The Recovery Hideout (Morning After the Attack)
Morning light, faint and filtered through dirty slits in the boarded-up window, hardly reached the floor where William lay out.The air of the safehouse was rich with the smell of antiseptic herbs and wet stone.
Pain wracked his body as if every bone had been shattered and hastily glued in place. Bandages encircled his left shoulder, faintly yellowed with the healer's poultices. He blinked slowly, vision blurring into focus.
Natasha was cross-legged on a small stool. Her fingers were moving quickly across a fluctuating holographic medical scan above a broken data pad. Her dark eyes were keen, unreadable—but the strain of her jaw revealed her worry.
Sitting across the room, Jax folded his arms, one leg up on the wall. A new gash disfigured his right arm hurriedly stitched, but his eyes were focused, roaming the room like a caged beast.
"You're awake," Natasha muttered without rising. "Good. The Black Venom would have killed you within minutes."
William attempted to sit up. His left arm bucked violently and fell back. He clenched his teeth.
It… didn't," he muttered.
"No," she replied, finally looking at him. "It didn't. The healer said your body counteracted it—partially, anyway. He never seen anyone survived Black Venom. Only Legacy Families or their trained assassins have access to it." She fell silent, voice lowering. "You humiliated a city asset in the Tier Upgrade Arena. Someone wants you silenced."
William let out a harsh breath. "I'm fine."
His shaking arm betrayed him.
They were holed up in the Slums of Black Fang—a district where the city's underbelly festered beneath neon glyphs and rusted scaffolding. Outside, the streets pulsed with raw life: beast-hide vendors haggled over scorched wolf pelts, gang patrols marked territory with spray-painted sigils and barefoot kids kicked smooth river stones through rain-grimed alleyways.
For the next two days, William worked hard. Light drills. Controlled breathing. Concentrating on 'Dragon's Lash'—the first of the tome's techniques. The second technique was sealed, its mystery curled up like a sleeping snake he couldn't decipher what the teqnique was. He assumed Until his understanding is 70%, he can't realize the second teqnique.
Each movement shocked his poisoned nerves, but he did not give up. Control was survival.
Natasha drifted across the slums, collecting rumors in ally side tea houses and illegal data hives.
"The Guild's report on your battle disappeared," she informed them one night, erasing grime from her knuckles. "Rorik's supporters are shifting. Quickly.
Jax grew quieter, more restless. He paced the cramped room, fingers twitching toward his sword at every distant shout or footstep. "We're sitting ducks," he muttered. "Trapped in a rat hole while they circle."
He was right.
On the third night, Rorik found them.
The battle broke out in a rainy alley as wide as a corridor, illuminated by jerky neon lights. Rorik alone—but he didn't require escort. His steps were calculated ,deadly, perfected by years of seasoned aggression. He wasn't merely a predator; he was a finely honed killing instrument that the city itself had polished to perfection.
William stood his ground.
Dragon's Lash flowed through his arms—more an impulse, less a move now. His attacks had the crackle of whip and the ferocity of serpent coiled. Every movement was more fluid than the last, his mastery rising toward that unattainable 70%. He deflected the pointed maul's spun, and rammed a palm strike into the middle of Rorik's back. The man wheezed but did not stumble.
Natasha didn't struggle. She maneuvered. A tripwire caught Rorik's leg. A smoke pellet—borrowed from a smuggler's stash—blinded him for three fateful seconds. She utilized the surroundings as a second skin: capsized stalls, loose pipes, even a startled stray dog driven to barking chaos. Intelligence over instinct. Strategy over sword.
Jax, wild and true, charged to defend her as Rorik burst from the smoke, maul hammering for Natasha's head. Jax took the blow on his own back. The force drove him into a crate pile, blood exploding across his back.
"Jax!" William bellowed.
But Natasha was already in motion. She did not toss a knife or shoot. Instead, she pulled on a rusty fire escape chain above them. It snapped free with a screech of metal, falling between Rorik and Jax like a steel screen. The diversion provided the opening William required.
He pressed Rorik back against the soggy brick wall, forearm against his windpipe, eyes blazing with fatigue and rage.
Who sent you?" William growled, voice hoarse and harsh.
Rorik spat blood onto the muddied ground. His lip curled into a snarl. "You think you battled the Tier Upgrade fight? No, boy ; you battled the family's leash."
William stood still.
Natasha moved forward, eyes narrowing. "The Legacy Family?
Rorik laughed, a broken, wet sound. "They don't dirty their hands. They recruit hunters like me—hungry, ambitious—and let us bleed the streets dry. Keep the low-tiers in line. You overstepped your bounds. That's all."
Rorik wasn't an family member.Just an instrument. An important one, deployed to keep the brittle hierarchy of Black Fang's hunter society intact. The Legacy Family—'House Veyra'—ruled from gold-trimmed towers, their power inserted into every permit, every bounty, every authorized duel.
William looked at Natasha. She nodded once, with a grim face.
They released him.
Rorik disappeared into the maze-like streets, limping but alive. A message, not a martyr.
############
Night descended like a shroud.
On the top of their hideout, under broken tiles and a smog-choked sky, William knelt alongside Jax.
The injury on his back wasn't deep .William smeared salve made from ground moonpetal and beast bile, a formula Natasha had bartered for in the black market.
Natasha stood a few strides back, arms folded, eyes intent on the radiating expanse of Black Fang below. The city throbbed like a diseased heart—beautiful, corrupt, alive.
Jax flinched as the salve ran deep in the tissue. "You didn't have to release him," he growled.
"We needed to know who held the strings," William said quietly. "Not simply cut them."
Silence was drawn out, punctuated only by the faraway hum of transports and the occasional bellow from the street below.
Then Jax talked, voice harsh with pain and something beyond- likely memory.
"You're wondering why I left the people who raised me?" He didn't glance at William. His gaze was on the stars they couldn't see. "Because they didn't kill beasts, William ; they created them."
William hesitated.
"They kidnapped orphans. Street rats like me. Taught us power, purpose." Jax's voice fell to a whisper. "Then they broke us. Starved us. Locked us in chambers brimming with raw poison until we screamed ourselves hoarse. They called it 'refinement.' Said it removed weakness." He stroked his scarred forearm absently. "But it didn't incinerate weakness. It incinerated humanity .They taught us hate and referred to it as strength. Transformed humans into beasts wearing human skin."
William capped the salve, his movements slow, deliberate.
Around them, the city glittered—cold, indifferent.
Natasha didn't move. She listened, her silhouette sharp against the skyline.
William looked at Jax—the haunted eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers curled like he still expected chains.
Then he spoke, voice calm as still water.
"Then we'll hunt them too."
His eyes, in the darkness, glowed dimly like crimson coals in the night.
Below, Black Fang slept, unaware that three rats in its gutters had just issued a declaration of war on so called legacies.
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