Joren walked to the window.
This was no idle glance into the night.
Since the battle began, a cold, calculating gaze had remained fixed on this spot—unblinking, unwavering.
The Platinum Star's supernatural senses pierced through darkness and distance alike, locking onto a figure one hundred meters away.
An Eastern woman stood motionless in flowing robes of deep violet, her silhouette stark against the moonlit street. She seemed small, almost fragile—yet Joren knew better.
The four "corpses" now reduced to ash? Her work.
...
Madam Gao's composure shattered.
Centuries of secrets, blood, and conquest had hardened her—but not against this.
Through the shared senses of her fallen ninja, she had witnessed everything.
Powerful? Yes. But not unprecedented.
The Hand had clashed with mystics, mutants, and warriors before.
But what happened in those final seconds defied every law she knew.
Golden light.
Not fire. Not energy. Light—pure, radiant, and ancient. Like the first dawn of creation: warm, sacred... and utterly annihilating.
Her warriors—reborn through the Beast's dark grace, beyond life and death—had crumbled like frost beneath midday sun.
"I see…" she whispered. "It's that kind of qi."
Iron Fist.
The Beast's eternal nemesis. The bane of the Hand across millennia.
Whenever they rose, they scoured the shadows clean.
And now—here, in the heart of the Western world, in this modern age—one appears.
Young. Untamed.
And impossibly strong.
Fear twisted into rapture.
A mortal vessel channeling the power of the sun itself…
If she could capture him. Study him. Fuse that solar essence with the Beast's primordial darkness…
Then true eternity would be within reach—beyond gods, beyond death.
...
Deep beneath Manhattan, in a chamber more temple than stronghold, Madam Gao knelt on a woven mat.
Before her hovered a mirror of condensed vapor, replaying the moment her four elite warriors were unmade by golden radiance.
Behind her, Wilson Fisk stood rigid, arms crossed.
"Is this your grand strategy?" he rumbled. "Send pawns to die… and then what?"
Madam Gao didn't turn.
The vision in the mirror froze: the boy raising his hand, golden lightning flickering at his fingertips.
"Fisk," she said softly, rising, "I withdraw my earlier judgment. You are not a king who has lost his claws."
The vapor mirror dissolved into mist as she stepped forward.
"You never understood true power. Commerce. Influence. Public image—these are children's sandcastles before the tide."
She turned to face him, her eyes burning with fervor.
"That boy wields the power of a celestial force. Your boardroom schemes? Useless against the sun."
Fisk's fists clenched, knuckles popping—but he said nothing.
"From tonight," Madam Gao declared, walking toward the center of the chamber, "New York's underworld returns to its oldest law: strength devours weakness."
Beneath her bare feet lay a vast, blood-red sigil carved into the stone—a fusion of Hand runes and older, forbidden glyphs.
She drew a ritual dagger from her sleeve and slashed her palm.
Crimson blood fell onto the circle's heart.
Boom—
The sigil ignited. Runes blazed crimson, pulsing like a living vein. The earth trembled.
"Your so-called order is built on money—and it's incredibly fragile. My order will be built on death and fear!"
"The Irish gangs with their clashing ideologies, the Russians who outwardly comply but secretly resist, the street crews fighting their own petty wars… they'll all become sacrifices."
"I will turn this city into a prison!"
Madam Gao's command traveled through the earth's veins, reaching every slumbering corner deep beneath the city.
"Wake up."
"Drag every living soul in Hell's Kitchen straight into Hell!"
"Until that boy who rides the sun steps willingly from his sanctuary!"
...
In Joren's room, he swept up unsightly puddles of ash from the floor with a broom.
The cracks in the wall stood out starkly under the glow of his desk lamp.
When the last trace was gone, he sat back down, ready to return to his battle with those damn calculus problems.
The silence lasted less than an hour.
A muffled explosion rolled in from far beyond his window.
Then came the wail of sirens.
In an instant, the entire city seemed to ignite—the night sky stained an eerie, bloody red.
...
Hell's Kitchen.
Daredevil stood atop an apartment building, uneasy in a way he couldn't place.
Just moments ago, his world—the one woven from sound, scent, heartbeat, and heat—had collapsed.
He heard it.
From underground.
Hundreds… thousands of "silent ones" emerged: from abandoned subway tunnels, from the city's rotting sewer arteries, from forgotten Cold War bunkers.
No breath.
No pulse.
They moved like ghosts from another dimension, slipping soundlessly into every shadowed alley and rooftop of Hell's Kitchen.
And then—the killing began.
Daredevil's ears flooded with the sounds he loathed most: screams, snapping bones, the wet thud of blades meeting flesh.
"No…"
He clapped his hands over his ears, his face twisting in agony beneath the mask.
This wasn't justice.
This wasn't war.
It was slaughter—cold, one-sided, and utterly unjustified.
...
Queens.
Peter Parker had just zipped into his suit, preparing for his routine night patrol—
when his spider-sense flared.
But this wasn't the sharp, directional sting he was used to.
This was a wave—deep, disorienting, crawling across his entire body.
He landed at the edge of a crossroads.
In the center stood a ninja, katana slick with blood.
Around him, seven or eight cars lay crumpled together, wreathed in fire and black smoke.
A driver clawed his way out of a mangled cab—
the ninja flicked his wrist.
The man's head arced into the sky.
"NO!!!"
Peter's eyes burned crimson.
He fired a web-line and launched himself forward with a roar.
...
Back in Joren's room, his phone began vibrating violently on the desk.
An unknown number flashed across the screen.
Joren answered.
"It's me."
Matt's voice was tight, urgent—drowned beneath deafening explosions and distant screams.
Something terrible had happened.
"Hell's Kitchen… no, it's spreading beyond… they're everywhere."
"Those… unkillable things. They crawled up from the underground. They're butchering civilians!"
Joren said nothing.
His eyes drifted back to the desk.
On the open calculus workbook, a half-finished formula lay abandoned.
He wouldn't be finishing his homework tonight.
Ya-re, ya-re…
He hung up, then reached for the coat hanging nearby—the one with the gold chain on the left collar. He slipped it on, then settled his ever-present baseball cap low over his brow.
The brim cast his face in shadow, hiding everything.
Really…
It's never going to end.