Warning:
The following chapter depicts intense gore, mass murder, and psychological terror. It's not for the faint of heart. Proceed with caution.
Two days had passed since Nicolas learned the truth—the man slain that night was Vega, the legend himself.
Craig's shattered voice lingered like a wound that wouldn't close, memories refusing to fade, drifting like mournful ghosts behind his eyelids, hazy but clawing at his soul.
He sat rigid in the Vanhua Crisis Command Hall (VCCH), fingers tracing restless patterns on the armrest, heart pounding with an anticipation he couldn't name—a dread laced with fire.
Christine burst from the adjoining room, her face pale, eyes wide with unspoken panic that twisted her gut."The meeting's starting," she whispered, her breath catching sharply, voice trembling on the edge of breaking.
Nicolas rose slowly, his gaze drawn inexorably to the cold metal sign gleaming above the door:
NO UNAUTHORISED PERSON ALLOWED INSIDE
He drew a quiet, shuddering breath, summoning a resolve forged in grief and rage.
With a steady push, he opened the door, stepping into the unknown.
The hall brimmed with somber authority, a sea of stern faces turning toward him—the Director General of Police (DGP), the Commissioner, the Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, the NIA Director, a senior IB officer, Crime Branch heads, Anti-Terror officials, Cyber Forensics specialists, even the Disaster Management Chief.
Flint sat motionless beside him, his silence heavy with shared torment.
Only the Home Secretary was absent, his empty chair a void echoing the room's tension.
Then the white-haired elder entered, his presence commanding instant reverence. Everyone rose as one, a ripple of deep respect cutting through the thick air of unease, chairs scraping like a collective sigh.
He settled at the head desk with measured grace.
His assistant placed a thick file before him.
Patting his coat pockets with a weary sigh, he slipped on his glasses—and as his eyes scanned the pages, his face hardened, lines deepening with the weight of horrors revealed.
The DGP stood behind him, and a massive screen hummed to life, casting harsh light: Vega's mutilated body sprawled in ruin, the house reduced to splintered wreckage, photographs capturing violence in cruel, unblinking detail.
The DGP's voice emerged steady yet laced with gravelly pain, each word deliberate."Many things have unfolded in these last two days… or rather, this past week. Before you sits Nicolas Vane, one of our most dedicated souls." His gesture swept toward Nicolas, drawing every gaze like spotlights, burning with judgment and expectation.
"On that fateful night, he and his team rushed to an emergency at 78 Spinker Street. Inside waited four bodies—all felled by bullets, lives snuffed in an instant."He paused, stepping forward with heavy deliberation, allowing the room to absorb the grotesque images flickering mercilessly.
"Worst was the man of the house," he pressed on, voice thickening.
"Riddled with bullets, his face a ruined mask, holes everywhere like a sieve of flesh. The killers—gang, team, mafia, shadows—vanished without a whisper. No shell casings, no footprints, nothing. It broke our investigators, left them chasing ghosts."
A vise tightened in Nicolas's chest, stealing his breath. The blood rushed back in vivid assault—the warm, metallic tang clinging to his throat, the house's silence shattered only by his own ragged gasps, echoing with the finality of loss.
The DGP pointed at him once more, a beacon in the storm."Yet Nicolas pierced the veil—a leak named Craig. And Craig's confession reshaped it all: the dead man was Vega. The Vega. Hidden for ten agonizing years… now silenced forever."A faint, bitter smirk ghosted the DGP's lips.
Silence coiled tighter, colder, breaths held like fragile secrets. Vega's name hung forbidden, a specter invoking fear and awe in equal measure.Raising his hands slightly, as if to steady the room, the DGP continued
"Facial reconstruction confirmed it beyond doubt it was Vega. And his killer? We're lost in the dark."He tugged at his tie, a fleeting crack in his armor, unease flickering in his eyes.
"Vega evaded records for a decade, a phantom. Then someone ended him—betrayal from within? A rival's blade? We grasp at shadows."
"Craig didn't recognize Vega?" the Home Secretary interjected, voice edged with frustration. "He could've come forward sooner, couldn't he?"
"New to Vanhua. No ties here, no citizenship," the DGP replied, tone clipped with regret.
He lifted his glass with a trembling hand, sipping slowly.
Nicolas watched the man's throat work against the swallow, tension rippling visibly. The room leaned in, heavy with unspoken dread, bracing for the next blow."Just when calm seemed possible… clues about Vega and his crew emerged. Then the true nightmare fell."
His face drained to grave ash, the weight dragging the entire hall down with him.
"Yesterday stole nearly one hundred innocent lives—the Vivilla Supermarket massacre." His voice cracked, burdened by disasters that scarred his soul.
"Vega's death alone wouldn't redefine us. But this? Hunting the beast who carved through one hundred souls demands everything we have."
