The journey to the Deep Market and the old slaughterhouse was a grim passage through the festering heart of The Pit. Ravi walked with that same unnerving, deliberate limp, the newly acquired dagger tucked into his ragged belt. Mira trailed a step behind him, her rebar spear held loosely, her mind a whirlwind of fear, awe, and a dawning, terrible excitement. The usual denizens of the slum melted away before Ravi's approach. Word of the confrontation at his hovel, of the brutal dispatching of Fenrir's enforcers, had spread with supernatural speed, carried on whispers of terror. They saw the cold, implacable set of his jaw, the ancient abyss in his eyes, and they scattered like rats before a coming storm. No one dared meet his gaze.
The Deep Market was the slum's black heart, a chaotic, stench-filled maze where the most desperate and depraved bartered for the most illicit goods – diluted narcotics, stolen trinkets, occasionally even human flesh. The air here was thicker, fouler, heavy with the smells of cheap drugs, unwashed bodies, fear, and something else… old blood. It clung to the back of the throat, a constant reminder of the slaughterhouse's former, and perhaps current, purpose.
The slaughterhouse itself loomed at the edge of the Deep Market, a dilapidated two-story structure of blackened stone and rotting wood, its windows dark and empty like vacant eye sockets. A pair of surly, heavily armed Red Fangs stood guard at its main, reinforced door, their expressions a mixture of boredom and ingrained brutality. They straightened up, hands going to their weapons, as Ravi and Mira approached.
"Halt! Who goes there?" one of them barked, his voice rough. "This is Fenrir's—"
He never finished his sentence.
Ravi didn't slow his pace. As he drew level, his hand blurred. The newly acquired dagger flashed in the dim light. There was a wet, tearing sound, and the guard gurgled, clutching at his throat as blood gushed between his fingers. He stumbled back, eyes wide with shocked disbelief, before collapsing.
The second guard, momentarily stunned by the sudden, lethal efficiency, fumbled for his axe. Before he could raise it, Ravi was on him. A palm strike to the chest, imbued with that unnatural, bone-jarring force, sent the man flying backward several feet to crash against the slaughterhouse wall with a sickening thud. He slid down, gasping, ribs clearly shattered, his weapon clattering beside him.
Ravi didn't spare them a second glance. He kicked open the reinforced door. It shuddered on its hinges but held. He kicked again, harder this time. The wood around the lock splintered, and the door groaned inward with a shriek of tortured metal.
Mira, her heart pounding, followed him into the oppressive darkness of the slaughterhouse. The stench inside was overwhelming – stale blood, offal, rat droppings, and the unwashed scent of too many bodies crammed into too small a space. Dim light filtered in from grimy, broken windows high above, illuminating a vast, cavernous main chamber. Rusty hooks hung from the ceiling, some still bearing suspicious dark stains. Crude tables and benches were scattered about. And in the center, on a raised platform fashioned from stacked crates and draped with tattered, filthy furs, sat Fenrir, the Rat King.
He was a mountain of a man, not tall but immensely broad, with a piggish face, small, cruel eyes, and a greasy, matted beard. He wore crude iron rings on his thick fingers and a vest made of stitched-together rat pelts over his bare, flabby chest. He was flanked by his toughest-looking thugs, a dozen or so hardened killers armed with axes, cleavers, and heavy clubs. A pair of terrified, half-starved young women, clad in rags, cowered near his makeshift throne, their eyes hollow with despair. Fenrir was gnawing on a roasted joint of some unidentifiable meat, grease dripping down his chin.
He looked up as Ravi and Mira entered, his small eyes narrowing. The sudden, violent intrusion clearly surprised him.
"Well, now," Fenrir rumbled, his voice a gravelly sneer. He tossed the bone aside. "Look what the sewer coughed up. I was wondering when my boys would drag your pathetic carcass in. Didn't expect you to deliver yourself, cripple. And with a little appetizer too." His gaze lingered on Mira with lewd appraisal, making her skin crawl.
"You are Fenrir?" Ravi asked, his voice calm, echoing slightly in the vast, grim chamber. It cut through the nervous murmurs of the surrounding thugs.
