The morning came quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that felt like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to break.
Kojo sat cross-legged in the center of the warehouse floor, both hands resting palm-up on his knees. The Ọwọ́ Ogun gauntlets gleamed in the early light filtering through the cracked skylights—gold and black metal etched with patterns that seemed to shift when you weren't looking directly at them. Spirals that turned into words in languages that predated written history. Symbols that meant war and creation and the space between destruction and birth.
He'd been sitting there for over an hour. Not moving. Barely breathing. Just listening.
The gauntlets hummed. Faint. Almost imperceptible. Like a voice trying to speak through water. Through time. Through the barrier between mortal and divine.
Kojo focused on that hum. Let it fill his mind. Let it drown out everything else—the pain in his ribs, the exhaustion in his bones, the memory of Rhea's face when he'd walked away again.
There was something in these gauntlets. Something old. Something powerful. Something that had been trying to reach him for years and he'd been too angry, too distracted, too human to notice.
Not anymore.
Mira noticed first. She'd come down to check his bandages—he'd been favoring his left side since the fight with the Entity—and found him like that. Statue-still. Eyes closed. Sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold morning air.
"Kojo?" she said softly.
No response.
She glanced back toward the stairs where Seraph and Ilias were still sleeping. Or pretending to. It was hard to tell anymore. Nobody really slept well these days. Just closed their eyes and waited for dawn.
Reverb was passed out on a cot in the corner, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. At least someone could sleep.
"Kojo," she tried again, louder this time.
His eyes snapped open. Gold light flickered in his pupils for just a second before fading back to their normal brown.
"I can hear him," he said.
Mira blinked. "Hear who?"
"Ogun." Kojo looked down at the gauntlets. At the way the light beneath the metal pulsed in time with his heartbeat. "He's been trying to talk to me. For years. I just... I wasn't listening."
"And now you are?"
"Trying to." He flexed his fingers slowly. The gauntlets hummed—low, resonant, almost like a voice trying to form words but not quite managing it. "But I don't speak... whatever this is. It's not sound. Not exactly. It's deeper than that. Like he's speaking directly to something inside me that doesn't have words."
Mira crouched beside him, medical instinct making her check his pulse even though she knew it would be elevated. "So what are you doing?"
"Figuring it out." He raised one hand slowly. Made a simple gesture—thumb and forefinger forming a circle. The universal sign. Okay?
The gauntlet pulsed once. Faint. Almost imperceptible. But there.
Kojo's eyebrows rose. His breath caught. "Holy shit. It understood."
"What did you just—"
"Hand signals." He was grinning now. Excited in a way she hadn't seen since before everything went to hell. "If he can't talk—or if I can't hear him properly—maybe he can respond? Confirm things?"
He tried again. Pointed at himself with one finger. Me. Then pointed at the gauntlet. You.
The gauntlet pulsed twice. Stronger this time. Deliberate.
"That's a yes," Kojo breathed. "Two pulses is yes. One is no."
By now, the others were stirring. Seraph came down the stairs first, hair still messy from sleep, one hand already on the knife at her hip before she'd even fully woken up. Old habits. Soldier habits.
Ilias followed, looking like he'd been awake for hours. Probably had been. He slept even less than the rest of them.
Taren limped after them, cane tapping against concrete in a rhythm that sounded almost musical. The old man never seemed to sleep at all. Just existed in a state of permanent wakefulness and terrible coffee.
"What's going on?" Ilias asked.
"Kojo's talking to his gauntlets," Mira said.
"I'm communicating with Ogun," Kojo corrected. He looked up at them, eyes bright with something that looked like hope and terror mixed together. "There's a god in these things. An actual god. And he wants to teach me."
Silence fell. Heavy. Profound.
Then Reverb's voice from the cot, muffled by the pillow he'd thrown over his head: "I'm sorry, what?"
"Get up," Seraph said. "You need to see this."
They gathered around him. All of them. Watching as Kojo demonstrated—asking simple yes/no questions, getting responses in the form of pulses through the metal. One for no. Two for yes. It was crude. Basic. But it was communication.