The words pierced Nicolas like shards of glass, unleashing Vivilla's horrors in relentless waves: shattered glass crunching underfoot, aisles twisted and weeping red, air thick with acrid smoke and the sickly reek of charred flesh and fear-sweat. Ambulances howling in chaos, medics stumbling through gore, their faces masks of despair; screams tearing the night, bodies collapsing in heaps, raw pleas for mercy unanswered.
Flint, frozen in wide-eyed paralysis, soul fracturing before him.
Christine doubled over by the fire truck, retching helplessly, her strength crumbling. Sirens wailing in symphony with roaring flames, news choppers circling like carrion birds above the inferno.
It replayed in agonizing slow motion, each frame etching deeper scars.
The DGP's palm slammed the long table, the crack echoing like a gunshot."That bastard acted alone,"
he growled, voice fracturing into raw fury. "Striding through that place, slaughtering without pause… locking eyes with CCTV cameras, as if the world—lives, families—were worthless dust. Rules? Morality? He spat on them. A psycho, the vilest I've witnessed."
Every eye riveted to him, shock blooming into disbelief, then a creeping, suffocating dread.One solitary man had transformed a bustling supermarket into a slaughterhouse.
The footage amplified the nightmare: Psycho's face dominating the screen, lips curled in a cruel, taunting smile that mocked their impotence, eyes gleaming with unholy triumph.
Nicolas couldn't tear away. His stare clashed with Psycho's frozen gaze—cold voids brimming with victory. Rage surged, a searing blade twisting inward, demanding vengeance.In the depths of his heart, he forged a vow, silent and lethal
"I'll be the one to make your whole body crawl like a fucking centipede."
Yesterday's Abyss
Psycho ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it with eerie calm as his team advanced on Vivilla Supermarket, their steps unnaturally synchronized, predatory.
A security guard's instincts flared—their unblinking focus, the void of casual glances, the hush of their footfalls swelling his unease like a gathering storm.
At the checkout, the guard lifted a hand, hesitant but firm.
His fingers barely grazed Psycho's jacket—pfft.
A muffled whisper of death.
The guard's eyes widened in shock, body folding slowly to the floor, life ebbing before realization dawned, a final gurgle lost in the air.
Shoppers froze mid-motion, wide eyes reflecting dawning terror.
A few bolted instinctively—only to crumple yards away, bullets ripping through skulls, chests, spines with sickening thuds that reverberated through flesh and tile.
More guards poured in, drawn by the unnatural commotion.
Psycho met their gaze with a smile that sealed fates, his team descending like shadows—methodical, unflinching, erasing them in heart-wrenching seconds, each fall a muffled tragedy.
One guard, blood pooling beneath him, locked fading eyes on Psycho's approaching form. Psycho crouched low, hunching close, peering into the man's soul with a smirk laced with abyss: "Don't worry—his hell is less cruel than mine."
A single shot to the temple, and darkness claimed him, tears mingling with blood.
Thirteen guards extinguished in under six agonizing minutes.
"Block every Wi-Fi and phone signal in this supermarket," Psycho ordered, voice flat as death.
His tech nodded gravely, flipping the jammer live.
Instant void—no calls piercing the night, no messages fleeing for help, no digital lifelines.
Inside, confusion rippled through the crowd like a chill wind: blank screens sparking arguments with flustered staff, whispers sharpening into nervous darts, an undercurrent of wrongness thickening the air, hearts pounding with unnameable fear.
Outside, Psycho sealed the exits with cold finality. "Lock every door. No one enters. No one leaves—not alive."
He let his bag thud to the ground, unzipping it deliberately: gleaming ammunition, a grenade's lethal curve, another suppressed pistol. He armed himself with unhurried ritual, as if donning finery for a macabre soiree, each click echoing his growing hunger.
A smile unfurled across his face—slow, cruel, curving like a devil's promise, utterly inhuman in its glee.
The crowd inside still grappled with their silenced worlds, oblivious, when Psycho crossed the threshold, weapons catching the dull fluorescent glow like harbingers.
The nightmare uncoiled,
deliberate and devouring.Psycho claimed the supermarket as his domain, strides languid, eyes drinking in the panic.
The cashier's gaze snagged on his gun; terror ripped a shriek from her throat: "Somebody call the po—"
The bullet shattered her jaw in a spray of red, tunneling through her skull.
She collapsed in slow motion, scream dying unborn, body twitching faintly on the cold floor.
Chaos bloomed like a wound—raw, spreading. People scattered not toward freedom, but in blind bids for fleeting survival: parents crushing children to their chests with desperate whispers of love, elders stumbling with arthritic gasps, shoppers slipping in the first warm slicks of blood they hadn't yet registered, confusion twisting to primal horror.
