The headquarters of the “Iron Dogs” was located in an old packaging warehouse, in the industrial heart of District 9. On the upper floor, surrounded by surveillance screens and cigar smoke, Jarek, the gang’s leader, counted stacks of dirty money. He was the man who had given the order to collect the debt from Riku’s parents seven years earlier.

  (Jarek’s Perspective)

  Jarek poured himself a glass of cheap whiskey. The sound of rain hitting the tin roof was usually relaxing, but today something felt wrong. The radio of one of his guards downstairs let out a sharp burst of static.

  “Boss… there’s something at the gate… it looks like a—”

  The voice was cut off by a horrific metallic screech, as if a tank were being torn in half.

  Jarek stood up and walked to the tempered glass window overlooking the main hall of the warehouse. Below, thirty of his best men were armed with rifles and submachine guns.

  “What the hell is going on?!” Jarek shouted into the intercom.

  The reinforced steel gate wasn’t just opened; it was hurled into the warehouse like a projectile, instantly crushing two men against the storage shelves. In the doorway, framed by rain and lightning, a black-and-crimson silhouette emerged.

  It didn’t look like a man.

  It looked like an exiled god of war.

  “Fire! Kill that thing!” ordered Jarek’s captain below.

  The hall was flooded with muzzle flashes. Hundreds of heavy-caliber bullets struck the figure. Jarek smiled for a second, expecting to see the creature torn apart. But the smile died when he saw the bullets ricochet off the black armor, falling harmlessly to the ground like raindrops.

  The creature advanced.

  The massacre was choreographed by hell itself. Jarek watched, paralyzed, as the thing leaped from side to side with inhuman speed. A claw pierced a guard’s skull; a kick shattered another’s spine. The once-gray hall began to be painted in vivid red. Screams of pure terror rose to Jarek’s office, drowning out even the storm.

  “Call reinforcements! Call everyone!” Jarek screamed into the radio, but no one answered. The Iron Dogs were being slaughtered like cattle.

  The creature stopped in the center of the hall, surrounded by corpses. It looked straight up, toward the office window. That scarlet slit in the helmet seemed to burn into Jarek’s soul.

  The Avenger’s Vision (Riku’s Perspective)

  Inside the armor, Riku was in a trance. The smell of gunpowder and blood didn’t disgust him; it fed him. Each time a life was extinguished beneath his claws, he felt a weight lifting from his chest. It was as if, for every Iron Dog that died, a small part of Akari’s pain was being avenged.

  “More, vessel… feel the rhythm of hearts stopping…”

  Kael’Zhorun’s voice was a drum in his mind.

  “They are the fuel for our return.”

  Riku didn’t use brute force alone. He used fear. He left the last guard alive for five seconds just to watch the man piss himself in terror before being thrown into the ceiling.

  Riku calmly walked toward the stairs leading to the main office. The metal steps groaned under his weight. He went through the reinforced upper door with a simple push, ripping it from its hinges.

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  There he was.

  Jarek.

  The man was cowering behind a mahogany desk, holding a Magnum pistol with trembling hands. He fired six shots. Riku kept walking, the bullets flattening against the armor’s chest plates and falling onto the expensive carpet.

  Riku stopped one step from the desk. Kael’Zhorun’s helmet retracted, revealing Riku’s face. He looked older, the golden slits in his eyes glowing with a cruel intensity.

  “Do you remember me, Jarek?” Riku asked. His voice was calm, which made it even more terrifying.

  Jarek shook his head, sweat pouring down his fat face.

  “I… I don’t know you! Take the money! Take everything! Just let me live!”

  Riku tilted his head slightly, a bitter smile forming on his lips.

  “Seven years ago, in this same district, a girl named Akari Aoyama begged for her life. Do you remember what you said to her through your men? That the price of the debt was life itself.”

  Jarek’s eyes widened. The memory hit him like a punch.

  “T-the little brother? The rat? It can’t be… you should’ve starved to death!”

