The slums didn't rest after Bia's arrival — they shifted.
Rumors spread like wildfire through the backstreets of New York: The Bulldogs had fallen.
Their warlord had bent the knee to a woman — one no one had ever seen before.
And just like that, the power balance fractured.
For years, four gangs had ruled these streets in a delicate, blood-soaked equilibrium.
Now, one of them was gone, replaced by something new — the Kogane Dragons.
And when balance breaks in the slums, predators stir.
Three days after Bia's conquest, whispers began to reach her through Drex's men. About a group that moved beneath the streets. A thousand strong. Impossible to track.
The name alone made the older Bulldogs go pale.
"The Blood Rats," Ty muttered one evening, leaning against a crate while Bia stood overseeing new recruits sparring. "They're unpredictable — they don't fight like humans. They fight like…" "Like an infection," Drex finished, his tone grim. "You can't crush them. You can only survive them."
Bia's gaze flickered upward, her golden eyes reflecting the dying sun. "Then we'll see if infection can withstand a goddess."
The Blood Rats were not like the other gangs.
They lived in the underbelly — the maze of tunnels beneath District 3, where light never reached.
There, a thousand voices whispered, a thousand feet moved in rhythm, a thousand eyes watched from the dark.
They were swarm and shadow, a hive born of hunger.
At their center stood six men — twins, identical yet distinct — whose bond was so strong it blurred the line between individuality and instinct.
Riku Kazanari, firstborn of the six, stood at the heart of the slum tunnels surrounded by his people.
The faint light of oil lamps glimmered over his sculpted frame — lean but honed, each muscle drawn tight with controlled energy. His black hair was messy in a way that looked effortless, and his dark eyes glinted with the same cunning that had kept him alive since childhood.
He smiled faintly as news reached him — the fall of the Bulldogs, the rise of a woman who called herself Commander.
"Interesting," he murmured. "A queen moves into the sewer."
He leaned back against a cracked concrete wall, hands in his pockets.
"The question is…" He tilted his head, the grin widening. "Does she know what lives down here?"
Riku didn't lead through shouting. He led through certainty.
His men didn't follow orders — they followed gestures, glances, the rhythm of his movement.
He was chaos wrapped in calm. The eye of the Blood Rat storm.
When he raised his hand, every member in the tunnel froze.
When he lowered it, they vanished.
That was the Blood Rats' strength — swarm synchronization.
Ten-man cells moving as one, communicating through silence and motion, folding around enemies until even gods would lose their bearings.
Beside him stood Ren, his twin — identical in every way but colder, quieter. Where Riku's chaos burned like a flickering flame, Ren's was the deep, steady pulse beneath it.
He was broader in the shoulders, his black hoodie unzipped halfway, revealing the faint scar running down his collarbone — a relic of a blade that once cut too close to his heart.
Ren didn't speak often, but when he did, people listened. He was the silent architect of the swarm, the one who made Riku's madness make sense. His method was sound — literally.
In battle, Ren used pipes, walls, and even the earth itself as conduits. A single tap from his knuckles could send vibrations through the tunnels — a coded language only the Blood Rats understood. With it, he could direct hundreds without a word.
"We don't fight fair," Ren had once told his men. "We fight to survive. That's all that ever mattered."
The third twin, Rai, stood apart from his brothers — the one who never stayed still.
He was built for movement, his every step light, his breathing measured.
He had the body of a sprinter and the reflexes of a predator. His forearms bore twin scars shaped like lightning bolts, souvenirs from a collapsing tunnel he had once dragged twenty men out of alone.
Rai's division was known as the Strike Tails, specialists in burst attacks through narrow spaces. They didn't just run — they flowed.
Through vents, through drains, through shattered walls.
By the time their targets realized they were surrounded, the Rats had already closed in.
Rai moved like a blur, his voice sharp and quick.
"Speed wins the ground," he told his men. "Fear wins the fight."
Then there was Rei, the fourth twin — the tactician of chaos.
He always had a piece of gum in his mouth and a half-smile on his face, like he was permanently amused by something no one else could see.
Rei believed in unpredictability — not just in motion, but in thought. His division trained to confuse and disorient, to create panic before striking.
They set traps that turned enemies against each other, mirrored each other's movements mid-battle, and vanished into smoke before retaliation could form.
"Confusion," he said, "is mercy. They die before they understand why."
Rei's men called themselves the Vanishers — ghosts of the slum.
The last pair weren't Kazanaris by blood — but they might as well have been.
The Crimson Twins, Kazu and Kai Arata, commanded the Blood Rats' third division: the enforcers.
They dressed in black and red, caps turned backward, muscles like sculpted marble, and matching tattoos of rat skulls on their necks.
Kazu was the louder — brash, impulsive, laughing even while he fought.
Kai was his mirror — silent, methodical, efficient. Together, they were a force of raw brutality.
Their signature technique, the Dual-Strike, was a nightmare to face.
While one attacked head-on, the other mirrored the movements in reverse from behind or the flank, creating an illusion of omnipresence. Enemies found themselves surrounded by echoes of the same two men, their attacks countered from every direction.
Their synchronized movement even created a psychological rhythm — a Fear Pulse — an instinctive terror that crept into opponents' minds as their heartbeats began to match the Rats' tempo.
The Blood Rats didn't fight for glory. They fought for survival — as they always had. No one rat stood out, because none needed to. They swarmed. They overwhelmed. They devoured.
When one fell, two filled his place. When one shouted, ten echoed. When one struck, a hundred hands followed.
To face the Blood Rats wasn't to fight an army. It was to drown in it.
Their thousand members were a single organism — a whisper in the dark, a shiver under the city, a reminder that chaos still had teeth.
