Demise

Unknown was moving like a phantom through the battlefield, weaving past officers, slipping through gunfire, breaking bones with the ease of a man who had done this too many times before.

The dim lighting of Kayd's castle-like mansion cast long shadows as he moved—a blur of raw violence, his fists slamming into skulls, boots crushing ribs, bodies dropping like puppets with their strings cut.

Lucky.

That's what this was.

Too lucky.

Every bullet barely missed. Every officer swung half a second too late. It was like fate itself wanted him to win.

Then—

A voice cut through the air.

A voice that froze his blood.

"You always were good at running, weren't you… Zhihao?"

Unknown stopped dead.

His breath hitched. His fingers twitched at his sides.

Nobody— nobody—had called him that name in years.

Slowly, he turned.

And there he was.

Detective Ryuji Liang.

The ghost of a past that should've stayed buried.

His trench coat draped over his frame, the dim light glinting off his badge, but it wasn't the authority in his stance that made Unknown's stomach twist. It was his eyes.

They weren't filled with disgust. Or hatred.

No—they were filled with recognition. With understanding.

Like he knew exactly what kind of monster Zhihao had become.

Unknown's jaw clenched. His body went rigid.

"Say that name again," he whispered, his voice eerily calm.

Ryuji's eyes didn't waver.

"Zhihao Suen. Hong Kong, 1955."

A thunderclap went off in Unknown's mind.

And suddenly—he wasn't in Kayd's mansion anymore.

He was back there.

Back in the filth. The blood. The suffocating stench of burning flesh.

The air was thick with smoke, the neon lights of Kowloon flickering above a city that had already swallowed too many souls.

Zhihao was only fifteen.

And he was already a killer.

He hadn't planned to be. He hadn't wanted to be.

But survival had a price.

And that night—that price had been paid in blood.

The gangsters came for him first.

A debt his father had owed. A debt Zhihao had to pay in flesh.

He fought.

He fought hard.

And when the dust settled—he stood among the corpses of men twice his age.

But he hadn't just killed them.

No—he had butchered them.

And in the glow of the neon lights, their blood reflecting in his empty gaze—he had become something else.

Something not human.

Unknown's fingers curled into fists. His breathing was ragged.

He could still hear their screams.

Could still smell the blood.

Ryuji took a step forward, his voice softer now.

"I know what you did, Zhihao. I know why you did it."

Unknown snapped.

With a roar of fury, he lunged.

And the past came crashing into the present.

Unknown wasn't in the present anymore.

He was back in Hong Kong.

Back in the filth. Back in the blood.

Back in that tiny, suffocating alley where he had killed his first man.

He saw his own fifteen-year-old self, drenched in someone else's life, panting, shaking, trying to justify the horror.

"I had to."

"I didn't have a choice."

"They were going to kill me first."

And then—the voices came.

The dead ones.

"Did you really think we'd stay buried?"

"Did you really think you could just forget?"

"No one runs forever, Zhihao."

His vision blurred. His pulse pounded.

And in the chaos of his mind—he attacked.

Unknown pivoted forward, throwing a wild right hook.

Fast. Brutal. Unhinged.

But Ryuji stepped back, just barely avoiding it.

He wasn't surprised.

This wasn't just a fight—it was a ghost losing control.

"You're still trapped in that alley, aren't you?" Ryuji muttered.

Unknown's teeth ground together. His breath was erratic, sharp. Like a caged animal on the verge of breaking loose.

"Shut the hell up!" he snarled.

Another swing.

Wider this time. Sloppier.

He wasn't thinking. He was drowning in memories.

Ryuji sighed, his stance solid, eyes calm. "You think this will bring you peace?"

Unknown didn't answer.

Because he couldn't.

The flashbacks were devouring him whole.

He saw faces from the past.

The man he gutted at sixteen.

The woman who begged for her life at eighteen.

The friend he left to die at twenty.

The corpses he stacked just to stay alive.

All of them screaming inside his head.

And then—a new voice.

One from the present.

"Get away from my fiancé."