  Riku placed his claws on Jarek’s desk, the metal groaning under the pressure.

  “Her tomorrow never came because of you.”

  Riku leaned forward, Kael’Zhorun’s sulfurous breath spilling from his lungs.

  “But your tomorrow ends now.”

  Riku grabbed Jarek by the collar, lifting him from the chair. The gang leader sobbed, absolute terror finally taking its toll.

  “Kill him slowly, Riku,” the demon whispered.

  “Let his despair be our final offering to this place.”

  Riku looked at the pathetic face of the man who ruled District 9 with an iron fist and felt nothing but a satisfied emptiness.

  Riku was in no hurry. The fear emanating from Jarek was like a feast for the entity sealed within his armor, and Riku wanted to savor every drop of it.

  Riku hurled Jarek against the glass wall, which cracked but did not shatter. The gang leader slid down, landing seated and groaning as Riku advanced slowly, his claws scraping across the metal floor, producing a shrill sound that seemed to saw straight through Jarek’s nerves.

  “Please… I have money… accounts in banks outside the district…” Jarek stammered, his face swollen from crying.

  “Akari had something too,” Riku said, his voice now overlaid with Kael’Zhorun’s cavernous tone.

  “She had hope. And you tore it away from her with a blade.”

  Riku grabbed Jarek’s right leg. Without effort, he began to squeeze. The sound of the femur shattering under the pressure of the demonic gauntlet echoed through the room like a dry branch snapping. Jarek’s scream was so piercing it cut through the warehouse’s silence.

  “Feel the marrow boil, worm…” the demon snarled inside Riku’s mind.

  Riku did not stop. One by one, he broke every one of Jarek’s limbs. He did it with surgical, cruel precision, ensuring the man remained conscious to feel every second of the agony. Jarek—the man who ordered deaths for amusement—was now nothing more than a sobbing, broken mass of flesh on the floor, begging for death as if it were a privilege.

  “Look at me, Jarek,” Riku commanded, grabbing him by the hair and forcing their faces together.

  “Look closely at the ‘rat.’ This is the future you created.”

  With a sharp motion, Riku drove his claws into Jarek’s throat—not to kill him instantly, but to silence his screams. He stared into the man’s eyes until the last spark of life faded under absolute terror. In the end, Jarek did not die as a leader; he died as a coward, broken in both body and soul.

  Riku released the corpse and straightened up. The hatred in his chest still burned, demanding more than blood alone. He wanted District 9 to see that the balance had shifted.

  “Destroy everything, vessel,” Kael’Zhorun roared, the armor glowing with an incandescent red light.

  “Let this place become the altar of our ascension!”

  Riku clenched his fists. Scarlet energy began to swirl around him, spinning like a hurricane of lava. He slammed his fist into the ground with the full force of the infernal entity.

  The shockwave was devastating. The office’s concrete floor exploded. Riku descended into the main hall as the structure began to collapse. With strikes from his energy-charged claws, he sliced through the warehouse’s support beams as if they were made of butter.

  “Never again!” Riku shouted, his voice echoing throughout the industrial district.

  He leapt to the center of the hall and focused all the power of the armor. An explosion of infernal flames burst from his body in every direction. The tin walls were blown away, the gang’s vehicles’ fuel tanks detonated in a chain reaction, and the roof collapsed in a rain of twisted iron and fire.

  Minutes later, Riku emerged from what remained of the headquarters. The warehouse was now a massive funeral pyre, illuminating the rainy night.

  In the middle of the street, before the smoldering ruins, Riku used his claws to carve a giant symbol into the hot asphalt—the same strange symbol from the ring.

  The mark of Kael’Zhorun.

  The mark of Riku Aoyama.

  The neighbors, hidden inside their shacks, watched the silhouette of the black armor against the flames. The fear they once felt for Jarek was nothing compared to the terror they now felt toward this new entity.

  Riku looked at the fire one last time

  . He was no longer the miserable orphan.

  He was the end of an era.