Chapter 1 — Grimvale
Grimvale didn't rot overnight.
It decayed slowly… like something dying but too stubborn to fall.
The air always carried a metallic tang — rust from broken railings, blood from alley fights, and the sterile sting of government disinfectant sprayed in neighborhoods they pretended to care about.
Apartment buildings leaned into each other like exhausted fighters. Neon signs flickered even when the power grid failed.
In Grimvale, children learned three things before they learned to read:
How to run.
How to lie.
How to survive.
And Daito Greyhell mastered all three.
He stood on the roof of an abandoned grocery store, wind tugging at his ash-black coat.
Below him, two gangs were clashing over supply crates — government rations marked with biohazard tape.
Idiots.
One of them swung a pipe.
The other pulled a knife.
Daito exhaled slowly.
Then he jumped.
He landed between them like a falling verdict.
The impact cracked concrete.
"Drop it," he said calmly.
They didn't.
The first one rushed him.
It took less than three seconds.
A pivot.
A knee to the ribs.
An elbow to the jaw.
Pipe disarmed.
Wrist snapped.
The second hesitated.
That hesitation cost him.
When it was over, both gang members were on the ground — conscious, breathing, but reconsidering their life choices.
Daito grabbed the crate.
"Next time," he muttered, "read the label."
He kicked it toward them.
The biohazard symbol glared up from the lid.
Disorder testing kits.
They weren't fighting for food.
They were fighting for fear.
"Disorder."
The virus didn't just infect you.
It rewrote you.
It began with fever.
Then tremors.
Then the emotional spikes — rage, despair, paranoia — amplified beyond human limits.
Veins darkened.
Muscles hardened.
Bones reshaped.
If the mutation completed…
You became a "Freaker."
* * *
Grimvale had more "Freakers" per square mile than anywhere in the country.
That's why the government built the wall.
That's why they stationed armed patrols at every exit.
That's why helicopters only flew in one direction — out.
Daito walked home through streets lit by broken lamps and distant sirens.
Kids stopped fighting when he passed.
Store owners nodded subtly.
An old woman struggling with grocery bags found them suddenly lifted from her hands.
He didn't smile.
He never did.
But he carried them to her door.
"You're just like your father," she whispered.
That made his jaw tighten.
"I'm not."
He left before she could say more.
The Greyhell house stood at the edge of District Nine.
Modest.
Reinforced windows.
Emergency supplies stacked neatly by the entrance.
His mother was at the kitchen table, sorting medical charts from the local relief center.
Her hands were steady, even after a fourteen-hour shift.
"You're bleeding," she said without looking up.
"It's not mine."
She paused.
That pause carried years of understanding.
On the wall above the fireplace hung a framed photograph:
His father in tactical gear, smiling despite the scar across his cheek.
Hero of the Border Cleansing.
Protector of the weak.
Dead three years.
Daito stopped in front of the picture.
He didn't pray.
Didn't speak.
But the memory came anyway.
"A man does what he has to do, to get the job done".
Of all the advice his father ever gave him… that was the only line that stayed.
Not because it was noble.
Because it was simple.
Efficient.
Cold.
Outside, a distant scream tore through the night.
Not human anymore.
Daito turned toward the window.
Another one.
Another Freaker.
His mother closed her eyes briefly.
Government response would take ten minutes.
Ten minutes was enough for a massacre.
Daito grabbed his coat again.
"Don't," his mother said quietly.
He paused at the door.
"You can't keep carrying this alone."
He didn't answer.
Because he wasn't carrying it alone.
He was carrying Grimvale.
And Grimvale was heavy.
The door shut behind him.
Somewhere in the darkness, something howled.
Daito stepped toward it.
Head high.
The scream didn't echo.
It ripped.
It tore through Grimvale like wet fabric being dragged across broken glass.
Windows trembled.
Stray dogs scattered.
Even the wind seemed to recoil.
Daito didn't run.
He advanced.
Calm.
Measured.
Surgical.
The alley ahead bled darkness — thick, suffocating, almost alive.
The air smelled wrong.
Burnt copper.
