His stomach convulsed violently, bulging in unnatural pulses. Suddenly, hands—dark, clawed, and grotesquely human—began pressing outward from his belly, pushing beneath the skin as if trying to claw their way out.
The sight was horrifying.
It was like watching a child try to break free from the womb, but through flesh instead of the birth canal—desperate, violent, wrong.
Zeck's body thrashed as he fought against whatever was happening, but it was no use. The hands pressed harder, the skin stretching to its limit. His veins bulged along his neck and arms, and blood soaked through his shirt as the thing inside kept pushing.
Gasps and murmurs rippled through the crowd, but no one moved.
Even the Reaper, still wrapped in his quiet stillness, watched with unreadable eyes, his bandaged form unmoved by the scene unfolding.
A sickening rip echoed through the arena.
Zeck's lower abdomen split open, and to the horror of everyone watching, a child—fragile and covered in blood—fell out of him.
Gasps swept through the crowd like a wave. The audience had seen madness in this arena before—limbs torn off, men burned alive, beasts unleashed. But this... this was something else entirely.
No one moved. No one spoke.
The child—barely able to sit up—began to weep, its tiny body trembling on the blood-slick floor. The cry wasn't loud, but in the eerie silence, it sounded deafening. Almost… human.
The commentators, usually quick with their wild reactions, fell quiet for a moment. Then one of them finally broke the silence.
"Ladies and gentlemen… what in the seven hells are we witnessing right now? A… child? Born from pain? Born from Zeck?"
All eyes turned back to Zeck.
Still breathing hard, blood caked around his mouth, he slowly leaned forward. His stomach—ripped wide just seconds ago—was already healing, flesh stitching itself back together as if the wound had never been there.
The other commentator leaned in, voice hushed but intense.
"I don't know what kind of dark magic this is, but I swear on the bones of every fighter in this arena—this is a first."
Zeck reached out, gently touching the child's face. For a moment, everything paused. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then the child looked up and whispered, "Papa."
Zeck froze. His breath caught.
He gathered the child into his arms—but almost instantly, the small body began to break apart, like it was decomposing in real-time. Chunks of flesh dropped from the child, sizzling as they hit the ground, burning through the stone like acid.
The commentators gasped.
"What the—! It's melting! The child is… he's disintegrating!"
The weeping stopped.
All that remained was a sword, lying where the child's body had been. A strange, dark blade, pulsing faintly like it had a heartbeat of its own.
Gasps erupted across the arena.
That sword—there was no mistaking it.
Dreadfang.
The blade of Killmonger. The blade that once danced in this very ring when Killmonger faced the Reaper and vanished into legend. Many thought the Reaper had destroyed him. Others whispered that the sword had been sealed away, buried with a brother's shame.
Yet here it was… reborn from Zeck's flesh.
The silence in the crowd was deafening. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Melissa's head turned sharply toward the scarred man beside her, her voice caught in her throat. But for once, he didn't meet her gaze. He stared into the arena, stunned—frozen, like the past had reached out and dragged him into the present.
Then he spoke.
"That's Dreadfang... Killmonger's sword."
His voice cracked slightly, the name tasting like blood on his tongue.
"He was his brother, wasn't he?" Melissa whispered.
He nodded.
"Zeck. The younger brother."
Melissa's thoughts swirled. The Reaper had killed Killmonger in this same ring. Everyone saw it. Or thought they did.
And now Zeck, in the middle of the same arena, had given birth to Killmonger's sword like it had been gestating in vengeance.
"This might be the end of the road for the Reaper," the scarred man added softly.
Melissa's breath caught.
"He's not here to win," she said, echoing his earlier words.
"No," he agreed. "He's here to rewrite what happened that day."
Zeck stood, Dreadfang in hand, and raised his eyes toward the Reaper.
Zeck didn't move forward.
He simply raised the sword — Dreadfang pulsing with ancient hunger — and the air around him shimmered like heat on steel. Then came the sound.
BOOM.
A sonic blast tore through the arena. The shockwave cracked the ground beneath him, hurling debris toward the Reaper.
Before the Reaper could even react—before his instincts could catch up to the danger—Zeck was already there.
With a single, clean arc, he sliced through the Reaper's left hand.
Time seemed to slow.
The severed hand flew in the air, then hit the ground with a dull thud.
Then something that they had seen all to well happened —all the blood from the severed limb began to pull backwards, sucked violently into the blade as though the sword were drinking it.
The Reaper stumbled back, clutching his mutilated arm. It didn't rot. It disintegrated, turning to dust on impact with the earth.
All that remained was the old bandage the Reaper had always wrapped.
The arena was dead silent.
Dreadfang glowed faintly.