Riku stood atop the old drainage platform, his men gathered below in lines of shadow. He crossed his arms, looking at Ren.
"So," he said, his grin sharp as glass. "The Dragons think they own the slums."
Ren tapped the wall once with his knuckle — the sound echoed through the pipes, a low hum spreading through the tunnels.
"They won't for long."
Riku's grin widened. "Good. Let's welcome our new neighbors."
He turned, his thousand men waiting in silence — a tide poised to break.
"We are the Rats," he said softly, his voice carrying through the darkness like venom through veins. "They'll see what happens when you try to claim the dark."
And with that, the tunnels erupted in motion. A thousand footsteps pounding in unison, a whispering storm rising from the underbelly of New York.
The slums had a new war coming. And this time, it wouldn't start with fire — but with the sound of claws in the dark.
The night over the slums of, New York hung still and heavy, a thick shroud of smog muffling even the stars. From the rooftop of the Kogane Dragons' new compound, Bia looked out across the maze of the slums—an ocean of rust and flickering neon. A faint golden shimmer bloomed before her eyes:
[Celestia Subsystem: Directive Received]
Mission: Conquer the Blood Rats.
Target: Gang Rank #3 — The Blood Rats.
Directive: Assimilation or Eradication.
Condition: Solo Operation Recommended.
The golden glyphs pulsed once, then faded into the night breeze.
Bia smiled, slow and quiet.
"Of course," she murmured. "You'd send me into the dark next."
Behind her, Drex stepped forward. "Commander—let us go with you. They're animals. A thousand strong—"
She turned her head slightly. Even that tiny movement was enough to silence him.
"No," she said. "You'll not kill my future allies."
Ty frowned. "You're saying—"
"I'll handle them myself." Her tone left no room for question. "When I return, they will kneel. Not as enemies, but as Dragons."
She looked back toward the horizon, eyes glowing faintly gold in the dark.
"Besides," she added, "the shadows remember me better than the light."
When the city slept, she moved.
Her boots made no sound as she walked the fractured sidewalks toward the industrial edge of District 3. The air grew damp, rank with rot and rainwater. Neon light faded, replaced by the soft glimmer of moonlight on puddles.
At the edge of a storm canal, a rust-eaten grate barred the way into the sewers. She placed a single finger against it. Metal screamed softly and crumbled to dust.
The air that rolled out was cold and fetid—sewage, rust, and mildew—but she didn't flinch.
To her, this was just another battlefield.
The stone passage stretched endlessly before her, slick walls glistening with condensation. A shallow river of dark water flowed along the center, its faint ripples whispering through the silence.
She walked along the narrow ledge, hands loose at her sides.
Every drop of water that fell from the ceiling echoed, yet she made no sound at all.
Her eyes gleamed faintly—golden, divine. She needed no light. The darkness was transparent to her; every corner, every crack in the stone existed in perfect clarity.
Far behind her, faint footsteps followed—soft, hesitant, scattered. She felt them long before she heard them.
Scouts, she thought. Good. Let them see what follows.
She didn't quicken her pace. Gods did not hurry.
The tunnel widened into a different kind of darkness—metallic, industrial.
The walls turned from stone to tiled steel, blue paint peeling like skin. Rusted grates lined the floor, the smell of oil mixing with wet concrete. Old bulbs flickered overhead, throwing fractured light down the corridor.
Voices drifted through the hall.
Soft at first—then clearer.
"...you hear that?"
"Nah, probably rats again."
"Too heavy for rats…"
"Shut up and keep watch."
They were everywhere now—men leaning against the walls, crouched near the grates, smoking, laughing, waiting. They didn't notice her at first. The sound of their chatter masked her approach.
Then the first one looked up—and froze.
She passed them without breaking stride. Their laughter died mid-breath, eyes following her as the weight of her presence pressed down. Her aura was subtle, restrained, yet every instinct in their bodies screamed predator.
She didn't speak. Didn't even glance at them.
Her only acknowledgment was the faint hum of golden light in her eyes as she passed.
Behind her, one of them whispered, "Who the hell was that…?"
The answer came in silence.
The corridor ended at a rusted stairwell climbing toward a wide, open chamber lit by the dying glow of orange lamps. Thick pipes crisscrossed the ceiling. Steam hissed from broken valves, veiling the space in a faint mist.
When she reached the final step, the noise hit her—hundreds of voices, overlapping, arguing, laughing, snarling.
The Blood Rats' den.
It stretched outward like an underground market gone feral. Makeshift bunks, crates, steel drums for fires—an entire world carved out of sewage tunnels.
As she stepped forward, the crowd noticed. First a few heads turned—then dozens—then hundreds.
Conversations died. Chairs scraped. Metal clinked as knives and pipes were drawn.
Within moments, the sound of movement filled the air. Figures emerged from every corner, every tunnel, every archway—closing in around her until she stood at the center of a living circle.
A thousand eyes watched her. A thousand breaths held.
And in the middle of it all, the Goddess of Force stood silent—expression blank, unreadable. Her golden gaze swept across the swarm like a judge appraising the condemned.
They surrounded her like rats drawn to heat, restless and hungry. Yet she felt no danger. Only inevitability.
Her heartbeat remained calm. Her voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper—but it carried through the chamber like thunder.
"So this is the nest."
She clasped her hands behind her back, posture relaxed, eyes unblinking.
"Good. I prefer when the prey comes to me."
The air seemed to tighten—every man feeling the weight of something vast pressing down from the unseen heavens.
The Blood Rats had found their intruder. But they hadn't yet realized they were standing in the presence of a goddess.