Apocalyptic Trails

                                    

                                          
Killer: The Tracker
Lore:
Cole Stone was born into another world. A world after the apocalypse. A world without great civilizations, without metropolises, and shopping centers. The only thing Cole inherited from the old world was his name. He didn't encounter many people with names from the old world. Most were named after attributes, only a few years after they were born.
Since his parents avoided communities for safety reasons, Cole grew up in isolation. The few times he accompanied his father to merchants were brief, and he barely spoke to peers. 
His parents were already part of the new world and knew little else but isolation. It was a miracle that they met. 
Cole's grandparents were the last generation before the apocalypse, but both of his grandmothers and one of his grandfathers died at the "end of the world."
Life in the ruins of long-gone times was not easy, and Cole had to become independent quickly. Despite decades-old canned goods, humans had to learn to hunt again. And Cole was a natural. Hunting was in his family's blood, and Cole often worked with his father to hunt deer and stag. He learned to read the trail of his prey, a craft he improved with the help of a white powder made from found chalk and wheat flour, while his father delivered the deadly shot.
In his twenties, Cole visited the larger communities, which his parents had always warned him about. 
There he wanted to make a name for himself as a tracker and hunter, nothing unusual for a man his age. But Cole lacked charisma, and assignments came only sparsely.
However, everything changed when he encountered Grotti. A criminal old man who paid well for shabby jobs. Cole immediately realized what kind of person stood before him, the kind his parents warned him about. 
But Grotti quickly made him aware of how good the payment would be for him. 
The task was simple: find a wanted man and bring him down. Cole had already killed animals, but a human? 
Was he even capable of such a thing?
Blood ran down Cole's hands to his fingertips, individual drops fell to the ground, creating a monotonous sound that burned itself into his thoughts. 
Cole had killed a man, a middle-aged man barely older than Cole's own father. It all happened so quickly, the attack, the resistance, the fatal blow. 
Cole began to retch as something began to crawl deep under his skin. A feeling of terror ran through his body, and Cole vomited on the corpse. The next moments passed by at a similar speed. 
Him entering Grotti's house, a club firmly in his grip, how he repeatedly struck his employer on the head, the blood, the flying skin fragments, the feeling of rage and hatred. 
Something died in Cole that day, making room for something malicious, a disturbance of his mind that bound itself to him like a parasite.
When Grotti's body was found in his house, bloody prints led through the entire house until the trail stopped in front of a solid wall. 
Cole was gone, but not of his own free will.
In the deep fog, shrouded in darkness, Cole's mortal body writhed. 
Two white sparks fluttered through the darkness and pierced both of his eyes. An iron mask consumed his flesh and merged with his skin. 
His screams of pain echoed through the vast nothingness, yet every sound came back three times as loud, in the form of malicious laughter. Invisible, wrinkled hands clawed into his clothes, and bloodshot eyes stared directly into Cole's soul. 
It was Grotti, he lived. But that was not possible. Grotti's skull burst like a grape under the pressure of Cole's club. "You are special, Cole. One last job. Catch me. Catch me, and you're free. Don't catch me, and you're mine." echoed the voice of the supposedly dead Grotti. The evil deep within Cole was brought forth by extreme physical and mental torture. Only with the right recipe could his full potential be unleashed.
The fog cleared, the darkness remained in the night sky, and trees surrounded Cole, the Tracker. In the distance, the flames of a campfire flickered, and four lonely souls warmed themselves on this cold night. In the midst of the group sat Grotti, surrounded by his newly found friends.