Night hung heavy over the city, a blanket of rain and lights that barely pierced the darkness. In a forgotten alleyway, where peeling walls told stories of despair, Gin writhed between screams and moans. Beside her, Bigby lay on the ground, his body battered and bloodied, the victim of a brutal beating amid the urban violence.
"Someone, please!" Gin cried out in a trembling voice as she tried to keep Bigby conscious. The few passersby who dared to cross that place looked away, knowing that the night offered more dangers than they could imagine, and no one wanted to dare to intervene. At that moment, an aura of silence settled over the alley. From the darkness emerged a man with a cold, determined gaze, whose footsteps echoed with an almost mechanical sound. Without saying a word, he approached with the confidence of someone who knows his way in the dark. His clothing was dark and practical, and in his hand he carried a key that glinted subtly.
"I can help." Gin looked at him with relief and nodded quickly.
"My car isn't far away," said the stranger. He bent down and helped Gin carry his friend. On the way, the good Samaritan asked Gin a few questions.
"Tell me, what happened?"
"I don't know. He knocked on my door and before he passed out, he told me that a gang was chasing him," said Gin in a broken voice.
"I see. Did he tell you anything about this gang?"
"He just begged me to take him to my house, but look at him, he's in bad shape. A doctor needs to see him. I've known him since we were young. I can't let him die."
"I understand," said the man in a contemptuous tone. "We're almost there." They walked a tenth of a kilometer to the car, and passersby began to stare and whisper. Gin got into the car, and as he did, the warm reddish liquid ran down the cracked and neglected seats of the vehicle.
"Oh... sorry about the seat." There was no response. The driver said nothing, he just drove, pressing the accelerator with surgical precision, his gaze fixed on the road, as if he already knew exactly where he was going. Little by little, they approached a desolate place, where not a single soul was to be seen, only the sound of rain and several factories in the surrounding area.
Suddenly, the car began to slow down in front of a streetlight. When the car stopped, Gin looked around through the window and frowned. Her breathing quickened as she realized that this place had none of the cold, sterile atmosphere of a hospital.
"What does this mean? This place isn't a hospital!" The man smiled, with the kind of expression that made her blood run cold.
"I know. It's just that I have some business with the filthy demon accompanying you."
Gin felt a chill run down his spine. "Demon? What are you talking about?" Gin didn't understand the man's words.
"Get out of the car," said the man as he got out of the car. "Throw that thing in front of the car." The dry, calm, authoritative tone of the man brooked no reply. Gin swallowed hard but obeyed. Outside, the icy wind hit his face.
"You're implying that my friend is a demon, but..."
The man looked at him with disdainful patience.
"Listen carefully," the man interrupted. "There are abominations walking among us, hidden behind human skin. Today I'm not in a very good mood, and that thing is going to pay for what it did, so now you have two choices: one, you take the car and get out of here, abandon your 'friend' and get on with your life. Or two... you die defending a being who is only using you to survive... just think about it, do you really think a normal person with the amount of blood he has lost would still be breathing? He's resting, waiting to recover.
"You're insane." Gin slid his hand into his pocket, but he barely had time to touch the knife he was carrying before the stranger took his life with a single, precise blow. With an almost imperceptible movement, he decapitated Gin in an instant. The young man's head fell and hit the ground with an almost muffled sound, followed by the thunderous sound of his body falling, spreading a pool of blood that mixed with the rain. The screams were drowned out, and in their place a chilling silence fell.
"What can you do... this is the price of ignorance," he said slowly.
As the scene unfolded in a mixture of violence and tragedy, Bigby began to convulse. The metallic smell of Gin's blood mingled with the smell of damp earth so characteristic of rain. On Bigby's skin, throbbing veins as black as ink became evident under the flickering light of the nearby lantern. Little by little, his human form dissolved into a twisted abomination. Bigby ceased to be Bigby.
His skin cracked like the leather of old shoes. His flesh expanded into unnatural shapes, twisting, transforming. His own intestines emerged like a grotesque necklace, coiling around his neck. His body became a nightmare of pulsating pustules. His face ceased to be human, his elongated jaw opening into an abyss of fangs. He was what some called a Bearer. The stranger did not flinch.
With measured steps and a cold gaze that seemed to scrutinize the soul, his presence commanded silence, his figure gliding effortlessly, and from his own body emerged, sliding through his hand, a peculiar weapon: a halberd that, unlike common weapons, was an extension of his own body. This weapon had a shaft segmented into three handles joined by chains that could be joined and separated at will by its bearer, moving with an almost organic fluidity, as if it were an inseparable part of him. He stood in front of the beast, looking at it with the eyes of a hunter.
"Wow, you look worse than I imagined."
The abomination growled, but in its fury, in its hatred, in its thirst for blood, it recognized something: the man was not afraid.
"You are a mere insect before me, you will never match my strength..." growled the abomination, its voice reverberating in the night, "I am unreachable for a mere human.
The man laughed. Not mockingly, but arrogantly. "Oh, really? And who said I am?"
With an unexpected twist, his halberd shot out, stretching to its maximum length until it sank into one of the monster's eyes. The creature roared, let out a deafening scream, and began to stagger. At the same time, the stranger pulled on the segment he was holding, ripping the beast's eye from its socket. Without giving it time to react, the stranger went for the other eye. A precise diagonal cut struck the abomination's eye socket. The Bearer let out a heart-wrenching sound and was left completely vulnerable. The stranger approached, looking contemptuously at the abomination.
"You know, you're out of luck... you're not going to the Pit," whispered the stranger sarcastically with a smile full of disdain. "I'm sending you straight to hell." The creature was ferocious, but the man was resourceful.
