was only war. The quiet kind. The dirty kind. The kind no one talks about.

In the underlevels of Manassas Outpost, buried beneath ice and concrete, a man sat alone in a shuttered maintenance bay. No lights. No comms. Just the sound of steel on steel as he cleaned a well-worn M6 magnum for the third time that night.

He wasn't listed on any roster. No service number. No official record. If ONI had its way, he didn't exist.

But his kill count whispered otherwise.

They called him The Ghost—though some joked it should be The Skull. Rumors spread among the black ops circles and outer colony militias: some ex-ODST who'd lost everything in a raid gone wrong. Family butchered by insurrectionist mercs working under ONI's blind eye.

The official report said the insurgents were neutralized.

Unofficially, their corpses were found crucified against the walls of a burned-out refinery, the symbol of a white skull painted in ash above the doorway.

He hunted them one cell at a time.

Didn't matter if you were Covenant, insurrectionist, or a crooked handler hiding behind a badge—if you profited from blood, he found you. And when he did, death wasn't fast. It was personal.

He had no orders. No allies. Just a war of one.

Some said he was dead. Others swore they saw him on Eridanus II, dragging a warlord's body through the mud. ONI scrubbed every image, every report—but the name lingered.

Frank Castle.

The Punisher.

And somewhere, not far from that frozen bay, a young Spartan-II was about to receive his first live kill order.

The war for humanity's survival would be fought in the light.

But in the shadows… another war had already begun.