Fenrir laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "The one and only! Rat King of this shit-hole, and soon to be the one who skins you alive for daring to touch my men!" He leaned forward, his piggy eyes gleaming with sadistic amusement. "Heard you were some kind of bone-breaker. Impressive. But you're in my den now, little man. Here, I make the rules. And the first rule is: you kneel before the King!"
Several of his thugs grinned, hefting their weapons, eager for the signal to pounce. They outnumbered Ravi and Mira more than six to one, and these were Fenrir's chosen enforcers, the most brutal and loyal of his Red Fangs.
Ravi surveyed the scene – the arrogant tyrant, his brutal enforcers, the terrified captives. His expression remained impassive, but the air around him began to drop in temperature, the divine pressure coiling, ready to be unleashed.
"Kneel?" Ravi repeated, a faint, almost imperceptible note of cosmic disdain in his tone. "To vermin such as you?" He took a slow, deliberate step forward. "You misunderstand your position. You are not a king. You are a festering boil on the face of this slum, and I am the blade that has come to lance you."
Fenrir's face darkened with rage at the insult. The sheer audacity of this crippled stranger, in the heart of his power, was astounding. "Impudent bastard! You think that fancy talk will save you? Kill him! Make it slow! I want to hear him scream!" he roared, pointing a thick, sausage-like finger at Ravi.
The Red Fangs surged forward with savage yells, weapons raised, eager to tear Ravi apart.
This was the moment Ravi had been waiting for. The full concentration of sinners in one place.
He didn't draw the dagger. He didn't need to.
As the first wave of thugs closed in, Ravi unleashed.
It wasn't a physical blow, not at first. It was the "Creator's Intent," the "Godly Aura," magnified tenfold, a focused shockwave of pure, terrifying psychic force.
CRUSH!
The effect was instantaneous and devastating. The charging thugs stumbled as if hit by an invisible battering ram. Their bravado evaporated, replaced by sudden, overwhelming terror. Their minds were assaulted by an ancient, alien presence, a force so vast and cold it threatened to shatter their sanity. Some clutched their heads, screaming, dropping their weapons. Others simply froze, their eyes wide with uncomprehending horror, their limbs refusing to obey. The air in the slaughterhouse became thick, heavy, charged with an almost visible energy that crackled around Ravi.
Fenrir, on his throne, felt it too. A suffocating pressure that made his heart seize, a primal fear that cut through his rage like a hot knife through lard. He stared, his jaw slack, as his toughest men were reduced to quivering, screaming wrecks without Ravi even laying a hand on them.
"W-what sorcery is this?!" Fenrir stammered, scrambling back on his makeshift throne.
Ravi moved. His limp seemed to vanish, replaced by an eerie, gliding grace. He was a wraith of vengeance cutting through the chaos.
The first thug who managed to shake off the initial psychic blast enough to swing a cleaver found his weapon arm caught in an iron grip. Ravi twisted. The sickening CRUNCH of bone was followed by a howl of agony. Ravi then drove his palm into the man's chest. Not a gentle push, but a focused strike that felt like being hit by a battering ram. The thug's eyes rolled back as he flew several feet, crashing into a support pillar with enough force to make the whole structure groan, and then slid to the floor, unmoving.
Another, attempting to stab him from the side, found his wrist seized. Ravi snapped it with a casual flick, then drove his elbow into the man's face. The sound of shattering bone and teeth was sickeningly loud. The thug crumpled.
Each movement was precise, economical, and brutally effective. Bones shattered, bodies were broken and tossed aside like rag dolls. He moved through the Red Fangs not like a man fighting for his life, but like a harvester culling diseased wheat. The screams of the injured and dying filled the slaughterhouse, a symphony of terror and agony.
Mira watched, rooted to the spot near the entrance, her rebar spear forgotten. Her mind struggled to process what she was seeing. This wasn't a fight; it was a slaughter. The terrifying power Ravi had displayed before was nothing compared to this. He was an avatar of destruction, his eyes glowing with a faint, internal luminescence, his every movement radiating an aura of absolute, terrifying power. Goosebumps erupted all over her skin; a chill that was part fear, part intoxicating awe, coursed through her veins.