Unknown barely registered the words before—

CRACK!

Mikaela's fist slammed into his face, twisting his jaw, sending him stumbling.

His vision flickered.

The past and the present colliding.

For a second—just a second—

He saw her as one of the ghosts.

And in that moment, he wasn't just fighting them.

He was fighting himself.

Unknown's vision was still swimming in blood and memory.

The past wouldn't let go. The corpses wouldn't stay buried.

But he wasn't dead. Not yet.

His body screamed in pain, but he forced himself up—slow, deliberate, unrelenting.

His hands clenched into fists. His breath was ragged.

His mind was fractured between the streets of Hong Kong and the cold, suffocating air of Kayd's mansion.

One thing was clear.

He needed to move.

Now.

Mikaela was already stepping back, getting into position.

Ryuji's eyes narrowed, calculating.

Unknown gritted his teeth.

"Again. I have to try again—"

He lunged—reckless, desperate.

But then—

BOOM.

His body jerked violently.

A force like a goddamn freight train slammed into his ribs, ripping flesh apart.

Unknown's breath choked in his throat.

He hit the ground hard, rolling from the sheer impact. Blood splattered in his wake.

Smoke curled from the muzzle of the shotgun.

And the man holding it—Detective Arata Fujikawa—just smirked.

He stepped forward, the cold steel of the shotgun still pointed at Unknown.

"You dirty Hong Kong rats really never learn, huh?"

Unknown's fingers twitched against the ground. His vision was swimming in red.

Arata chuckled, shifting the shotgun slightly.

"You think you belong here? Tch. Like hell. You're just another stray from across the water. No better than the ones we used to put down back in the day."

Unknown's breath hitched.

His body screamed, but he didn't move. Not yet.

"It's always the same with you lot," Arata continued, voice casual, like he wasn't standing over a man he'd just shot. "No country, no future, no place to go—so you crawl into the underworld like the rest of the filth."

He planted a boot against Unknown's shoulder, pressing down.

"Stay down, mutt."

Mikaela's gaze flickered between them, but she didn't step in. Not yet. She knew this wasn't just a fight—it was a message.

Ryuji, however, was silent. His eyes were unreadable.

Unknown's fingers twitched again.

His heart pounded.

The ghosts of his past screamed at him to move.

To kill.

To prove that he was still alive.

And as his blood pooled beneath him—

He made his choice.

The air was thick with smoke and blood.

Unknown's breath was ragged.

His limbs were heavy, his vision blurred, his body broken—but his will refused to shatter.

He had always been a survivor. Even now.

As his fingers tightened around his weapon, he tried to move. Tried to push forward.

One more time.

Boots echoed against the marble.

Yuriko Matsunaga strode through the carnage, hands behind her back, her cold gaze sweeping over the bodies littering the floor. Her officers stood at attention as she passed.

And when she stopped—she looked down.

Her expression didn't change.

Unknown was still breathing. Barely.

A dying animal.

A remnant of something that should have been buried long ago.

She exhaled through her nose before looking toward her men.

"Kairi Saigeru and her little band of roaches are to be brought in—dead or alive."

Her tone was clinical. Final.

But then—Unknown twitched.

He was still trying to move.

Her eyes flicked back down—just in time to see his fingers twitch toward his weapon.

Bloodied. Shaking. Desperate.

One last defiance.

His fingers curled around the grip.

His thoughts were fading, breaking apart like shattered glass.

But he could still see her.

Yuriko. The bitch who stood above him like he was nothing.

No.

He wouldn't die like this.

Not on his knees. Not beneath them.

With everything he had left, he jerked his arm up—

BANG.

The shot tore through his skull.

The world went black.

But before it ended—

The ghosts of his past whispered to him.

The streets of Hong Kong flickered into view, the neon lights washing over him in a haze.

Laughter.

The real kind.

He saw his friends again—the ones who never made it out.

The ones he'd lost along the way.

The stupid late-night fights. The dumb jokes over cheap street food.

The endless dreams of something better.

Something that never came.

And then—

There was nothing.

Unknown was gone.