"Is your name Ogun?" Two pulses. Yes.
"Are you a god?" Two pulses. Yes.
"Can you teach me to use this power?" Two pulses. Yes.
"This is insane," Reverb muttered, finally sitting up and rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"This is divine resonance," Taren said quietly. His voice had that tone it got when he was remembering things from before the Fall. Things he'd seen that the rest of them could only imagine. "I've heard stories. Artifacts that house fragments of the Old Ones. Gods who bound themselves to metal and stone to survive the Silence Wars. Who gave up their physical forms to endure when everything else was being unmade." He looked at Kojo with something like reverence. "You've been carrying one this whole time."
"Not just carrying," Kojo said. "He's been trying to reach me. During the fight with that Silence Entity—when I was losing, when I thought I was going to die—he manifested. Fully. I saw him. This massive figure made of iron and fire and creation itself. He told me he'd been calling to me but I wouldn't listen." His voice went quiet. "I was too angry to hear anything but my own rage."
"And now?" Seraph asked.
"Now I'm listening." Kojo looked at the gauntlets again. Spoke directly to them like they were a person. Like they were. "Can you teach me? Can you show me how to use this power without losing control?"
Two pulses. Yes.
He grinned. "Alright. How?"
The gauntlet didn't pulse this time. Instead, it moved. Just slightly. The fingers twitching, pointing toward the corner where Reverb kept his supplies and equipment.
"Uh," Reverb said. "Why's it pointing at my stuff?"
Kojo stood slowly, following the gesture. The gauntlet kept pointing until he reached a stack of crates and supply boxes. There, wedged between two containers of medical supplies and a broken resonance amplifier, was a notepad and a pen. The kind Reverb used for quick calculations and supply lists.
He picked them up. Looked at the gauntlet. "You want to write?"
Two pulses. Yes.
"Okay then." Kojo set the notepad on a crate, held the pen awkwardly in his gauntleted hand. The metal wasn't designed for fine motor control like this. "Show me."
His hand moved. Not him. It.
The sensation was strange. Not possession—he was still in control, could stop it if he wanted—but guidance. Like someone taking your hand and showing you how to form letters when you were learning to write as a child.
The gauntlet guided his fingers, pressing the pen to paper, forming letters in a script that looked ancient. Angular. Sharp. Beautiful in a way that made your eyes hurt if you looked too long. The kind of writing that belonged in temples and tombs, not warehouses in dying cities.
When it finished, Kojo stared at the words. Everyone leaned in.
I am Ogun. God of iron, war, and creation. I have waited long for one who would listen. You are wounded. Angry. Strong. I will teach you to be more.
Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed.
Mira's hand went to her mouth.
Ilias stepped closer, staring at the writing like it might disappear if he blinked. "Is there... is there one in mine too?"
Kojo looked at him. Then at the gauntlets. "Is there a god in my brother's staff?"
Two pulses. Yes.
Ilias's breath caught. His hand went to the Osh'Kora staff mag-locked to his back. The weapon thrummed faintly at his touch, like it had been waiting for this moment. "Who?"
The gauntlet moved Kojo's hand again. Wrote in that same ancient script:
Orun-Fela. The Last of the Old Beat. God of freedom, rhythm, and rebellion. He chose you.
"He chose me?" Ilias's voice was barely a whisper. "Why?"
You called to him without knowing. In every act of defiance. Every moment you refused to kneel. Every time you fought for those who couldn't fight for themselves. He heard. He answered.
Seraph's hand found Ilias's shoulder. Squeezed once. Her eyes were bright with something that might have been tears but she'd never admit it.
"This changes everything," Taren said quietly. He wasn't looking at the writing anymore. He was looking at the two brothers—one holding gauntlets that housed the god of war, the other wearing a staff that held the god of rebellion. "If the Church knew—if the Families knew—they'd come for you both. Kill you before you learned what you were carrying. Gods don't choose mortals anymore. Not since the Fall. Not since the Silence Wars when the divine and mortal were separated by law and force."
