Location: Shanghai Midnight, Ghost Festival
The city throbbed with neon and fire.
Paper lanterns swung above the streets, their eerie glow casting grotesque shadows over the masses below. The smell of incense hung thick in the air, choking the lungs of the living. People kneeled before altars, offering fruit and burning joss paper, feeding the dead though they had no idea how hungry the dead truly were.
The Plague Doctor stood atop a decaying apartment complex, his mask facing the Huangpu River. Through the hollow eyes of his beaked visage, the world was a nightmare. The neon lights were sickly, their glow like decaying flesh. The laughter of the crowd turned into wet, squelching sounds, as though they were swallowing the life around them.
The shadows between the buildings?
They breathed.
"They're here," he whispered, a chill crawling down his spine.
His earpiece crackled with urgency. "Confirmed. Thermal scans show unnatural heat signatures along the Bund. Whatever's coming, it's using the festival as cover."
A pause. Then, more pressing: "We also have reports of missing children. Seven in the last hour."
The Plague Doctor's grip tightened around his dagger.
The Feast Begins
Down below, no one noticed the pale woman in the tattered qipao. Her smile was too wide too jagged her fingers far too long as she accepted a rice cake from an unsuspecting vendor.
No one saw how her shadow didn't match her movements, how it twisted and crawled, as if it had a mind of its own.
But the little boy at the sugar painting stall did.
He pulled at his mother's sleeve. "Mama, that lady has no eyes."
By the time she turned, the woman was gone. The boy's hand slipped from hers, swallowed by the crowd.
Intercept
The Plague Doctor moved like a nightmare.
The Husk didn't run. Instead, she lunged into the shadows and came out clutching a child barely six, still kicking and screaming. Her jaw split wider with a wet crack, flesh tearing at the hinges. Then she bit down. The child's scream turned into a shrill gurgle as teeth sank into his shoulder, ripping muscle from bone. Blood sprayed across the brick wall like a burst pipe. He thrashed, tiny fingers clawing at her face, but she just kept feeding, crunching through bone like stale bread, eyes rolled back in sick ecstasy.
"You're too late," she rasped, her voice the scraping of nails on bone. "The gates are already open. They're coming up from the river "
Before she could finish, his dagger pierced her throat with a sickening crack, the blade slicing through flesh and bone like paper. Her head was split in half, yet it still hung there flesh and muscle barely holding together, swaying like torn fabric in the wind. And then, somehow, she spoke. Her voice gurgled through the ruin of her throat, lips barely forming the words.
'You think we are like animals, soft, weak fit for slaughter?'
Her jaw twisted into something resembling a grin, even as her skull threatened to come apart.
'We are beyond death. No matter what you do… we will not end.'"
She lunged. One clawed hand slashed through the air, nearly raking the Plague Doctor's mask. He ducked just in time, the sharp nails brushing his hood. But she was too fast her body flickered like a shadow caught in a soap bubble, blinking in and out of sight, reappearing behind him before vanishing again.
He didn't flinch. His eyes narrowed behind the mask, calculating, reading her rhythm.
Then she reappeared just long enough.
With precision and fury, he drove his fist forward. The blade-tipped knuckles of his gauntlet met her face mid-lunge. The impact was thunderous.
The impact sounded like a wet sack of meat slammed into concrete. Her skull didn't just break it exploded. Bone fractured instantly, fragments piercing through skin and soft tissue, while the top half of her head collapsed inward from the force. Blood sprayed in a thick, pressurized burst arterial and bright coating the walls in a splatter pattern too wide and sudden to track. Her brain ejected from the opening like crushed jelly, sliding down the bricks in chunks. One eye shot loose, skidding across the wet pavement, while the other remained, swollen and bulging from the pressure, before rupturing with a quiet pop. The sound wasn't cinematic. It was sickening wet, real, final. Her body hit the ground hard, convulsing. The twitching lasted only a second, then stopped. The alley reeked of copper, fat, and ruptured organs. The silence after was worse than the noise.
She dropped without a sound.
