Chapter 72: Ashes of Eden
He'd expected this. It was why he'd held back against Olson. Beating the Wire Dog boss wasn't the point, showing Gregor enough to follow was. If that failed, he'd cut him down and rebuild the gang from whatever pieces were left.
No hesitation. No loyalty. He'd raze and start over if he had to. Just not yet.
"Ivan Cho, Head of Security for Woon Corp. Correct?"
Gregor's aura twitched before his face did. A tell.
"So. You consumed his memories."
His tone sharpened.
"That makes this simpler."
Azakh-Tur cocked a brow.
"Simpler? You think this is easy?"
His voice dropped, rough as stone.
"You don't understand. Nothing about me is easy. Tell me, human, what stops me from killing you right now? Don't mistake me. I could split you apart as quickly as anyone rotting in the street outside."
Gregor didn't blink. Calm, even with death on his throat.
"You help me get what I want, and I make everything run smooth. No conflict with Min. No trouble from the gang. I'll even bind it in contract if you wish. I just ask one thing first."
A smile crept across Azakh-Tur's face.
"And what's that?"
Gregor's eyes went cold.
"Show me your strength. Prove I'm right to put faith in you."
Faith. The word hit strange, sharp and mocking. Faith in him? Comical. Yet it carried weight. Pressure.
"Bold...You know I can kill you, yet you still ask for proof. I like it."
He tilted his head.
"You hide your aura well. Can you do the same for others?"
"I can. We're within range."
Without waiting, smoke seeped from Gregor's boots, black and slow, crawling into the corners of the room. It held no smell, even vision wasn't affected, but Azakh-Tur could feel it, the outside world seemed to vanish, cut away.
'This is how I didn't notice him before he shot that armored idiot. Dangerous human.'
"If you can't hold, say something, I don't want Dead Hands bursting in."
Gregor's grin widened.
"Don't worry. You won't break it...this..."
Gregor's words faltered as he watched. His composure didn't crack, but his silence did.
Cloth tore. Skin warped. Claws pushed through, wet and sharp. Horns punched out, splitting scalp and bone. Seo-jin's human guise sloughed off like dead meat until only the demon stood.
He flexed. Bones shifted. Flesh split. Butcher's Wrath tore itself free from his body, sinew stretching, tendons snapping. Living cleavers, breathing violence.
Gregor tensed. He'd seen them in combat, saw the blood they carved, but not their birthing. The sound of wet bone grinding in a body that should've been human.
Azakh-Tur stood in his full glory, his pitch-black skin cracked and lined with pulsing red, horns jutting, black at the base and burning toward their tips. His tail, tipped with a spearhead of bone, lashed the steel floor, carving a groove with each strike.
'Let's see what breaks.'
Bloodlight began to rise.
It didn't explode outward. It crawled, a slow seep, like smoke leaking from a wound in reality. The light bled up from his pores and slithered along the walls, staining them crimson.
Gregor's chest tightened as the shadows around him buckled against the weight pressing in. His mana bled faster, pouring out just to keep the aura contained.
The room darkened. Not from lack of light, but because the air itself seemed choked. Corners stretched long, warped. The graffiti on the walls twisted into snarling faces, every skull and sigil writhing like it wanted to scream. For a moment, the office wasn't the Dead Hands den at all—it was the Maw itself, gnashing and alive.
Gregor had fought monsters, men, demons. He had gambled against odds that should've killed him. But the thing standing in front of him wasn't a gamble. His body told him what his mind didn't want to admit: even with Min at his side, they'd die here. No victory, no survival.
Sweat rolled down his temple. His teeth ground. His muscles shook, locked in place. His ability was breaking—straining to hide what couldn't be hidden.
Azakh-Tur could only smile.
He hadn't pushed his aura like this before. Not fully. Never let it breathe. Now it roared through him, filling marrow and muscle, surging out unchecked. The strength he'd stolen from the dungeon coiled hot in his veins, feeding the tide. It was intoxicating.
'So this is what I've been holding back.'
