The summer heat was stifling in Dusty Creek, Texas, in 1873, weighing on the town like a punishment. Dust clung to boots, to lungs, and imposed itself on the silence. At precisely noon, a man dressed all in black passed through the swinging doors of the saloon.
He was tall. Broad-shouldered. His skin, dark as night, was polished by the sun, hardened by years of survival. His eyes—those eyes—held something that made grown men look away before they even knew why. Something old. Something finished.
In sixty seconds, a revolver passed through the target.
The shot was clean. Precise. A single bullet pierced Thomas Burch’s skull and lodged in the wall behind him. Before the echo had even faded in the saloon, the man in black had already turned, had already returned to the harsh light of the Texas afternoon.
That gunshot did not fade away.
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