But then a twitch.
Her mangled body jerked. From the ruined mass where her head used to be, something shifted. Bone cracked. Flesh writhed. A gurgling sound bubbled up like sewage rising through a clogged drain.
Then came the voice wet, broken, yet furious.
"Khrrkk… y-you… filth… you think this ends me?"
Blood poured from what remained of her mouth if it could still be called that. Teeth jutted from torn flesh, her tongue squirming like a dying worm.
"W-we are the curse that walks, you masked butcher… we are famine… we are the rot…"
She coughed, spraying a mist of black-red blood at his boots.
"Rip me apart… I'll crawl with my ribs… I'll scream through my spine… I will still come for you."
The Plague Doctor didn't speak. He calmly reached under his coat, pulling free a revolver unlike any forged by human hands. Its barrel shimmered faintly with etched holy runes, the steel lined with silver, the chamber loaded with bullets sanctified in rituals long forgotten by men.
He raised the weapon slowly, pressing the cold muzzle against the center of her chest.
"No," he muttered. "You won't."
He pulled the trigger.
The shot was quiet no thunder, no recoil but the effect was instant.
Her body convulsed, then stiffened. The bullet didn't tear through flesh it unmade it. Her entire form began to disintegrate, breaking apart like ash caught in a breeze. Flesh turned to dust, bone to smoke. Her curse-riddled remains lifted into the air and vanished, leaving nothing behind but a black scorch mark and silence.
The Plague Doctor didn't pause. His gaze shifted toward the waterfront, where the festival's largest offerings floated on barges whole roast pigs, towers of fruit, gilded paper palaces drifting for the dead.
And beneath them, in the black water, something stirred.
The Drowning Gate
The first child's shoe floated to the surface at midnight.
Then another.
Then seven more, arranged in a perfect, sickening circle on the pier.
The Plague Doctor stepped into the center, his boots sinking into the wet wood, a cold dread seeping into his bones. He didn't need to see the runes forming beneath the surface to know what was happening.
The Archons were testing the waters.
And they were using the children as anchors flesh vessels for something far worse.
He raised his dagger, preparing to strike just as the river exploded.
A column of water and writhing shadows shot upward, splashing across the dock with a horrendous splash. Within it, half-formed shapes reached out: skeletal hands, mouths with too many teeth, eyes that wept black oil, their breath like the foulest rot. The air filled with the stench of decaying fish and funeral incense, mixing with the copper tang of blood.
The Plague Doctor didn't flinch.
"You don't belong here," he snarled, plunging his blade into the pier with a sickening thunk.
The Obsidian Shard flared.
For one heartbeat, the night was torn apart by blinding, purple light a searing, ethereal flare that tore through the air like a comet's strike. The water screamed a shrill, inhuman wail and the writhing shapes began to unravel, their bodies disintegrating into ash and smoke, leaving behind only the foul stench of their existence.
Seven children tumbled onto the dock, gasping, their limbs stiff, their eyes wide with terror unharmed, but forever scarred by the horrors they'd witnessed.
Silence.
Then, from the depths, a voice that wasn't a voice a rasping whisper that scraped across the mind, colder than death itself:
"We remember you, broken bird. The Archons are coming. And this time, they'll clip your wings for good."
The Plague Doctor exhaled slowly, breath hissing through the filters of his mask like steam from a war machine. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his dagger old steel, blackened from countless kills, its edge honed to the bite of a whisper. Around him, the air thickened with tension, like the silence before a storm.
He didn't flinch. He didn't speak. He was death, wrapped in leather and smoke, and something was about to bleed.
Behind him, the first sirens began to wail, the sound of impending destruction echoing through the empty streets.
Elsewhere Chongqing, China
High above the smog choked skyline of Chongqing, perched on a skeletal radio tower, a figure crouched.
His skin shimmered with obsidian red, veins pulsing with streaks of fiery yellow, as if his blood burned with molten hatred. Tendrils of something alive twitched beneath his coat a coat that moved even when the wind was still.
They called him Katzuki.