"Then we don't tell them," Mira said firmly. She looked at both her brothers with fierce determination. "And we start training. Right now. If these gods want to teach you—if they've been waiting for you—then you learn. Because whatever's coming, we're going to need every advantage we can get."
Kojo nodded slowly. Looked down at the gauntlets. At the patterns that shifted and moved. At the weight of divinity in metal form. "When do we start?"
The response came immediately. Not in pulses. In movement.
The gauntlets lifted both of Kojo's arms—effortless, powerful, like they weighed nothing—and placed them in a fighting stance he didn't know he knew. Wide base. Center of gravity low. Hands positioned for both offense and defense. A stance that felt both ancient and perfectly natural.
"Now," Kojo translated, feeling the certainty through the connection. "We start now."
The training was brutal.
Ogun didn't speak. Didn't need to. He moved Kojo's body through forms and strikes and defensive positions that felt both utterly foreign and deeply familiar. Like remembering a language he'd never learned. Like muscle memory from someone else's life.
The gauntlets would pulse to indicate when he was doing something right. Would adjust his positioning when he was wrong. Would show him—through that strange guidance that wasn't quite control—how to shift his weight, how to pivot, how to strike with maximum force using minimum movement.
War wasn't just about power, Ogun seemed to be teaching him. It was about efficiency. Precision. Understanding the rhythm of combat the way a blacksmith understood metal.
Ilias trained separately, staff in hand, trying to feel Orun-Fela the way Kojo felt Ogun. It was harder for him. The staff didn't have the same kind of direct communication. But sometimes—in moments when he stopped trying so hard—the weapon would hum. Would guide his movements just slightly. Just enough.
Where Ogun taught war, Orun-Fela taught rhythm. The hidden beat beneath reality. The pulse that connected all things. How to move with it instead of against it. How to flow like water through the spaces between.
Mira watched them both, making notes, checking vitals when they paused to breathe. Making sure they didn't push too hard too fast.
Seraph and Reverb worked on reinforcing the warehouse defenses. If the Church or the Families came looking, they'd at least have some warning.
Taren sat by the fire, smoking his terrible tobacco, watching the brothers train with eyes that had seen too much and understood more than he'd ever say.
Three hours passed. Maybe four. Time felt strange when gods were teaching you their ancient ways.
They were still learning when the first explosion hit.
The warehouse shook. Concrete dust rained from the ceiling like snow. Alarms screamed—the proximity sensors Reverb had installed triggering all at once.
"What the hell—" Reverb was already at his console, fingers flying across holographic displays. "Church signatures. Multiple. High-level Tuned." His face went pale. Actually pale. Reverb didn't scare easily. "Oh shit. It's the Families. They sent the Families."
Seraph's hand went to her weapon. "How many?"
"Four confirmed. Symphonic-level or higher." Reverb looked up, eyes wide with something close to panic. "They're not here to capture. They're here to end this."
Mira grabbed her medical bag. Started pulling out the trauma supplies. "Then we fight."
"We can't—" Taren started to say, but Kojo cut him off.
"We can." He was already moving toward the exit, gauntlets glowing faintly with that divine light. "Because we don't have a choice."
Ilias grabbed his staff. Met his brother's eyes across the warehouse. In that look passed everything they'd never said out loud. All the years apart. All the pain. All the brotherhood that had somehow survived it all.
"Together?" Ilias asked.
"Together," Kojo confirmed.
They burst through the warehouse door into chaos and fire and the beginning of the end.
Four figures stood in the ruined street, backlit by smoke and flames. The morning sun was hidden behind clouds of ash. The air tasted like blood and resonance and imminent death.
Alyon the Iron Choir stood at the center—massive, broad-shouldered, skin like burnished copper that seemed to reflect light in impossible ways. When he spoke, his voice made the air vibrate with harmonic resonance. Layers of sound building on each other until reality itself seemed to bend. "Ilias Venn. Kojo Venn. You are in violation of divine law. Surrender now and face judgment. Resist and be erased from history."