Fenrir, his face pale and sweaty, watched his elite guard being dismantled with horrifying ease. His arrogance had completely vanished, replaced by a desperate, crawling terror. This wasn't a man. This was a demon, a god, something else. He fumbled behind his throne, his eyes darting for an escape route, but there was none.
In less than a minute, it was over. The floor of the slaughterhouse was littered with the groaning, broken forms of the Red Fangs. Only Fenrir remained, trembling on his throne, and Ravi, standing amidst the carnage, his rags undisturbed, his breathing even.
Ravi's cold, luminous eyes settled on Fenrir.
"You wished for me to kneel," Ravi said, his voice resonating with an unnatural power that vibrated in the very stones of the slaughterhouse. "Now, it is your turn."
Fenrir, his bluster gone, his face a mask of abject terror, slid off his throne and fell to his knees, his bulk quivering. "M-mercy! Please, I… I have coin! Jewels! Anything you want! Just… just spare me!" he blubbered, his voice hoarse with fear.
Ravi slowly advanced, each step sounding like a nail being driven into Fenrir's coffin. "You spoke of making beggars fight to the death for your amusement. Of taking the young and innocent for your depraved pleasures." Ravi's voice was like the grinding of glaciers. "Your sins are… extensive."
He stopped before the kneeling, trembling Rat King.
"You enjoyed the suffering of others," Ravi continued, his gaze boring into Fenrir's soul. "It is only fitting that your end reflects your tastes."
Ravi reached out, not with the dagger, but with his bare hand. He placed it on Fenrir's head. Fenrir whimpered, shutting his eyes tight, expecting a swift, brutal end.
It wasn't swift.
A faint, dark energy began to coalesce around Ravi's hand. Fenrir started to scream, a horrifying, soul-tearing sound that was abruptly cut short as his body began to convulse violently. His eyes snapped open, wide with unimaginable agony and terror. He felt… everything. Every bit of pain he had ever inflicted on others, every moment of fear, every despairing cry, all of it surged back into him, amplified a thousandfold, a psychic torrent of pure suffering. His fat body shriveled, his skin cracking, aging at an accelerated rate. His greasy hair turned white and fell out in clumps. He was experiencing the karmic weight of his entire miserable existence in a few horrifying seconds.
The two captive young women, who had been watching in terrified silence, gasped, covering their mouths. Mira felt a wave of nausea, yet she couldn't look away. The raw, divine retribution was both horrifying and undeniably, terribly just.
When Ravi finally removed his hand, Fenrir was a withered, desiccated husk, barely recognizable, his eyes wide and vacant, frozen in a silent scream of eternal torment. He slumped to the floor, dead, his soul scoured clean by the sheer weight of his own sins.
Ravi looked at the remains of the Rat King, then his gaze swept over the broken thugs, some still groaning, others mercifully unconscious or dead. He turned to Mira, whose face was pale but whose eyes shone with a complex mixture of terror, relief, and something akin to worship. He then looked at the two cowering captives.
His voice, though still imbued with that chilling power, softened almost imperceptibly. "You are free."
He then raised his voice, and it boomed through the slaughterhouse, carrying out into the Deep Market, reaching the ears of every trembling slum dweller within earshot.
"Fenrir, the Rat King, is dead. His reign of terror is over." A pause, pregnant with unspoken threat and promise. "This sector is under new management. The old rules are dead. Sin will be punished. This is my only warning."
He turned and walked towards the entrance of the slaughterhouse, stepping over the carnage without a glance.
Mira, after a moment of stunned hesitation, hurried after him. As they stepped out into the relative light of the Deep Market, they found it eerily silent. Every eye was on them, on Ravi. Fear, yes, but also a dawning, incredulous awe. The Rat King, the untouchable tyrant, was dead. Slain by this one, limping stranger.
The moniker "Bone-Breaker" or "Demon-Eyes" no longer felt adequate.
In the hushed whispers that followed their departure, a new title began to take root, spoken with a mixture of terror and reverence.
The Slum God.
The balance of power in The Pit had not just shifted; it had been utterly shattered. And the shockwaves were just beginning to spread. Who, from the wider, more 'civilized' city beyond the slum's borders, would be the first to take notice of this new, terrifying power that had just declared its dominion?