Some said he was a failed bioweapon. Others claimed he made a deal with a dying god. What Katzuki really was he didn't even care anymore.
He wasn't a hero.
He wasn't a villain.
He was the storm that hit both sides.
Katzuki watched the news feed flickering in a warped screen embedded in his arm. Reports of ghost festival disappearances. Of river-black rituals. Of a man in a beaked mask lighting up the Bund like judgment day.
His lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Shanghai's bleeding again. Tch."
His hand crackled with crimson energy raw, violent, alive. Tendrils of blood-Dark red, yellow light coiled around his fingers like starving serpents, hissing and snapping as they danced over his knuckles. The air around him warped from the heat, the stench of burning ozone mingling with the iron tang of old blood.
He stood still silent, unmoved power pulsing at his fingertips like a heart ready to kill.
He stood, body shifting with a sick, unnatural grace like flesh unbound from bone. Muscles rippled beneath his coat like liquid shadow, surging and twisting as if something deeper, darker writhed beneath his skin. Every movement whispered violence.
And with that, Katzuki disappeared into the smog, his boots thudding against concrete and rusted metal as he vaulted from rooftop to rooftop. No dramatic exit just swift, precise movement, like a trained predator fading into the city's spine. He didn't look back. He wasn't a savior. He was a weapon silent, deliberate, and waiting for his next target.
The First Clash Chongqing's Heights
The rain fell in sheets, cascading down the towering buildings of Chongqing. Beneath the glistening neon lights, shadows moved like living creatures. Katzuki stood atop a decrepit skyscraper, his body flickering with an eerie glow red and yellow veins, pulsing beneath his skin like a living flame. His eyes scanned the streets below, his heightened senses aware of something unnatural stirring in the city.
He could feel it the Archons their dark power slithering through the city like poison in the water. But there was another presence, too. A foreign one. Familiar, yet different. Something that didn't belong.
He growled low, clenching his fist. "Someone's in my way."
The Plague Doctor's Approach
The Plague Doctor stood across the city, far from the chaos in the streets. His figure cloaked in darkness, a broken mask obscuring his true face. His boots echoed with grim resolve as he moved swiftly through alleyways, his mind focused solely on his target.
He'd tracked the Archons' influence to this city, and it had led him to a shadow far more dangerous than the usual pawns. His dagger gleamed in the dim light, the obsidian blade crafted from the same alien materials that had slain the monstrous entities before. He knew the Archons' servants had no humanity left, but someone with a human form, like this one, was dangerous.
He turned a corner and came face-to-face with a bloodied trail leading to the rooftop. Someone had been here.
Then, from the shadows, a flash of movement.
The Plague Doctor's instincts screamed, and he whirled around, dagger raised. The figure he saw next was like nothing he'd ever encountered an inhumanly distorted being, veins glowing like fire, skin burning with an unnatural red-yellow aura. This was no mere soldier of the Archons it was something worse.
"You'll make a fine sacrifice," the Plague Doctor muttered beneath his breath, eyes narrowing. He stepped forward, his dagger at the ready.
The Fight Begins
The air around Katzuki crackled with energy as he looked down at the figure before him. The Plague Doctor's stance was aggressive, his weapon ready to strike. There was no mistaking it this was an enemy. A servant of the Archons. Katzuki could see it in the man's eyes, feel it in the air he was here to stop him.
Katzuki's muscles tensed. "You think I'm with them?" He snarled, voice thick with fury. "Then you're dead wrong."
Before the Plague Doctor could react, Katzuki exploded forward like a raging storm. His tendrils of molten energy lashed out, striking the Plague Doctor with the fury of a thousand burning suns. The force sent the masked man skidding back, his cloak tearing in the wake of the blow.
But the Plague Doctor didn't falter. With unnerving speed, he spun, slashing his dagger through the air. The blade collided with Katzuki's fiery tendrils, the impact sending sparks flying as the two forces met in a blinding flash of light.