Resonance armor formed around him with every syllable—layered, dense, nearly impenetrable. The kind of defense that had taken down entire battalions during the Church Wars.
Vareen of the Pulse Veil flickered beside him like a ghost that couldn't decide if it wanted to be real. Slender. Pale. Eyes like liquid mercury. She moved between heartbeats, phasing in and out of reality, leaving afterimages in her wake that made your eyes hurt trying to track her.
Mael the Chord Breaker stood silent in monk's robes, a blade strapped across his back that hummed with frequencies that shouldn't exist in mortal space. The weapon was tuned specifically to sever the connection between body and soul. One cut and you'd still be alive—but you'd never access resonance again. Never hear music the same way. Never be whole.
Sero the Vex Cantor smiled—beautiful and terrible in equal measure. His voice was a weapon that could twist emotions like clay in a sculptor's hands. Turn fear into paralysis. Rage into suicide. Love into hate. He'd ended wars without ever throwing a punch, just singing people into madness and despair.
They'd come prepared. They'd come to kill.
Ilias stepped forward, staff in hand. Blood was already drying on his knuckles from the training. "You call this judgment? Four against two?"
"Four against one," Alyon corrected, his voice booming like war drums. His eyes were fixed on Ilias. "Your brother is merely collateral damage. You're the threat. The wild god who refuses to kneel."
Kojo snorted. Actually laughed. "You're gonna regret that."
Alyon's smile was cold. Confident. "We shall see."
Then he sang.
Not words. Not even really music. Just pure resonance—a hymn that made reality bend and crack at the edges. The ground split beneath their feet. Buildings groaned like they were dying. His armor solidified, glowing white-hot with stored power.
He charged like a landslide given purpose.
Ilias raised his staff to block.
The impact sent him flying backward through the air. Through a wall. Through what used to be a shop. Through two abandoned cars that crumpled like paper in a child's hands. Metal shrieking. Glass exploding. The sound of a body hitting concrete at speed.
He hit the ground rolling somehow, staff still in hand despite everything, ribs screaming protest. Blood flooded his mouth. At least two broken ribs. Maybe three.
Then Vareen was there—flickering behind him faster than thought, her heel slamming into his spine with enhanced force.
He went down hard. Face-first. The world spinning.
Mael appeared next, blade singing that terrible frequency. The edge sliced through the air—and through Ilias's connection to the Source. Through that invisible thread that linked him to the rhythm of reality.
For one terrible heartbeat, he was just human. Powerless. Mortal.
They closed in like predators sensing blood.
Alyon's fist coming down. Vareen's strikes from impossible angles. Sero's voice twisting fear through his chest like poison injected straight into his heart.
This is it, Ilias thought. This is how I die. In a ruined street. Fighting odds I can't beat. Never getting to tell Seraph how I really feel. Never having that drink with Kojo. Never—
Then his brother roared.
The gauntlets blazed with light that hurt to look at directly.
Kojo hit Alyon like a freight train—gauntlets changing size mid-swing, growing massive, titanium and divine power slamming into the Iron Choir's armor with enough force to crack stone.
Alyon staggered. Actually staggered. His eyes went wide with something that might have been respect or might have been fear.
"Get away from my brother," Kojo snarled.
Ogun's presence was there—not controlling, but guiding. Showing him where armor was weakest. How to move. The rhythm of war itself flowing through his veins like fire and iron and ancient rage.
Vareen blinked toward him, phasing through reality. Kojo didn't try to track her visually. Just closed his eyes and listened. To the displacement of air. To the flutter of heartbeat between dimensions.
When she materialized behind him, his elbow was already there.
She hit the ground gasping, ribs cracked, unable to phase properly with broken bones.
Mael came next—blade humming with that soul-severing frequency. Kojo caught it between his gauntlets. The metal screeched. The silence-frequency tried to sever his connection to Ogun.
The gauntlets pulsed. No.