Rotting meat left too long in summer heat.
"Disorder" had bloomed here.
He rolled his shoulders once.
Flexed his fingers.
And stepped inside.
They were waiting.
More than twenty silhouettes hunched and twitching in the narrow corridor between buildings.
Their bodies looked sculpted from rage and disease — bones jutting through skin like prison bars, veins pulsing black as spilled ink.
Some had elongated arms that scraped the pavement.
Others dragged half-formed limbs behind them like unfinished thoughts.
Their breathing wasn't breathing.
It was grinding.
Like machinery chewing on bone.
One stepped forward.
It's jaw unhinged too wide.
Teeth layered like a shark's nightmare.
"Daaai… to…"
It remembered him.
That was the cruelest part of Disorder.
It didn't erase.
It twisted.
Daito exhaled slowly.
"Twenty-three," he counted softly.
Twenty-three Freakers.
He adjusted the leather wrap around the hilt on his back.
His uncle's blade.
Forged steel.
War-tempered.
Balanced so perfectly it felt like an extension of intention itself.
His father taught him how to move.
His uncle taught him how to kill.
The Freakers charged.
The first came low and fast.
Daito stepped sideways — not back.
Never back.
The claws sliced through empty air.
His blade flashed once.
A silver crescent.
SLASH!
The Freaker's arm separated at the shoulder in a spray of blackened blood that hissed when it touched the ground.
One.
He pivoted.
Second Freaker lunged from above, dropping from a fire escape like a rabid gargoyle.
"Rwaarg!"
Daito didn't look up — he felt it.
His father's voice whispered through muscle memory.
The body telegraphs before the strike.
He thrust upward.
SHWING!
Steel pierced through jaw, through skull.
He ripped it free.
Two.
They swarmed him.
Limbs.
Teeth.
Screams.
A tidal wave of malformed humanity crashing inward.
Daito moved through them like a needle through cloth.
Clean.
Precise.
SLASH!
A horizontal cut opened three throats in one motion — the blade sang as it passed.
A backhand strike severed a spine.
He stepped inside another's guard and drove the pommel into its temple hard enough to crater bone before finishing with a diagonal slice that turned torso into halves.
SLASH!
Five.
SHWING!
Seven.
SLASH!
Nine.
They tried to overwhelm him with numbers.
But numbers meant nothing in a narrow alley.
They bottlenecked themselves.
Climbed over each other in blind frenzy.
Daito used their chaos like a conductor uses an orchestra.
A kick shattered a kneecap.
A follow-up slash removed the head.
He grabbed a lunging Freaker by its mutated collarbone and spun, using its body as a shield while three others impaled it from behind with their own claws.
Thirteen.
Black blood painted the brick walls like abstract art.
One Freaker tackled him.
They crashed through wooden crates.
It's breath hit his face — hot, putrid, thick with decay.
"Rrwoo!"
It's claws pressed against his throat, skin splitting.
For a split second—
Rage flared.
Volcanic.
Blinding.
But rage without direction is fire in the wind.
His father sharpened that fire.
Daito slammed his forehead forward.
BAM! CRACK!
Bone cracked.
He rolled, trapped the creature's arm, and with a movement so smooth it felt rehearsed by fate itself — sliced from hip to shoulder.
SLASH!
It fell apart in sections.
Sixteen.
He rose slowly, chest heaving once.
Only once.
The remaining Freakers hesitated.
Predators sensing a greater predator.
Daito pointed the blade at them.
"Seven left."
They screamed and rushed him together.
"Rooarrgh!"
"Shreei!"
"Drraaa!"
He met them head-on.
Steel blurred.
An upward arc split one from groin to sternum.
He spun through the spray, ducked under snapping jaws, and drove the blade backward without looking — feeling it sink into a skull behind him.
A wide sweep severed legs at the knee.
A thrust through an eye socket.
A decapitation so clean the head remained suspended midair for a heartbeat before tumbling like discarded fruit.
Twenty-two.
Twenty-three.
Silence.
Except for the wet sound of bodies collapsing.
Daito stood in the center of carnage.