The walls groaned under the weight of it, the floor creaked like it might split.
Gregor's vision blurred, his knees threatening to drop. He forced the words out through grit teeth, spit flecking his lips.
"...Enough!"
In a blink, it was gone.
The walls uncoiled, the faces in the graffiti stilled, the Maw bled out of the room like vapor sucked through a crack.
Gregor collapsed forward, hands braced on his knees, breath tearing out of him. His chest heaved, sweat dripping from his chin to the floor. Azakh-Tur sneered at the sight, ready to mock the human's weakness—
Then Gregor snapped upright.
His eyes burned. His shoulders shook with laughter. It wasn't relief. It wasn't joy. It was something jagged, cracked and wrong. The sound crawled across the steel walls like rust eating metal.
"Where do I sign?!"
Even Azakh-Tur stalled. The rush of power still humming in his veins soured at the sudden absurdity of it. For the first time in hours, he felt awkward. Small. Like the high of his aura had been spat on.
He forced his voice steady.
"Give me the day I asked. I'll have a contract by then."
Gregor's grin didn't falter. He stood, spine straight, still shaking faintly. The smoke around them thinned, drawn back into him until the room was clear.
"Do not be offended when I read every word. Until then—"
His tone dropped, business-like, sharp.
"—I need a story for Min. For the others. They'll want to know what happened to the Wire Dogs."
Azakh-Tur's tail flicked against the floor, bone scraping steel. He thought for a beat, then spoke flat.
"Tell 'em I came back through a rift. Dungeon dropped the second I arrived. That's where I ran into Lynn and John. On the way back we crossed some Wire Dogs, heard their plan. Their base was close, so I butchered every last one of 'em before coming here to finish the job. That should sound like something Seo-jin would do."
Gregor's grin faltered, but only slightly. The edges dulled.
"Da. That sounds like him."
He turned, hand on the doorframe. Paused.
"Twenty-four hours."
Then he left.
The silence after hung heavy. Azakh-Tur eased back into Seo-jin's skin, the horns receding, the cleavers withdrawing. He stared at the closed door, jaw tight, that awkward feeling crawling back up his throat.
"So... any idea how contracts work?"
[Negative.]
"Yeah…"
He dragged a hand down his face.
"Shit."
----
Close to Dead Hands territory, an office building towered over the docks, a husk of concrete and broken glass. Wire Dog colors scrawled across every wall. Snarling hounds, chains, jagged lightning bolts, but one piece dominated the front. A cybernetic black dog, its ribs torn open, lightning spilling from the wound. Teeth bared. Eyes hollow.
The ground floor should've been guarded. Instead, there were only scraps. A boot with half a leg still inside. A hand chewed down to the wrist. A ribcage crushed flat.
The climb higher painted it worse.
Second floor...rubble, overturned tables, bodies left where they'd been cut down. Some torn apart raw, others pulped until they were barely shapes.
Third floor...cleaner cuts, but crueler. A head hung from the ceiling, its spinal column still attached, stretched like rope. Two more dangled beside it, swinging in the draft. A body nailed to the wall with broken wood and bent machetes, its skin peeled back, pinned like parchment.
Fourth floor...posed dead. Arms and legs hacked off, placed at odd angles. Faces arranged into grim masks. Laughter frozen into their features, forced by knives digging into the flesh.
A scream ripped through the silence. High. Raw. Human.
Another followed. Above.
The top floor.
The barricade around the office door was thick. Desks, beams, plates of scorched steel riddled with bullet holes. Whatever had been inside tried to keep the monsters out. It hadn't worked.
Inside, the carnage was complete.
Pain hunched over a corpse like a burning nightmare, his jaws wet, his claws still buried in the cavity as he ate. Across from him, Snare sat slouched in a chair, papers in hand. His eyes crawled over the text, ignoring the stench and the noise.
Another scream.
Neither flinched.
At the far end, Panic worked. No smirk. No giggle. His eyes were steady, his movements precise. The man on the table still breathed, still twitched, but his body from the neck down was nothing but dead meat. Panic's blade carved slow. Careful. Each stroke peeled, shaved, shaped.