The blade shattered into pieces like ceramic dropped on concrete.
Mael's eyes went wide. No one had ever broken that blade. Ever.
"Yeah," Kojo breathed. "That's a god you're fucking with."
Meanwhile, Ilias was getting back up. Slowly. Painfully. Every movement agony. But getting up anyway because that's what you did. You got back up.
Staff in hand.
The connection snapped back—stronger than before. Like a rubber band released. Like something that had been compressed finally breaking free.
The Osh'Kora hummed with divine recognition.
Get up, Orun-Fela's voice whispered directly into his mind. Not sound. Just knowing. This is not your end. This is your beginning.
Ilias stood.
His eyes burned gold with borrowed divinity.
Sero tried his voice again—twisting rage through the air like invisible knives, trying to turn Ilias's anger against himself. Trying to make him self-destruct.
It didn't work.
Because the anger wasn't chaos anymore. It was fuel. It was purpose. It was controlled fire in a forge.
Ilias moved.
Not human-fast. Not even Tuned-fast. Something else entirely. Something that existed in the spaces between seconds.
The staff sang with him—each strike leaving trails of golden light like comet tails, each movement syncing perfectly with the hidden rhythm beneath the city. With the heartbeat of reality itself.
He hit Sero first. One strike. Clean. Precise. The Vex Cantor's resonance shield shattered like glass under a hammer.
Vareen tried to blink in, desperate. Ilias was already turning, staff sweeping low, catching her mid-phase with divine timing.
She screamed—trapped between dimensions, unable to move forward or back, caught in a nightmare of her own making.
Alyon charged again, armor reforming from pure will and resonance.
Ilias met him head-on.
Staff against fist. Divine rhythm against resonance armor. The collision of old world and new.
The impact created a shockwave that shattered every window for three blocks in all directions. Car alarms screaming. Dogs howling. The sound of reality protesting.
They separated. Circled each other like predators trying to find an opening.
"You're strong," Alyon admitted, voice like grinding stone. Blood leaked from his mouth where internal damage was catching up. "But strength alone won't—"
Ilias moved faster than thought.
One thrust. Precise as surgery. Perfect as mathematics.
The staff's tip touched Alyon's chest—and the armor dissolved.
Not shattered. Not broken. Unmade. Like it had never existed.
Alyon stared down at himself in absolute disbelief. That armor had taken years to learn. Decades to perfect. It couldn't just—
"How—"
"Because I'm not fighting alone," Ilias said quietly. "None of us ever really are."
Then he struck again. Center mass. Divine power meeting mortal flesh.
Alyon fell like a mountain collapsing.
The fight became a storm of movement and power and desperate survival.
Kojo and Ilias moved together—not coordinated like they'd practiced, but harmonized like they'd always known how. Like two instruments playing the same song from different angles. Like brothers.
Where Kojo was overwhelming power—brutal, relentless, unstoppable as a avalanche—Ilias was precision and rhythm. Every strike exactly where it needed to be. Every movement flowing into the next like water.
Alyon tried to rise. Kojo's fist ended that attempt. Armor or not.
Mael came at them with bare hands, trying desperately to use his silence-touch. If he could just sever their connection to the divine—
Kojo grabbed his wrists. Squeezed with divine-enhanced strength. Bones cracked like dry kindling.
Vareen was still trapped in her dimensional nightmare, screaming as reality tore her apart slowly.
Sero ran.
Turned and ran like prey fleeing predators.
Ilias let him. For about ten seconds. Let him think he might actually escape.
Then he threw the staff.
It flew like a spear—straight and true and inevitable—and caught Sero in the leg with divine accuracy. He went down hard, momentum carrying him into a tumble that broke something else.
Ilias walked over calmly. Pulled the staff free with casual brutality. Looked down at the Vex Cantor trembling on the ground, all his terrible beauty reduced to fear and pain.
"Tell them," Ilias said quietly. Calmly. Like he was discussing the weather. "Tell the Families. Tell the Church. Tell everyone who needs to hear it." His eyes still burned gold. "Tell them we're done running. Tell them we're done hiding. Tell them if they come for us again, this is what happens."
