[Hospital – Night]
The sterile white walls of the hospital blurred at the edges of Damien's vision as he sat there, unmoving.
His fingers twitched against his knee, the phantom sensation of blood—her blood—still clinging to his skin.
His thoughts were a mess.
Why did this feel so… familiar?
The smell of antiseptic. The cold air against his skin. The weight pressing down on his chest like an iron fist.
His head throbbed.
Just like that time…
Damien clenched his jaw, forcing the thought away.
He had buried that memory a long time ago.
This wasn't the same.
It wasn't.
And yet—
The image of Elena lying there, her breath barely audible, the blood soaking into the pavement beneath her—
But this time the image changes instead of Elena, A middle-aged woman lying in a small apartment—naked with marks of violence across her body, bruises blooming like sickly flowers on her pale skin. Blood pooled beneath her, a deep crimson stain on the cheap, tattered carpet.
His breath caught in his throat.
No.
Not now.
Not here.
Martha Cooper.
The only mother figure he ever came close to having.
Her lifeless eyes stared up at the cracked ceiling of that dingy apartment, her mouth slightly parted as if she had tried to say something before the end.
Damien squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in sharply through his nose. Not now. Not here.
But the memory clawed its way to the surface anyway. The sound of police sirens, the weight of too many eyes watching him, judging him. The way the officers barely looked at her as they whispered among themselves—just another dead woman in a shitty part of town.
The way they had looked at him.
Like he was nothing.
Like he had no right to grieve.
Like he was supposed to just accept it.
His fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
He was orphaned at the tender age of one, left at the doorstep of the orphanage by someone who found him near a garbage bin—discarded like he was nothing.
At the age of five, he ran away from the orphanage due to excessive bullying and cruel treatment from both the staff and the older kids. Living on the streets, he learned fast—how to fight, how to survive, how to stay invisible when he needed to.
And then Martha found him.
She wasn't perfect. Hell, she barely had enough to take care of herself, let alone a street rat like him. But she tried. She gave him a home, gave him food, and taught him things no one else ever had.
For the first time, he had something close to a family.
Until she was taken from him.
His fingers twitched, his nails digging into his palms.
Forty-eight hours.
That was all it took.
The police had found the man responsible—her former husband—drunk, bloodstained, and rambling about how she "deserved it."
Damien remembered the trial. If you could even call it that. A few months behind bars. A slap on the wrist. Then freedom. The man got to walk away, while Martha rotted six feet under.
That was the first time Damien truly understood.
Justice wasn't real. Not for people like him.
If you wanted justice, you had to take it with your own hands.
At the age of eight again wandered the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back and the rage burning in his chest, Damien learned the first real lesson of his life.
The world didn't care.
Not about him. Not about Martha. Not about anyone who wasn't born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
So, he stopped expecting it to.
Until an old man found him.
Ryan Furukawa.
A half American half Japanese descent man who had seen more fights than Damien could ever count. Ryan didn't ask questions. Didn't pry into Damien's past. He just looked at him—really looked at him—and for the first time in years, Damien felt… acknowledged.
Ryan taught him how to fight.
Not the sloppy, desperate brawling of the streets. Not the useless self-defence techniques the schools preached.
Real fighting.
How to control his breathing. How to read an opponent's stance. How to strike with precision and efficiency.
"Emotions will get you killed," Ryan had told him once, his voice steady, his eyes hard as steel. "But the right emotions? Channelled correctly? That's what wins wars."
Damien had listened. Had learned. Had honed himself into something sharper, stronger.
Kickboxing and Kendo.
The two disciplines shaped him into what he was now—something more than just a street brawler.
Kickboxing gave him speed, power, and endurance. Every strike he threw, every kick he landed, was honed through years of relentless training. It was the art of controlled aggression, of striking with maximum force while staying fluid, and adaptable.
Kendo, on the other hand, was precise. It was about reading an opponent's intent before they even moved, about striking in the blink of an eye. It wasn't just about the sword—it was about discipline, strategy, patience.
Ryan had been ruthless in his training.
"If you can't keep your head in a fight, you're already dead," he had said more times than Damien could count.
And Damien learned.
Every bruise, every fall, every drop of sweat and blood—he absorbed it all, letting it forge him into something unbreakable.
Because weakness meant death.
And he refused to be weak ever again.
At the age of fourteen, Ryan took him to an underground MMA fight.
The air was thick with sweat and cigarette smoke, the dim overhead lights casting eerie shadows over the battered faces of fighters. The ring wasn't much—just a crudely roped-off section of the floor, stained with years of blood and spit.
Damien remembered the first time he stepped inside.
His opponent had been older—bigger, stronger, with the kind of experience that made most kids his age hesitate.
But Damien wasn't most kids.
The moment the fight started, he moved. Fast. Efficient. No wasted motion.
He could still hear Ryan's voice in his head. Read their stance. Watch their breathing. Find the weakness.
The guy threw a heavy punch, aiming to knock him out in one blow. But Damien was faster. He slipped under it, countered with a sharp kick to the ribs, then followed up with a precise right hook to the jaw.
