The slums were quiet after Garrik's retreat, but Aiden knew silence was never safety. Power unguarded was power stolen, and the Black Fangs—or someone worse—would return.
That night, beneath the broken arch, he gathered his boys. Ten now, lean and sharp-eyed, each owing their bellies to him. They waited for orders, not scraps.
"We survived Garrik," Aiden began, his voice low but steady. "But survival is not enough. A rat survives. We must be more."
The boys exchanged nervous glances. Aiden stood, lifting the pendant from beneath his shirt. Its faint glow cast his face in pale light.
"From this day forward, no one touches us without bleeding for it. You are not beggars. You are my men. And I will give you more than food—I will give you strength."
Strength, however, did not mean wild brawling. Aiden knew brute force would never win against men like Garrik. He needed something sharper.
He began small. Wooden sticks for practice. Stones for aim. Quiet drills in abandoned courtyards where no guards bothered to wander. He taught his boys how to strike together, how to feint, how to retreat without panic.
He drilled them in silence, in patience, in discipline. "Noise is weakness," he told them. "A dog barks. A wolf waits."
At first they laughed, but the first time three boys working in tandem disarmed one larger brute, the laughter turned to awe.
Weapons came next. Not swords—the slums could not afford such luxuries—but knives, clubs, sharpened scrap. Aiden spent coin carefully, ensuring each of his men had steel hidden in their belts. "You are not to wave them like fools," he warned. "Steel is shown only when it ends a fight."
As weeks passed, the change was unmistakable. The boys grew harder, faster, sharper. What had once been a ragged group of orphans became something else—a unit. And Aiden, once mocked as the ghost, now stood before them as a leader.
But Aiden did not stop there.
He spread his net wider, weaving together power not just of knives, but of whispers. Merchants who borrowed his coin now feared his men. Hawkers who gossiped too freely found their stalls overturned. Aiden punished betrayal with swiftness but rewarded loyalty with food, shelter, and coin.
By summer's end, the ghost controlled three alleys outright.
The Black Fangs vanished into silence.
And for the first time, Aiden felt the weight of something he had never known before—respect.
One evening, as he stood on the rooftop of a crumbling house, watching the noble banners flutter above the hill, one of his boys spoke. "Master Aiden… what are we now? A gang?"
Aiden shook his head, eyes fixed on the horizon. "No. Gangs fight for scraps. We are builders. One day, this city will feed from our hands. Even the hill will look down and see us."
The boy was silent, but the others began to whisper the name among themselves: The Ghost's Men.
And Aiden let them.
For ghosts did not haunt forever. Some rose from shadows to become kings.