Phones emerged in trembling hands, fingers stabbing at screens for police, family, salvation—"Signals blocked tight?" one of Psycho's men drawled outside, voice casual over the din.
"Yeah—they're cut off, doomed already, clueless in their cages," the technician replied with a predatory grin, savoring the trap.
Psycho prowled the aisles like a specter wreathed in crimson mist, firing not with rage, but cold precision—each shot a verdict without trial or thought.
A teenager huddled behind a display rack, breath hitching in silent sobs, eyes pleading from shadows.
A man dragged himself forward inch by inch, lips moving in frantic prayers, tears carving tracks through dust.
One by one, they fell—heavy, final thuds mingling with muffled whimpers cut short.
No one was spared; all were mere obstacles in his path.
The elevator chimed softly, doors parting to unleash a burst of black-suited rivals, guns blazing in frantic defense—their suits crisp, unmarred by the gore Psycho wore like a second skin.
Bullets whined through the air like vengeful wasps.
Psycho melted behind fleeing civilians, hoisting their bodies as living shields, warm blood sluicing over his face as he advanced unhurried, a grotesque baptism fueling his ecstasy.
This was no clash of arms—it was his symphony of slaughter, each note savored.
Up on the second floor, dozens cowered in corners, breaths ragged, eyes hollow with the animal instinct to survive.
He paused, surveying them with empty curiosity.
One man inched forward on his belly, fingers shaking as they clutched Psycho's leg, voice a broken sob: "My wife… she's alone at home… waiting for me with dinner on the table… please… I'm not one of them, I swear—"
The bullet struck mid-breath, head snapping back with a wet crack, body slumping like a marionette severed from its strings, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
Psycho didn't spare the corpse a glance, stepping over it as indifferently as spilled produce, boot sole grinding into pooling blood.
Darhua's voice echoed in his mind, ice-cold command cutting through: "There's a team slithering underground, hungry for Darima's throne in Vanhua. I dodged them once… now end them, Psycho. Every breath they take insults me."
"Where?" Psycho had murmured.
"In a supermarket. Kill them all. Every. Single. One."
They materialized now at the aisle's end—rival team, guns trained, fingers whitening on triggers.
Fire erupted.Outside, one of Psycho's men chuckled over the pounding music: "Music's sure loud, right?"
"Hella loud—drowns the screams, the shots. Suppressors make it poetry anyway," came the reply.
His team swayed in grotesque revelry, dancing as if the dying were confetti, untouched by the symphony of agony within.
Psycho surged forward, weaving through the storm of bullets with predatory grace—some grazing flesh, drawing blood that only sharpened his focus.
He seized one rival by the throat, hands steady despite the sting, hoisting him aloft like a ragdoll, jamming the barrel beneath his jaw.
One deliberate pull.
Skull erupted in a crimson geyser, raining down.
The second fumbled his aim, hands quaking with terror—Psycho denied him even that, kicking him sprawling, yanking a knife from his own pocket to drag it languidly across the throat, savoring the gurgle, the choke, the final stillness as life ebbed in wet rasps.
No reaction stirred Psycho's features. Not a flicker.
He simply rose and continued, for the harvest was far from reaped.
Blood drying tacky on his hands from those fresh kills, his smile lingered like an open wound, festering with malice.
The first innocent he passed froze, stammering through terror: "I-I'm not one of them—"
Psycho tilted his head slowly, almost with feigned curiosity, voice a silken whisper: "Are you?"
Before words could form, the knife slashed deep—too deep for screams, only a bubbling choke escaping as the man clutched futilely at his ruined throat, collapsing in slow, twitching agony.
A shopkeeper retreated step by trembling step, palms up, voice cracking: "Please—take the money, all of it, just—"
Psycho drove the blade into his chest with surgical calm, murmuring close: "Keep it. Coins mean nothing to the reaper."
A teenager's voice pierced the din, raw with defiance and fear: "Someone call the police! CALL THE—"
The blade silenced him mid-shout, the half-formed cry hanging spectral in the air, body folding with a boyish slump that twisted hearts unseen.
Desperation clawed the air—prayers to indifferent gods on jammed lines, hands quivering, lips stuttering pleas, but their executioner was Lucifer incarnate, each deliberate step a summons to the grave, the air heavy with the copper promise of death.
A man dropped to his knees, palms pressed in fervent supplication: "Spare me… I've got a family, dreams—"
"Nothing that touches me," Psycho replied softly, driving the knife upward under the jaw until resistance faded, body going limp in a final, defeated sigh.
"Don't kill me!"
"Please, let me run home!"
"Who are you?"
"Sir—my children need their father—"
Psycho glided through their midst like wind through brittle grass, each stride felling another: throats parting in red smiles, skulls fracturing with dull crunches, floors drinking blood like parched earth after rain.In mere minutes, fifty innocent threads of life unraveled, their final breaths a chorus of regret.