Screams split the air, choked and broken. Panic didn't waver. He wasn't cutting...he was sculpting.
The Wire Dogs were gone. Food for the Brood.
----
Four hours bled out across the office. Gregor gone. Lynn and John had come, received their orders, and left with warnings to keep silent about the dungeon. He'd wrung them both dry for certainty...made sure neither would turn liability.
Now he sat in the chair behind the scarred desk, hunched, motionless. The only sound came from the faint brush of fur against skin. The rabbit's foot pendant rolled between his fingers.
Something else stirred with him. A faint grind from inside his chest cavity, vertebrae clicking as if a lock was being tested. Blue light leaked through the cracks of his ribs before dying again, the sound of bone settling back into sleep.
The pendant felt better than anything else he'd pulled from the dungeon. More than loot—it had weight. It had proven itself when he called the Elderwarren at the docks. He could still taste the chaos of it.
Another hour. The scrape of charm against skin continued. The rattle inside him returned. Louder. Grimm slipped free this time, his skull dragging a dangling spine, intestines swaying like wet cords as he floated to the edge of the desk. His glow mixed with the bloodlight seeping from his master. Silent. Watching.
But the pendant wasn't what consumed him. Not tonight. He wasn't measuring damage values or running soulmass tallies. He was drowning in memory, rifling through every stolen scrap of this ruined world he could claw at. Sorting it. Stacking it. Trying to make sense of it.
Hours passed. His back stiffened. His shoulders locked until the wood beneath his hand creaked. Bloodlight itched under his skin, rising with the pressure until his grip dented the desk. Grimm hovered inches away, intestines trembling, sockets glowing steady.
The words ripped out raw.
"There's no green…"
[Recommendation: User heart rate exceeding safe threshold—]
"You lied."
The words tore out like a wound.
"It's gone. All of it—gone. This world's ruined...you showed me green! Where the fuck is it?!"
Bloodlight detonated under his skin. It wasn't a flare; it was a rupture. Heat and pain threaded through him, a furnace opening beneath his ribs.
"I'll make you pay..."
He spat the vow, every syllable a promise hammered into bone.
"I'll carve it into my flesh, into my soul. I'll find a way. I'm gonna kill you."
The room had pitched sideways. The ceiling dragged like a smear across his vision. His chest swelled, pressure clawing at bone as if his organs were boiling to escape.
Memories cut through him—stolen flashes of a lusher world. Trees, fields, sky. Green. But every image tore apart the longer he stared, peeling back to what lay beneath. Not innocence. Not purity. Ash.
Through Seo-jin's mind he'd seen the truth. A world that survived only by force. Humanity hadn't rebuilt through unity, it clawed power from ruin. Strength was law. The weak bent, broke, or bled. Cities fractured, gangs, religious cults and corporations carving out dominion like butchers stripping meat.
The only "order" left sat beneath the boots of the five kings, and even their shelter came poisoned. Their protection was ransom, bought in flesh and blood.
There was no green left to guard. No ground untouched. Murder wasn't crime, it was currency. Death came as casual as breath. Even before he arrived, earth was already corrupted beyond return.
The pictures that had once driven him, the promise of innocence unspoiled, collapsed to dust in his skull.
Ash. Nothing but ash.
The Convergence had seen to that. It tore through and bled the color out, leaving only rot, steel, and hunger in its wake. Users and the Network. Alien realms clawing at the edges. Nothing untouched. Nothing green.
Grimm hovered, blue and small against the red wash, spine and intestines swinging like a metronome. The ghost didn't judge; it only watched as the fury washed through its master...now calm on the surface, a stormed god underneath.
He leaned forward until his knuckles whitened on the desk, breath ripping loud in the quiet. Rage and grief braided into something colder, harder.
"I'll bring it back...even if I have to destroy the world to do it."
Grimm's blue light lowered to his shoulder, small and indifferent.
"If there's nothing left to ruin, what the hell did I even come here for?"