Then he turned and walked away, leaving Sero sobbing in the rubble.
Behind them, Vareen's screaming finally stopped as she tore herself free from the dimensional rift. She collapsed, broken but alive.
The four members of the Families lay in various states of defeat. Not dead—Ilias and Kojo had shown that much mercy—but broken. Beaten. Humiliated.
The message would spread. Had to spread.
The brothers walked back through smoke and ash and the ruins of the street.
Back to where Mira was already setting up triage. Where Seraph stood guard with weapons ready. Where Reverb monitored the scanners with growing horror.
"Uh, guys?" Reverb's voice was tight with controlled panic. "We've got a problem. A big problem."
"What now?" Kojo asked, trying not to collapse from exhaustion.
"Church skyships. Multiple. Incoming fast." Reverb's hands flew across his displays. "They're not here to negotiate or arrest.
Whatever you just did, it lit up every scanner in the city like a fucking beacon. They know exactly where you are and they're coming with everything they've got."
Taren limped forward, leaning heavily on his cane. "Then we move. Right now. No time to pack. Take what you can carry and go."
"Where?" Mira asked, already repacking her medical supplies for rapid transport.
"Anywhere but here."
Ilias looked up at the sky. Already he could see them—distant but approaching fast. Searchlights cutting through smoke like the fingers of angry gods.
"They'll keep coming," he said quietly. "No matter where we go. No matter what we do."
"Let them," Kojo said. He was grinning despite everything. Despite the pain and exhaustion and broken ribs. "We'll be ready. We've got literal gods on our side now."
Seraph squeezed Ilias's hand once. Hard. Real. "Come on. We need to go. Now."
They moved—quickly, efficiently, weeks of running teaching them how to evacuate fast. Grabbing essentials. Abandoning everything else. The warehouse had never really been home anyway. Just another temporary shelter in a life of temporary shelters.
As they disappeared into the tunnels beneath the city—old maintenance corridors and forgotten infrastructure—the Church ships descended on the ruined street like mechanical angels of vengeance.
They found nothing but bodies and ash and the lingering resonance of divine power.
Elsewhere in the city, in a fortress made of scrap metal and spite, Rhea Vance stood on her balcony. Cigarette forgotten between her fingers. Staring at the pillar of smoke rising from the Morrows. At the Church ships circling like predators.
"You crazy, beautiful bastards," she whispered to the wind and smoke.
Behind her, Tzark's volcanic rumble. "They just declared war on the Church and the Families both."
"No." Rhea smiled—cold and sharp and proud in equal measure. "They just answered the war that was already declared. They just stopped pretending they could stay hidden."
She turned back inside, all business now.
"Get me everything we have on the Four Families. Names. Capabilities. Weaknesses. Where they live. Where they sleep. Who they love." Her eyes were hard. Calculating. "And start reaching out to our contacts in the other gangs. The ones who hate the Church as much as we do."
Vess's four arms folded in that gesture that meant she was thinking tactically. "You're getting involved? Directly?"
"I'm always involved." Rhea's smile widened into something predatory. "They just don't know it yet.".
Kemi stepped forward. "My Queen, this could start a gang war. The Council will crack down on all of us."
"Let them try." Rhea lit another cigarette.
"We've been living in their shadow too long. Maybe it's time we reminded them that shadows have teeth."
She looked out at the city—her city, the one she'd fought for and bled for and built her empire in—and made a decision that would change everything.
"Find the Venn brothers," she said quietly.
"Keep tabs on them. If they need help—supplies, safe houses, information—we provide it. Anonymously. Carefully. But we provide it."
"Why?" Kemi asked.
Rhea was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Because someone has to stand against the Church. And if it's going to be anyone, I'd rather it be someone I know won't quit.
Someone too stubborn to die." She exhaled smoke. "Someone who keeps his promises even when it hurts."
She didn't say Kojo's name. Didn't have to.
Everyone understood.