Then the rival core emerged—fifty men, armed but quaking, forming a ragged wall of desperation.Their leader bellowed, voice splintering
"YOU'RE ALONE! YOU CAN'T TAKE US ALL—HEAR ME?"
Psycho's laugh was soft, intimate, chilling: "That's the delusion you cling to."
They charged—a fatal wave.
Psycho received them like a master butcher appraising livestock.
One swung a bat with frantic force—Psycho snatched it mid-arc, snapping the arm in two vicious twists, leaning in to whisper, "Too slow," before plunging steel through ribs, feeling the shudder of dying lungs.
A second hurled his weapon aside, collapsing in sobs: "P-please… I'll abandon the gang, start over, I swear on my mother—"Psycho knelt first, slicing Achilles tendons with precise cruelty, watching the man writhe and scream before granting the end, eyes never leaving the fading light.A third wailed into the fray: "He's not human—he's the devil!"
Bullets tore at him, some burrowing deep; Psycho only smiled broader, pain a lover's caress igniting his joy. One rival lunged, clenching his neck in a vise: "Fight with guns? How about like men for once?"
Psycho tilted forward in a blur. The rival's hammer-fist connected like a freight train to his jaw, stars exploding as he hit the ground, tasting copper and fury.
"So that's all Darima ha—?"
The man sneered down, smirk blooming—then Psycho's blade erupted through his skull from below, pinning him like an insect.
Psycho surged up laughing, wild and unhinged, seizing hair to drag the corpse across gore-slick tile, straddling it triumphantly
"I never promised manhood. Do monsters play fair?" He posed the question to dead ears.
Gunfire thundered unchecked.
Psycho waded through, unflinching, grin widening with every sting.
One rival dragged himself away, trailing blood, whimpering: "Help… anyone… please…"Piles of broken forms mounted. Screams thinned to whimpers, then silence. The market ossified into a pre-dawn mausoleum.
The final rival knelt trembling, tears carving rivers down his face, voice a rasp: "Why… why this hell?"Psycho pressed a finger to his lips, gentle as a lullaby: "Shh. Don't spoil the perfection."One shot. Ended.Silence blanketed all, profound and eternal.Psycho stood at the ruin's heart—serene, vacant, immune to the carnage cradling his feet. Poised for the next fragile pulse.
He traversed the desecrated aisles like corridors of his personal crypt, ascending to the third-floor office—the rival boss's fragile sanctum, where illusion of control clung by threads.
The boss had devoured every CCTV frame: his men picked apart one by one, innocents reaped like wheat, Psycho's advance inexorable, unyielding. His hands knotted white-knuckled, eyes boring into the door, pulse hammering with the inevitability of doom.
The door creaked open, slow as judgment.
"Finally… you're he—"Two grenades rolled inward, lazy and ominous.
The boss's voice fractured in horror "What the—? No… no—you psychotic bas—"
BOOM.
Oblivion erupted—the room disintegrated in fire and thunder, music's veil torn asunder, shockwave pulverizing windows blocks away.
Outer screams pierced the night, building shuddering, phones clawing desperately at revived lines, police switchboards igniting.
Psycho didn't pause to bask.
He walked on, purpose unswayed.Until a sound pierced—a fragile mewl, human and heartrending, seeping from the bathroom hall.
A woman's voice, raw with soul-deep terror.
One sharp kick sundered the door.There, a young woman huddled on tile, cradling her infant—tiny, head lolling weakly, both quivering like leaves in storm.
Her eyes met his, brimming with every ounce of maternal ferocity and despair.
She lunged forward, body barricading the child, tears plummeting: "Please… please… I just want to live… to raise him… we waited ten years through loss after loss for this miracle… he's my world, my everything… please don't take him from me—"
She crumpled to her knees, arms encircling Psycho's legs in vise desperation, pleas unraveling from her core like frayed silk, each word a dagger of humanity.
Psycho's mask held—no twitch marred the void.
Yet a shadow stirred within: a girl's face, soft and near-beloved, a flicker of warmth Darhua had methodically excised long ago.
It dissolved. The spark extinguished.
Footsteps pounded the hall, urgent.
"Psycho!" a man gasped, breathless with alarm.
"That blast lit the sky—we gotta vanish, cops swarm in minutes!"
Psycho offered no reply. His gun rose, steady.Two shots cracked—merciless echoes, absolute.
The man recoiled at the door, staring as Psycho emerged, barrel dripping fresh crimson to the grip.
"Let's go," Psycho murmured, tone devoid of inflection.
No flicker of remorse shadowed him.
No pause of doubt.
Pure command.
They scoured traces on exit—gloves stripping prints, casings pocketed, shadows melting into night well before sirens wailed.
Behind, the supermarket lay hushed, a monument to solitary wrath—
a graveyard blooming from one man's abyss.