The night was breaking apart.
Sirens howled through the upper city while the sky burned in strips of red and gray. Below, Ilias carried Seraph through the fractured streets—her body limp against his, her breath hitching with silent sobs.
Her hands were streaked with her mother's blood. Her voice was gone.
They ran through the shell of the district, through neon ruins and falling ash. Kojo trailed behind, silent for once, jaw tight. Reverb's drone floated beside them, lens cracked but still recording. Every few seconds, Seraph gasped her mother's name, then went quiet again—a sound that hurt worse than any wound.
Kojo finally said, voice rough, "She's gone, Seraph. You can't fix the dead."
Seraph's eyes were hollow, her voice shaking. "Then what was it all for, Kojo? My family, my father, everything—gone. We saved nothing. We just broke it slower."
Reverb cut in, static crackling in his tone. "You saved her long enough to make a choice. That's not nothing. Now move. We've got company."
From the mist ahead, a voice answered—quiet, almost polite.
"So this is the resistance? The ones who whisper about change?"
They stopped.
From the edge of the road stepped a man wrapped in black and gray. No footsteps. No echo. Only the reflection of city lights in his eyes—eyes that didn't blink. His movements were wrong somehow. Too smooth. Like he existed slightly out of phase with reality.
Ilias's pulse quickened. "Cult of Silence."
The man tilted his head slightly, and when he smiled, it didn't reach his eyes. "You saw me in the prison. You should've taken my offer then, boy. We could've tuned the world together."
"I'm not interested in joining murderers."
The cultist's smile faded. "You misunderstand. We don't murder. We quiet the noise. We bring peace to a universe that screams too loudly." He looked at Seraph, and something cold passed through his expression. "The girl's crying disrupts the rhythm of the world. You should silence her, too."
Kojo stepped forward before Ilias could reply, fists clenching. "Say one more word about her and I'll fold you like bad sheet music."
The cultist's gaze flickered—almost amused. "Bold words from a man who resonates so loudly. I can hear your heartbeat from here. Every surge of power through those gauntlets. Every angry thought rattling in your skull." He raised his hand slowly, deliberately. "Let's see if you can keep your rhythm when I take away your noise."
And sound died.
The wind froze mid-whistle. The city's distant alarms vanished. Even the echo of their breathing cut off like it had been sliced away. Ilias tried to shout but his voice was gone. He could see Seraph screaming silently beside him, hands pressed to her throat, eyes wide with panic.
Then the cultist moved.
Fast. Sharp. Formless.
He crossed the distance between them in a heartbeat, hand extended, fingers splayed. Kojo barely blocked the first blow, his arm jerking from the force. He felt it—that void pressing into his skin, crushing every vibration inside him. The resonance in his Ọwọ́ Ogun gauntlets sputtered and died.
For a heartbeat, he was nothing. Just flesh and bone and the memory of strength.
Then he remembered who he was.
He'd been forged in silence once—by the Church that tried to erase him. By the experiments that had stolen his voice, his identity, everything but his will to survive.
Kojo slammed his gauntlet into the ground. The shockwave cracked the earth and shattered the stillness. Sound came back like a scream—sirens, wind, breathing, everything rushing in at once.
Ilias gasped, voice returning. "Go! Take her and run!"
Kojo met his brother's eyes—one wordless message between them. Go home.
Ilias grabbed Seraph and ran, dragging her away through the wreckage, tears streaking down her dirt-stained face. Kojo turned back toward the cultist, breathing hard, blood already trickling from his nose. "Alright, maestro of mute. Let's see how you dance."
The cultist regarded him with something that might have been respect. "You broke my silence. Not many can do that." He lowered into a stance that was somehow both relaxed and coiled. "Let's see if you can do it twice."
He flicked his wrist, and Kojo's next punch froze mid-swing. The silence wrapped around his arm like liquid steel, crushing momentum into nothing. Then—crack—a strike hit Kojo's chest, sending him tumbling through walls, through an empty tram, through concrete.
He hit the ground hard, coughing blood, grinning despite the pain. "Okay... that hurt."
The cultist appeared before him in a ripple of gray, footsteps making no sound despite the broken glass beneath his feet. "You don't understand power. To impose silence is to be divine. To control the absence is to control everything."
Kojo spat blood, pushing himself to his feet. "Then why are you still talking?"
He surged forward, gauntlets flaring with light. His punch landed—hard—square in the cultist's ribs. The impact should have shattered bone, should have sent the man flying.
Instead, the cultist absorbed it. The force simply... vanished. Redirected into the void.
Kojo staggered, off-balance. "The hell—"
The cultist struck. Faster this time. A palm to Kojo's sternum that drove the air from his lungs. A knee to his ribs that cracked something. An elbow to his jaw that made stars explode behind his eyes.
Kojo blocked the next strike, but the force still rattled his bones. He could feel his resonance stuttering, failing, like trying to shout underwater. Every hit he threw was swallowed. Every defense was bypassed.
I can't keep this up.
He tried again. Another punch. Another block. Another redirect. The cultist was learning him. Reading his rhythm. Predicting his beats. And Kojo was slowing down.
"You fight like a hammer," the cultist said softly, almost kindly. "All force. No finesse. No understanding of the music beneath the violence."
Kojo grinned, breathing hard, blood dripping from his split lip. "Yeah. But I hit hard."
He feinted left, drawing the cultist's guard, then drove his right fist into the man's ribs with everything he had. The gauntlet flared—BOOM—and the shockwave tore through the street, shattering windows, cracking pavement.
The cultist flew backward, crashing through a storefront, glass and metal exploding around him.
Kojo stood there, chest heaving, vision blurring at the edges. "There. See? I'm learning."