Then he began counting.
"...Four."
The corpses started to tremble.
"...Five."
Black veins glowed faintly.
"...Ten."
Their flesh cracked like drying clay.
"...Fifteen."
Edges flaked into ash.
"...Twenty-two."
Every body disintegrated simultaneously — collapsing into fine, dark particles that lifted into the air and vanished like smoke stolen by the night.
"SWOOSH!"
No evidence.
No burial.
Disorder cleaned it's own mess.
Daito sheathed his blade.
But the alley wasn't empty.
Heavy footsteps approached from the far end.
Slower.
Measured.
A Freaker larger than the rest stepped forward — nearly eight feet tall.
It's muscles bulged grotesquely, skin stretched thin over writhing veins.
Two jagged horns curved from its skull.
It's eyes glowed a sick, intelligent red.
The Boss.
It tilted its head.
"You… hunt… us."
Daito didn't answer.
He was already moving.
The distance between them collapsed in a blink.
The Boss swung — an arm thick as a steel beam cutting through the air with enough force to shatter concrete.
Daito ducked beneath it.
Stepped inside its reach.
And drew one perfect line.
The blade passed through the neck like wind through tall grass.
CLING!
No resistance.
No hesitation.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the Boss's head slid from it's shoulders.
It's massive body remained standing for half a second before collapsing like a condemned building.
Daito turned away before it hit the ground.
"...One."
He counted without looking back.
"...Ten."
Cracks formed along the corpse.
"...Fifteen."
The head dissolved first.
"...Twenty."
The Boss disintegrated into nothing.
Daito adjusted his coat.
He didn't wait for speeches.
Didn't care for dominance displays.
Small fry talked.
Real predators ended conversations before they began.
He stepped out of the alley as sirens wailed in the distance — late, as always.
Twenty-three Freakers.
One Boss.
All erased.
Daito Greyhell walked home beneath the dying echoes of violence.
Head high.
Blade clean.
* * *
By morning, the alley was sealed behind yellow barricades and armed personnel wearing respirators stamped with the sigil of the National Biohazard Authority.
Drones hovered like mechanical vultures, scanning for residue that no longer existed.
But there was nothing to collect.
No blood.
No tissue.
No bones.
Just scorched brick and fractured pavement.
And twenty-three chalk outlines drawn by confused officials who hated mysteries.
"He's faster than our response teams."
"He leaves no samples."
"He counts."
The reports were clinical.
The fear was not.
They called him a myth at first.
Then a rumor.
Then a problem.
And finally—
A variable.
That's when they deployed the "Savages."
Savages were not heroes.
They were not soldiers.
They were what happened when grief stopped being human.
Each one had sacrificed a loved one who had turned Freaker — not by mercy killing alone, but by ritual.
Alchemy.
A forbidden transmutation process that converted the mutated toxicology of Disorder into power.
To become a Savage, you didn't just lose someone.
You used them.
Blood was siphoned.
Organs distilled.
Bone marrow refined into tinctures and sigils burned into flesh while the loved one was still transforming — still screaming.
The result?
Power.
Terrible.
Unique.
Irreversible.
But the price carved itself into their eyes.
Daito was walking home when the first Savage found him.
The streetlights flickered once.
Twice.
Then exploded.
Darkness swallowed the block whole.
From the shadows stepped a tall figure wrapped in a long coat lined with metallic threads.
His right arm shimmered unnaturally — veins glowing a faint, venomous green beneath translucent skin.
"Daito Greyhell," the man said calmly.
"Unregistered combatant. High-value anomaly."
Daito didn't stop walking.
"I'm busy."
The Savage smiled faintly.
"They all say that."
The air shifted.
Suddenly the Savage vanished.
Not invisible.
Fast.
Daito turned just in time to block.
CLANG!
The glowing arm slammed into his blade.
SWOOSH!
The impact detonated the pavement beneath them.
A shockwave burst outward, shattering nearby windows like crystal rain.
Daito slid back three meters.
His fingers tingled.
Enhanced strength.
Alchemy conversion.
The Savage rotated his glowing arm experimentally.