But overconfidence is a double-edged sword. The beast, in its desperation, in an attempt to survive, opened its jaws and swallowed the hunter in front of it. Darkness enveloped him. Anyone else would have been digested in that instant. But the stranger was not just anyone; he had made that clear. Inside the monster's entrails, as he fell, he grabbed his halberd with both hands and plunged it into the creature's esophagus. He did not cut immediately. No. He tore. Little by little, with irregular but precise cuts and innate sadism, he cut his way through the flesh until he tore the creature apart from the inside. The beast fell to its knees, its breath turning into an agonizing moan. The man emerged in an explosion of viscera and fluids from the large wound he had created, drenched in the stench of entrails and the Bearer's black blood.
The man plunged his weapon into the creature's chest as if he enjoyed it, a look of satisfaction on his face. The halberd he was holding vanished into thin air, and without saying a word, he dug his hands into the creature's chest, opened its ribs as if they were windows, and ripped out its huge, beating heart. He threw it on the ground and crushed it as a sign of his superiority. At that moment, the corpse of the beast lying on the ground began to emit a cold vapor, slowly disappearing until no trace remained. The hunter, unperturbed and with a look that denoted years of experience in hunting dark beings, walked away from the scene. As the rain continued to beat down on the pavement, he disappeared into the darkness, leaving behind a trail of blood and mystery.
Hours later, the cold water hit his skin, washing away all the grime, washing away the coagulated blood, the dirt, and the stench of death that enveloped him. Each drop that fell to the floor was a remnant of the battle, proof that he had survived once again. He looked at his reflection in the fogged-up bathroom mirror. His body still had many scratches and old wounds, but it was his gaze that bothered him the most: he saw it as empty, distant. Something inside him broke every time he let that out. He finished dressing in simple clothes.
And the night moved to a bar he had started going to a few days ago, a refuge of low lights and thick smoke where lost souls gathered. There, in a corner away from the hustle and bustle, he entered with measured steps, his silhouette blending into the shadows of the place. His eyes, intense and filled with silent resentment, scanned the room in search of a place to drown his bad memories. From a dimly lit corner, a group of individuals watched him intently. They were not ordinary drinkers; their postures were too rigid, their gazes too focused. Warriors, soldiers... predators. He simply ignored their presence and sat down at the bar.
"Whiskey," he murmured to the bartender. As the glass filled, he sensed movement behind him.
"You fought well last night," said a rather burly man, accompanied by three other individuals.
"He clenched his fist," he didn't turn around, "I don't know what you're talking about, but thanks for the compliment.
"Compliment? It's not just a compliment, it's a fact. We're watching you. We were tracking the Bearer you killed, I knew from the moment I saw you that you weren't human, and that explains my leaders' interest in you.
"You've said enough. What are you looking for?"
"Me? Nothing really. As I said, my captain seems to have business with you, but... we haven't been told anything. All I know is that you're the person they're looking for."
"They?"
"Oh dear, I think he put his foot in it, but that's how it is. We only follow the squad leader's orders because our creators ordered us to. Now we're just a unit of the Reicas, the ones in charge of hunting Bearers..." said one of the Reicas with a laugh that spread to the other three.
Despite all the people in the room, it fell silent. The man sitting at the bar drank his whiskey slowly. He didn't respond immediately. The Reicas exchanged glances.
"You're strong, but you're alone and with that attitude. If you keep this up, sooner or later you'll die."
"Maybe." He clenched his jaw. His fingers gripped the glass tightly, not out of anger, but out of a deeper, more visceral instinct. He stood up.
"You know, I like you. After all, we're the same, but at the same time, I feel sorry for you."
"I don't care about your feelings."
The air grew thick. One of the Reicas men, the one who seemed to be their leader, tilted his head curiously from across the bar. That's when a familiar voice cut through the murmur of the bar. It came from an athletic man with long black hair slicked back and amber eyes. The voice was accompanied by a contemptuous laugh, laden with years of resentment, that echoed in the air. The man stopped dead in his tracks, and in an instant, the atmosphere became tense. Out of the shadows emerged Dum, Yam's brother, with a wry smile that could not hide the bitterness of their shared past.
"I'm glad to see you, Yam. But it's not because I'm happy," said Dum, his voice dripping with mockery and disdain.
Yam barely smiled, his gaze fixed and calculating:
"Well, I find it extremely amusing to see you surrounding yourself with lowlifes, Dum," he replied, revealing the hidden edge of a rivalry that had taken root long before that bloody night.
The atmosphere became tense. The others fell silent, watching the interaction between the brothers. There was something disturbing about the way they looked at each other. Those present in the bar, both the outcasts and those who lived in the shadows, could feel the change in the air. The tension grew between the brothers, like an unspeakable secret that threatened to explode at any moment.
Yam, marked by his past and recent battles, carried with him the burden of a dark destiny and a relentless internal struggle. Meanwhile, Dum, with his tsunkyo sword (a weapon created from an alloy of Bearer ash and steel, which only certain important members of the Reicas carried) resting at his side, seemed to embody the determination to eradicate those who, like Yam, had strayed from the path of humanity. The reunion in the bar was nothing more than the prelude to an inevitable confrontation.
In the corners, the murmurs intensified, two brothers divided by betrayal, resentment, and the search for a destiny that seemed impossible to change. The distant sound of rain mingled with the rapid beating of their hearts, announcing that, at that moment, personal conflict would join the chaos that ruled the streets of a city forgotten by the light. As the eyes of those present rested on them, the past and the present merged into an imminent confrontation. In that clandestine bar, amid shadows and secrets, the beginning of a conflict that went beyond simple fraternal rivalry was marked. It was the very embodiment of destiny, a struggle between lost humanity and the monstrosity that had been born of resentment. The night continued its course, and as the rain continued to beat down on the streets outside, the future of Yam and Dum seemed suspended in the delicate balance between redemption and damnation.