Katzuki's form shimmered, and in an instant, he was behind the Plague Doctor. The assassin barely had time to react before a lash of fiery tendrils whipped across his back, tearing through his cloak and leaving deep gashes in his flesh.
"Not bad," Katzuki grunted, his glowing skin flaring hotter. "But you're still too slow.
Relentless Assault
The Plague Doctor growled beneath his mask, feeling the burn of his wounds. The pain was familiar. But what unnerved him was the fact that his opponent was so fast too fast. This wasn't just some mindless creature; this was a force.
"You're not one of them," the Plague Doctor muttered. "But you're still a threat."
The Plague Doctor moved with practiced precision, tossing vials of poisonous mist into the air. The gas erupted, choking the space between them with thick, acrid fumes. Katzuki's glowing form flickered in the fog, his body turning into a shifting mass of red hot light as he fought through the gas.
Katzuki's body shimmered as he willed the fire within him to surge. Flames erupted from his fists, consuming the fog, igniting it into an inferno. He struck forward again, his hands a blur of motion, sending burning waves toward the Plague Doctor.
The Plague Doctor parried with his dagger, cutting through the air, but the flames were too much. One tendril wrapped around his dagger, disarming him in an instant. He barely had time to react before Katzuki's fist plowed into his chest, sending him crashing to the ground.
The impact left a massive crater in the rooftop, shards of concrete and twisted metal flying in all directions. The Plague Doctor lay there, stunned, his vision swimming.
The Realization
Katzuki stood over the Plague Doctor, ready to end the fight. His energy surged, tendrils poised to strike. But then, a thought hit him this man isn't one of them.
The Plague Doctor gasped for breath, pushing himself up, his hand reaching for his belt, where a special vial sat. He drew it and uncorked it, spilling a thin trail of liquid that sizzled when it touched the ground. He raised it to his lips, draining the vial in a single gulp, his wounds healing almost immediately.
Katzuki watched, his fiery tendrils wavering as the man healed in front of him.
"You heal fast," Katzuki said, his voice low. "You're not one of theirs."
The Plague Doctor staggered to his feet, eyeing Katzuki cautiously. His grip tightened on a second vial, preparing for the next move. "I'm not with the Archons, if that's what you think. I'm here to stop them."
Katzuki's glowing eyes narrowed. "Then we're on the same side."
The Plague Doctor, now fully recovered, stood to his full height. He wiped the blood from his mask and let out a heavy sigh. "Why didn't you say that earlier?"
Katzuki, still glowing, cracked a crooked smile. "I was trying to kill you, man. You're kind of hard to talk to when you're trying to kill me with that weird dagger."
The Plague Doctor raised an eyebrow. "If it's any consolation, I was about to slit your throat too."
Katzuki laughed, the flames on his body flickering. "Well, we've both got bad communication skills, huh?"
The Plague Doctor couldn't help but smirk beneath his mask. "It seems we do. But maybe we should work on that... after we stop the real threat."
Katzuki glanced at the wreckage around them, the distant rumble of shadows stirring beneath the city. "I guess so." He cracked his knuckles. "But first "
The Plague Doctor raised a hand, stopping him. "Yes, yes. No more fighting. I don't need to get another round of that."
Katzuki grinned widely. "So, what's your name, Mr. Masked Psycho?"
"I'm called the Plague Doctor."
"Hah, fitting. I'm Katzuki. Don't worry, I'll leave the 'killing you' part out this time."
The Plague Doctor snorted, but the tension between them seemed to dissipate. For the first time, both of them felt like they might actually have allies in this war.
Katzuki tilted his head. "So, you're saying, now we're, like... friends?"
The Plague Doctor hesitated for a moment. "Let's just say we're allies."
Katzuki laughed. "Allies, friends, same thing. But seriously, next time we're teaming up, we need better communication."
The Plague Doctor simply nodded. "Agreed. Let's save the world... if we don't kill each other first."
They shared a brief moment of understanding before turning their attention back to the streets below. The city was teeming with shadows the Archons were still out there. But for now, they were no longer enemies. Just two warriors, caught in the chaos of something much worse.