For a moment, silence. Then the cultist rose slowly from the rubble, blood on his lips, something new in his eyes. Not anger. Not surprise. Hunger.
"Good," he said, voice changing, deepening, layering with harmonics that shouldn't exist in human speech. "Then let's escalate."
His face changed. Something else moved behind his eyes—ancient, vast, wrong. The cultist's body convulsed once, violently, then stilled. When his eyes reopened, they weren't his anymore.
They were empty. Not black. Not white. Just... empty. Like looking into the space between stars.
"You think this flesh defines me?" the thing wearing the cultist's face rasped. "We are not men. We are echoes of the first hush. The silence that existed before sound. Before music. Before creation learned to sing."
The world went black and white. Color bled from the edges of Kojo's vision, leaving only stark contrasts—light and shadow, presence and absence.
From the cultist's shadow rose a shape—tall, thin, endless—like a ghost made of pure negation. The Entity of Silence had awakened.
Kojo stood his ground, panting, every instinct screaming at him to run. "Ah, hell."
The entity moved without moving—its presence erasing the world as it passed. Kojo tried to strike but his resonance collapsed entirely. The gauntlets on his arms flickered, glowing like dying stars, their divine light dimming with every second.
His strength—inhuman, divine, forged by the Church's brutal experiments—meant nothing here. The entity wasn't fighting him. It was unmaking him. Erasing the very concept of his existence one breath at a time.
He fell to one knee, gasping, unable to draw air. "Can't... breathe..."
The entity tilted its head, considering him like an insect. "You resonate so loudly. Like a child banging pots. Let me show you what true power sounds like."
It raised one hand, and the silence became physical. Crushing. Suffocating. Kojo felt his ribs creaking under pressure that came from everywhere and nowhere. His heartbeat stuttered. His vision darked at the edges.
This is it, he thought distantly. This is how I die. Not in glory. Not saving anyone. Just... erased.
Then a voice—inside his skull, ancient, cold, furious—whispered:
"NO."
His gauntlets ignited in white flame. Heat poured through his arms, into his chest, filling the emptiness the entity had carved. Behind him, reality tore open, and a spectral figure appeared—massive, towering, radiant with power that made the entity recoil for the first time.
Ogun.
The god of war. The god of iron. The god of those who fight when the world tells them to kneel.
He was bronze-skinned, crowned in lightning, draped in smoke that moved like living shadow. His eyes burned like molten gold, and his presence was weight, gravity, inevitability made manifest. The air around him shimmered with heat and power, and when he breathed, thunder rolled.
And he spoke—not in words, but in rhythm. In the pulse of drums. In the ring of hammers on anvils. In the heartbeat of warriors who refused to fall.
"I have been calling to you, child. But you would not listen."
Kojo's voice was hoarse, blood on his tongue. "I... didn't know how."
"Then learn. Now. Or die trying."
The gauntlets flared brighter, hotter, alive with divine purpose. Kojo stood, strength flooding back into his limbs. But it wasn't just strength. It was understanding. Clarity that cut through the entity's void like a blade through silk.
The entity wasn't silence. It was the space between sounds. The pause. The rest. The breath before the strike. And if silence was rhythm—if absence was just another kind of presence—
Then he could fight it.
Kojo grinned, blood on his teeth, eyes blazing with reflected firelight. "Alright. Let's make some noise."
He moved.
Not with brute force. With precision. With purpose.
He struck in the pauses. Between the entity's movements. Between its manifestations. Between the moments when silence tried to swallow him. Each punch landed heavier. Faster. Cleaner. Not because he was stronger, but because he finally understood the rhythm.
The entity recoiled, surprised for the first time in millennia. "Impossible. You're mortal. You can't—"
"Can't what?" Kojo drove his fist forward, and the impact sent shockwaves through reality itself. "Can't learn? Can't adapt? Can't kick your ass with style?"
He pressed the attack, relentless now. Left hook to where the entity's ribs would be. Right cross that shattered its attempt to reform. Uppercut that sent it careening backward through the remains of a building.
Ogun's voice echoed in his mind, proud and fierce: "Silence is not your enemy. It is your canvas. Paint it with thunder."
Kojo roared, driving both fists forward in a devastating double strike—BOOM—and the explosion wasn't fire or light.
It was sound. Pure, unfiltered, glorious sound. The silence shattered into a thousand screaming shards. The cultist's possessed body tore apart, flesh and bone unable to contain the contradiction of divine resonance and primordial void colliding.
The entity dissolved into black mist, its final scream more felt than heard—a vibration that made teeth ache and bones shiver.
Kojo stood amidst the wreckage, chest heaving, light fading from his gauntlets. The street around him was destroyed—craters where they'd fought, buildings collapsed, the very air still shimmering with residual power.
Ogun's presence faded too, but not before Kojo heard one final whisper: "You are worthy. When you are ready, call me again. And I will answer."
Then silence. Real silence this time. Not the entity's crushing void, but simple, peaceful absence of sound.
Kojo swayed on his feet, exhaustion crashing over him like a wave. He'd won. He'd actually won. Against something ancient and terrible, he'd—
The hum. Distant. Metallic. Growing closer.
Above the ruined street, drones hovered—not Reverb's. These bore the sigil of the Church of Resonix. Clean. Official. Hunting.
He heard one voice over the comms, filtered but unmistakable: "Target confirmed. Divine resonance signature detected. After all this time... we've found him."
Kojo tried to move, but his legs wouldn't obey. The fight, the divine power, the sheer expenditure of will—it had drained everything. He collapsed to one knee, vision blurring, still managing a faint smile. "Guess... I overplayed the beat."
The drones descended, their spotlights painting him in stark white light.
Then darkness claimed him, and Kojo fell into unconsciousness, the echoes of drums still ringing in his ears.