"I sacrificed my brother," he said casually.
"He was halfway through mutation. I finished it. Converted the venom in his blood into kinetic amplification."
He stepped forward.
"Everything I touch… hits ten times harder."
He vanished again.
This time Daito didn't block.
He stepped inside.
GRAZE!
Let the punch graze past his shoulder — skin tearing from the pressure alone — and drove his elbow into the Savage's throat.
POW!
A precise strike.
War veteran training.
Airway disruption.
The Savage staggered.
SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!
Daito followed with three rapid cuts — wrist, thigh, shoulder — not deep enough to kill, but enough to disable.
The glowing veins pulsed violently.
The Savage laughed, coughing blood.
"You don't even have alchemy… do you?"
Daito's eyes were flat.
"I don't need borrowed power."
The Savage roared and unleashed a full-force downward punch.
"Haargh!"
FWOOO!
Daito sidestepped.
Placed one hand against the Savage's elbow.
Redirected.
Used his uncle's footwork — circular, fluid, minimal.
The punch hit the ground.
BAM!
CRACK!
The street cratered.
In that half-second of overextension—
SLASH!
Daito drew a single vertical strike from collarbone to sternum.
Clean.
Measured.
Decisive.
The Savage froze.
Looked down at the line dividing his body.
"You fight like…" he whispered.
"Like someone who's seen too much already."
Daito stepped past him.
Behind him, the Savage collapsed.
Unlike Freakers—
Savages did not disintegrate.
They bled.
And stayed dead.
From a rooftop across the district, two more figures watched.
One cloaked in smoke that moved against the wind.
Another with eyes glowing amber, fingers twitching with restrained energy.
"He killed Reion," the amber-eyed one muttered.
"Without conversion," the smoke-cloaked figure replied.
"He's just human."
"No," the other corrected quietly. "He's refined."
Daito stopped at an intersection.
His shoulder bled freely now.
Warm.
Real.
Pain reminded him he was alive.
He looked up at the government drones circling overhead.
"Send more," he muttered.
He had seen their kind before.
Savages.
People who believed strength required sacrifice.
That power demanded corruption.
Daito disagreed.
His father didn't sacrifice him for strength.
His uncle didn't butcher family for technique.
They trained.
They endured.
They fought.
And when the time came—
They got the job done.
A message buzzed on his cracked phone.
Unknown number.
Subject: Recruitment Opportunity
Join the Savages.
Protect Grimvale properly.
Power is necessary.
Daito stared at it for three full seconds.
Then deleted it.
If becoming a hero meant becoming a monster first—
He would remain human.
Even if it killed him.
High above Grimvale, in a government control room lined with monitors, a woman in a white coat folded her hands.
"Deploy the next pair," she said calmly.
On the screen, Daito walked alone through the city he refused to abandon.
"Let's see," she murmured, "how long he lasts without Savagery."
* * *
Grimvale had a strange way of staring.
It wasn't admiration.
It wasn't fear.
It was something in between — the look people give a loaded gun sitting on a table. Dangerous… but maybe necessary.
Daito walked through the district with dried blood flaking from his collar and a shallow tear across his shoulder still seeping red beneath his coat.
Every step felt heavier than the last, but his posture never bent.
Head high.
Always.
People noticed.
A woman holding her child froze mid-step.
Two construction workers stopped arguing.
Teenagers who usually shouted greetings just watched silently.
Whispers followed him like trailing smoke.
"That's him."
"He killed them all."
"They say even the Savages can't—"
"Mr. Savage…"
Daito's jaw tightened.
He hated that title.
Savages borrowed power.
He earned his.
Halfway down Ashford Street, he saw the old man.
Thin.
Bent.
Shaking in a way that had nothing to do with age.
He clutched a photograph so tightly the edges were crumpled soft as cloth.
When Daito tried to step around him, the old man moved into his path.
"Mr. Savage," he said, voice cracking. "Please."
Daito exhaled through his nose.
"I'm not a Savage."
The old man held up the picture.
A young man — maybe twenty — lay strapped to a hospital bed.
Belts across chest and arms.
