The kid lunged again.
Ken exhaled. He really didn't want to break any bones tonight.
The punch came in fast, no technique, just raw fury packed into a fist. Ken tilted his head slightly, letting it graze his cheek, and tapped the kid's stomach lightly with two fingers.
A ripple of red mist burst out behind the kid, like a tiny explosion of crimson smoke. He stumbled back, eyes widening for half a second.
Ken lifted his hand. A thin thread of his own blood floated between his fingers, glowing faintly under the station lights. It coiled like a serpent, gentle yet unmistakably deadly.
The kid's jaw tightened. He charged again.
Ken slid sideways, almost lazy in his movements, guiding the blood thread like it weighed nothing. The kid threw a straight punch — fast — but Ken stepped into it, letting the fist pass his face by inches.
Then he moved. The blood thread snapped forward like a whip, wrapping around the kid's wrist. Ken tugged once, twisting his body with practiced grace, and the kid was pulled off balance, stumbling past him.
The kid caught himself mid-fall, slamming his palm on the ground and flipping back up with surprising athleticism.
Ken blinked. "Oho. Acrobatics? Nice."
The kid spat blood and rushed again.
This time he swung wild, each punch carrying the kind of force that comes from surviving too much, too young. His feet scraped the floor, his breathing ragged, but he kept pushing forward, trying to break through Ken's calm.
Ken let him.
For a moment.
He didn't dodge every punch — some grazed his jaw, others hit his forearms. Ken took the hits on purpose. Studied the rhythm. The weight. The desperation. He could tell the kid wasn't fighting to win.
He was fighting because he didn't know how to stop.
"Hey," Ken said quietly as another fist flew at him.
He caught it mid-air.
Their eyes met for the first time in the fight.
Ken's blood, floating lazily around his hand, pulsed once.
The kid froze.
Ken didn't squeeze. Didn't attack. Didn't even pull. He simply held the fist, steady and firm, like he was grounding a storm.
"You're strong," Ken said. "Really strong. But you're swinging like someone who wants the world to hit back."
The kid tore his hand free with a burst of force and spun low, kicking Ken's ankle. Ken hopped over the sweep, flipping in the air while two thin spirals of blood twisted around his arms like ribbons.
When he landed, the kid was already coming for him again.
He flicked his wrist. The blood around him surged, splitting into three crimson serpents. They circled him, hissing silently, weaving through the air like living streams of red lightning.
The kid stopped for just a second, long enough to realize he was finally outmatched.
Ken dashed forward, movements fluid, almost graceful. He didn't hit the kid — didn't need to. The blood serpents wrapped around the kid's arms and legs in a blur, binding him mid-charge without drawing a single drop of fresh blood.
The kid thrashed, muscles tightening, veins bulging.
Ken let him struggle only for a moment.
Then tapped his forehead with two fingers.
A soft thump echoed. The kid's body went limp. Not unconscious, just forced still.
Ken exhaled and wiped a streak of blood off his cheek.
He stood there for a long moment, arms crossed, staring at the kid sprawled on the metallic floor of the dock corridor. The lights above flickered with that dull white glow that made everything look a little more exhausted than it really was. The kid was breathing, chest rising and falling in small, shaky motions. His knuckles were raw, split open from punching Ken's blood-formed constructs over and over. His face wasn't angry anymore, just empty. Like he had punched until the reason drained out of him.
Ken clicked his tongue and crouched slightly, running a hand through his hair as he studied the kid's unconscious body.
"Why the hell would you come at me like that…" he muttered.
But the question wasn't for the kid. It was for the universe. Or maybe whoever was pulling strings behind all this nonsense.
He replayed the last few minutes—the kid charging at him like a starving wolf, no weapons, no backup, just wild fists and a kind of desperation Ken had only seen in cornered animals. But then something actually clicked in Ken's mind, something small. Ash.
Ash told him earlier—someone tried to attack him in the restroom. Some random guy. Weak, sloppy, no technique, no reason.
Ken stood up slowly.
It couldn't be a coincidence.
He frowned, looking down the empty corridor. IGV engines hummed in the distance, deep and heavy, like the entire dock was breathing in its sleep.
He tapped his wrist band, opening the comms. The holographic screen flickered to life, light painting sharp shadows across the unconscious kid.
Ken contacted the Hero Association's regional dispatch.
A calm female voice answered, though he could hear the slight buzz of chaos behind her.
"Hero Association, state your emergency."
"Ken, ID 0812. I want to report an attack."
There was a pause.
"...Sir, before you proceed with your report—please be informed that we've already received multiple incident logs involving spontaneous attacks toward random targets."
"What do you mean multiple?" Ken asked, eyebrows tightening.
"As of this hour… fourteen separate reports," the dispatcher said, voice a little lower now. "Different districts. Different types of attackers. None showing abnormal energy traces. All unarmed. All showing extreme aggression without motive."
Ken's whole body froze. He glanced at the kid lying on the floor again.
"What the hell…"
The dispatcher continued, speaking faster now, like she was reading updates as they came in.
"Sir, we are advising all heroes to stay alert until we confirm the cause of these attacks. There seems to be no pattern so far—age, gender, backgrounds—completely random."
"Doesn't sound random," Ken muttered, jaw clenching.
"Pardon, hero?"
"Nothing," he said. "Just process my report and send a patrol to pick up this kid."
"Yes, sir. Sending a unit to your location now."