The man staggered.
The crowd roared.
And Damien?
He finished it. A knee to the gut, a spinning back kick—his opponent hit the ground and didn't get back up.
Ryan had simply nodded from the sidelines.
"Good," he had said. "But you hesitated at the start. Next time, don't wait. Kill the fight before it kills you."
Damien took that lesson to heart.
From that night on, he fought. Again and again. In underground rings, in street brawls, in places where no one cared about rules or mercy. He learned how to take a hit, how to break someone down piece by piece, and how to make sure they stayed down.
By the time he turned sixteen, Damien was a name people recognized in those circles. Not because he was the biggest or the strongest.
But because he was the one who never killed.
No-Kill Shura.
The name spread like wildfire through the underground circuits. Fighters whispered it with a mix of awe and frustration.
Damien never went for the kill.
He never broke bones unless he had to. Never crushed throats or shattered skulls the way some of the others did.
But that didn't mean he was merciful.
His fights were brutal, and calculated. He tore through opponents with clinical precision—breaking their rhythm, dismantling their defences, making sure they never wanted to step into the ring with him again.
And yet, no matter how many times he won, no matter how many bodies he left broken in the ring, there was always someone who thought they could change that.
Someone who thought they could push him past that line.
Someone who thought they could make him kill.
They always failed.
Because Damien didn't fight out of bloodlust.
He fought to prove a point.
That no one—not the privileged, not the monsters who thrived on pain, not the ones who thought the world owed them everything—could break him.
He was the storm they couldn't weather. The blade they couldn't dull.
Until he came...
The one who killed her.
Standing inside the ring like he belonged there.
Like he was untouchable.
Like he hadn't taken the one thing Damien had left.
Damien's breath slowed, his fingers tightening into a fist as the memory burned through him.
Elliot Vance.
A name he would never forget.
The bastard who had walked free after Martha's murder. The man who had smirked in the courtroom, unrepentant, untouched, free to keep breathing while she was buried beneath six feet of dirt.
And now, years later, he had stepped into his ring.
It should have been poetic justice.
But justice didn't exist.
Only retribution.
Damien had stood across from him, his heart a steady drumbeat in his ears. The crowd around them roared, oblivious to the history between them. To them, this was just another underground fight. Another name against the No-Kill Shura.
But Damien wasn't looking at an opponent.
He was looking at a dead man walking.
Elliot sneered, rolling his shoulders. "So you're the kid everyone talks about?" His voice was the same. Arrogant. Dismissive. "Hmph. Thought you'd be taller."
Damien didn't respond instead he asked, "Do you regret it?"
"Huh? What the heck are you talking about kid?"
Damien tilted his head slightly, his eyes dark—void of emotion.
"Martha Cooper," he said, his voice disturbingly calm. "Do you regret killing her?"
For a brief second, something flickered across Elliot's face. Confusion? Annoyance? He scoffed, shaking his head. "That some dead hooker or something?"
The world slowed.
Damien had always prided himself on control. On never lets emotions dictate his fights. On never crossing that final line.
But in that moment?
Something inside him snapped.
The bell rang.
Elliot barely had time to register the movement before Damien was already in his space, a vicious elbow slamming into his ribs, followed by a lightning-fast knee to the gut.
Elliot grunted, staggering back, but Damien didn't give him room to breathe.
A right hook—precise, powerful—caught him square in the jaw. Blood sprayed from his mouth as his head snapped to the side.
The crowd roared.
Elliot cursed, shaking himself off, eyes burning with rage. "You little—!"
He lunged, throwing a wild punch.
Too slow. Too predictable.
Damien slipped under it with terrifying ease, his counter a brutal kick to the inside of Elliot's knee. A sickening crack echoed through the underground arena.
Elliot let out a strangled yell, collapsing to one knee.
Damien loomed over him.
Horrifying was just the silence that followed.
The crowd, once a deafening storm of cheers and jeers, fell eerily quiet.
The underground ring had seen its share of blood. Fighters left bruised, broken, and sometimes carried out unconscious. But this… this was different.
Elliot Vance lay crumpled at Damien's feet, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. His face was frozen in shock, his mouth agape, blood pooling beneath him. His eyes—wide, staring—unseeing.
Dead.
Damien barely felt his own breath. His hands trembled, his knuckles split and bloodied. Not from the fight. Not from defending himself.
But from taking a life.
For the first time since he stepped into the underground, he had broken his rule. The line he had sworn never to cross.
No-Kill Shura had killed.
And he wasn't sorry.
Something inside him had expected guilt. Expected regret. Expected anything other than the cold, empty void settling in his chest.
Instead, all he felt was the steady, numbing realization.
Justice wasn't real.
Retribution was.
He had taken what the world had refused to give him. Had delivered the only sentence that mattered.
And now, there was no going back.
The referee, the gamblers, the fighters—everyone in that room knew. The underground wasn't ruled by laws. It was ruled by reputation. And Damien had just rewritten his.
No-Kill Shura was dead.
Something else had taken his place.
A monster. A killer. A storm that had finally lost its restraint.
And for the first time in years…
Damien felt free.