Rope around wrists.
His veins blackened beneath the skin like roots spreading through glass.
His mouth hung open mid-scream.
Eyes barely human.
"He's my son," the old man whispered.
"Disorder took him. The doctors say it's only a matter of time before he turns fully. They're waiting for transfer to a containment ward but…"
His voice shattered. "He begs me to end it..... When he's lucid, he begs."
The street had grown silent.
Everyone listening.
Everyone watching.
Daito didn't look at the photo long.
He didn't need to.
He'd seen that face before.
Too many times.
"You hunt them," the old man continued.
"You put them down clean. Quick. Please. Let me remember my boy before he becomes one of those things."
Daito closed his eyes briefly.
His muscles felt like sandbags.
He could still feel the Savage's ribs splitting under his blade.
Could still smell the Freakers burning into ash.
He was seventeen.
Seventeen.
"First," he said calmly, "stop calling me Mr. Savage. I'm not one of them."
The old man blinked.
"Second… I'm tired."
A ripple moved through the crowd.
Daito's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.
"I just fought over twenty Freakers. Then I executed a Savage."
His gaze sharpened slightly. "If I do this for you, tomorrow there'll be ten more parents waiting. Then twenty. Then fifty."
The old man's hands trembled harder.
"My son is not a number."
"I know." Daito replied.
Silence thickened.
Daito stepped slightly to the side.
"If you don't mind moving."
The words weren't cruel.
They were flat.
Exhausted.
Practical.
The old man didn't move.
Instead, something inside him broke.
"You heartless brat!" he shouted, tears spilling freely now.
"You think swinging a sword makes you a hero? You think you're better than the Savages? At least they do something!"
Gasps echoed around them.
"You're no different from the government!" the old man cried.
"You let us suffer while you choose who's worth saving!"
The words hit.
But Daito didn't flinch.
What would you expect from a teenage delinquent from around here anyway?
He stepped around the old man.
Didn't look back.
The curses followed him for half the block.
Then the crying swallowed them whole.
By the time Daito reached home, the sky had darkened into bruised purple.
The house light was on.
Safe.
He stepped inside quietly.
His mother looked up immediately.
She didn't ask about the blood anymore.
She asked different questions.
"You're late."
"Had things to handle."
She studied him carefully.
Not his wounds — his eyes.
"What happened?"
Daito leaned against the wall near the kitchen entrance.
For a moment, the delinquent king of Grimvale looked exactly what he was.
Young.
"An old man wanted me to kill his son."
Her hands stilled over the paperwork.
"…Disorder?"
"Yeah."
He shrugged slightly.
"I said no."
Silence filled the room, but it wasn't judgmental.
It was heavy. Understanding.
"And how do you feel about that?" she asked softly.
Daito scoffed.
"I feel tired."
He pushed off the wall and walked to the sink, running cold water over his knuckles.
The diluted blood spiraled down the drain like fading memory.
"If I start doing mercy kills," he continued, voice quieter now, "that's all I'll ever do. Grimvale will line up outside our door."
His mother approached slowly.
"You can't carry every grief."
"I'm not trying to."
"You are."
He didn't answer.
Because maybe she was right.
She reached out, gently pressing antiseptic against the tear in his shoulder.
He didn't wince.
"You're not your father," she said carefully.
"I know."
"You're not a Savage."
"I know."
"You're also not made of steel, Daito."
He met her eyes then.
For a brief second, the armor cracked.
"I didn't know what to say to him."
She nodded.
"There are no correct words for a parent losing a child."
The image of the photo flashed in his mind.
Straps.
Ropes.
Blackened veins.
His father's voice echoed faintly in memory.
"A man does what he has to do."
But what if what you have to do isn't clear?
Daito turned away slightly.
"I'll handle it if he turns."
It wasn't a promise.
It was a line in the sand.
His mother gave a small, tired smile.
"That's my son."
Outside, Grimvale howled again in the distance.
Not a Freaker this time.
Just grief.
And somewhere in District Nine, an old man sat beside a hospital bed, praying for twenty seconds of mercy.
to be continued...