The comm call ended.
Ken remained still, staring at the ground. The metallic floor reflected the blurred outline of him and the kid. But Ken wasn't really looking at either. His mind was spinning, trying to draw lines between him, Ash, the kid, the restroom attacker, and now fourteen more cases.
It made no sense. But before he could think about this, his wrist band vibrated again—this time violently, the screen flashing bright red with a priority alert.
He tapped it, and before the hologram even fully formed, a sharp, authoritative voice cut through:
"KEN, this is Central Command. You are required to move immediately."
Ken straightened, instincts kicking in.
"What's happening now?"
"A Nexus Tear is opening near your location. Coordinates have been sent."
Ken's eyes widened slightly. He checked the map. The coordinates blinked only a few kilometers away.
"That close…? When did the distortions start?" Ken asked. "I didn't sense anything."
"That's the issue," the voice said, urgency rising. "There were no distortions detected. No gravitational anomalies. No spatial noise. Nothing. The tear manifested instantly."
Ken froze.
That… wasn't possible.
Nexus Tears were disasters that announced themselves. Days before opening, reality would twist, air would shimmer, the ground would crackle with displacement signals. Creatures could be felt long before they entered the world.
But this?
Instant emergence.
Like something forcing itself through without warning.
"Ken, we need you to contain the breach until the others arrive," the voice said. "Estimated support arrival time: six minutes and forty seconds."
"Understood," Ken muttered, though a cold feeling was now climbing up his spine.
The call ended.
For a moment, everything felt silent. The dock, the patrol officers, the unconscious kid, the humming of the IGVs—everything faded into background noise.
He took one step forward, then another. His heartbeat steadied. His vision sharpened.
He didn't even look back.
In the next second, he took off—blood gathering around his legs, propelling him into the air. The metallic walkway blurred beneath him as he shot forward like a crimson streak.
Wind slammed against his face. Buildings rushed past in streaks of grey and steel. Sirens echoed somewhere behind him, but they couldn't catch up—Ken was already gone.
He crossed the distance in a minute.
And then he saw it.
In the middle of an abandoned industrial plain, the air was splitting apart—like someone was cutting through the sky with invisible claws. Black cracks extended across empty space, pulsing with light from the other side. The ground trembled, vibrating with a low, guttural hum.
But it was unlike any other nexus tear, it glowed purple from inside.
Ken landed on cracked concrete, dust exploding around him.
The tear flickered violently, like it wasn't stabilizing—it was forcing itself open. The air warped, bending the distant horizon like heat waves. Sharp lines of energy peeled away from the tear, cutting through the wind like blades.
Ken clenched his fists. This wasn't normal. This wasn't even close to normal.
First the kid attacking him. Then dozens more attacks reported across the city. And now a Nexus Tear appearing without even a whisper of warning.
Sweat formed on his forehead.
"What the hell is going on…" he breathed.
And then something stepped out of the Tear. A single silhouette. At first glance, the creature didn't look monstrous. If anything… it looked almost elegant.
The creature floated forward without flapping wings or shifting weight. The moment its feet touched the ground, the Tear behind it snapped shut like it was afraid to stay open.
Ken's heartbeat climbed into his throat.
He had expected a beast. Some hellspawn. Something mindless.
What he got was a nightmare wearing the silhouette of a man.
The creature's skin was a dark, muted iron-grey — rough like old stone in some places, smooth like glass in others, forming patterns that looked like runes carved into living flesh. Thin, glowing lines of pale-white light ran across its body like cracks in a sculpture barely holding cosmic energy inside.
But the most haunting detail was its face.
Its mouth was stitched shut with metallic cords that pulsed every few seconds—tight, painful, unnatural.
And its eyes—
Its eyes were the part that made Ken's knees weaken.
Clawed. Out.
Deep gouges raked through both sockets, carved by fingers or claws with such force the bone had cracked around the edges. But instead of blood, the wounds leaked a dim, white vapor, drifting upward like smoke escaping a broken lantern.
Yet somehow… the empty sockets still followed him.
Its arms were slightly too long, ending in five-fingered hands — each finger splitting at the last joint, opening like a branching root when it flexed.
Two spine-like protrusions extended from its back — not wings, not tentacles, but thin, elongated blades of bone-like material, floating just behind it, rotating slowly like ritual symbols.
And around its legs crawled a faint distortion in space, like reality bent an inch every time its feet shifted.
Ken felt his heartbeat slam into his ribs. His blood manipulation instinctively tightened, red threads hovering at his fingertips.
But his hands were shaking.
Why?
He'd faced wraiths that turned men insane. He'd fought beasts that could swallow mountains. He'd been in warzones, trenches, starfields twisted by monsters.
He had never felt this.
This quiet, raw, animal fear. This instinctive sense of wrongness. This primal warning screaming in his bones:
Do not move.
Do not breathe.
Do not provoke it.
The creature tilted its head slightly, as if listening to his fear. The skin along its neck cracked softly with the motion. A faint breath escaped its mouth—dry, empty, like wind passing through a hollow cavern.
And Ken's entire body locked up.
He didn't know what this thing was. He didn't know where it came from. He didn't know how it bypassed every detection system, every distortion warning, every universal law the Nexus Tears followed.
But he knew one thing with absolute, chilling clarity:
This creature—this single eyeless thing—terrified him more than anything ever had in his entire life.
And it hadn't even taken a step yet.