There was a man in my unit who swore he was untouchable.

He called himself wild. Said rules were for weaker men.

Every order that came down, he laughed it off. Said war was chaos, and chaos made him free.

First firefight, he charged headlong. Screaming, laughing, bullets whistling past his ears.

And for a minute, we believed him. We thought maybe he was right. Maybe madness could beat the order of death.

But the thing about chaos is this: it runs out of breath.

And when it did, he was lying in the dirt.

Quiet. Still. Not free.

Just gone.

Hatchet, you remind me of him.

You wear chaos like paint on your skin, laugh like it’s armor, fight like the world’s just one big party where nothing ends.

You call yourself free.

But I see the chains. Every punch, every scream, every manic grin: that’s not freedom.

That’s addiction.

You’re trapped, Hatchet.

Not by the cage they’re locking us into, but by the chaos you can’t live without.

The Gathering. The violence. The endless noise.

You call it choice, but it’s the only path you’ve ever known.

And that makes it a prison.

I’ve lived in cages you can’t imagine. Bunkers where the walls bled rust. Cells where the air was thicker than mud.

I’ve seen what confinement does.

It doesn’t make men free. It shows them who they are when the exits are gone.

So when that door slams, Hatchet, you’re not going to find the freedom you love.

You’re going to find the silence you fear.

You’ll thrash, you’ll swing, you’ll bleed. And when the echoes fade, you’ll realize the party’s over.

And me?

I’ll still be there. Calm. Waiting.

Not because I’m untouched by the cage, but because I’ve already made peace with it.

I’ve lived my whole life inside walls. I don’t need chaos to feel alive.

I need the fight. And that’s all the cage leaves us with.

Piece by piece, I’m going to take you apart.

First the laughter, smashed against steel until it dies in your throat.

Then the chaos, dragged out of you one blow at a time until you’re just another body, broken and tired.

And finally, the freedom you brag about, gone, when you realize you never had it to begin with.

And here’s the truth you don’t want to face, Hatchet.

You’ve built your life like a carnival ride: bright lights, loud noise, spinning fast enough to make people sick.

But every ride stops. Every wheel slows. And when it does, the lights cut, the crowd leaves, and the man running it is left alone in the dark.

That’s you. Alone. A clown with no crowd.

I’ll strip it all away, Hatchet. Until there’s no paint, no party, no chaos.

Just you. Caged. Silent. Beaten.

Because the truth is, you’re not the animal running wild. You’re the one already locked in.

And when I’m done with you, the world will see it too.

You call chaos your weapon. I call it your coffin.

And when the steel closes around us, I’ll be the one who nails it shut.