Night in the slums did not sleep.
It waited.
The tunnels beneath District 3 vibrated with quiet tension. What had once been the Blood Rats' den now thrummed with disciplined formation. No more scattered lounging. No more gambling and smoke and noise. Every man stood in rank.
Fifteen hundred bodies.
Fifteen hundred killers.
Fifteen hundred Dragons.
They filled the wide heart of the underground base, shoulder to shoulder under rusted pipes and dim orange lamps, eyes all fixed toward the stairs.
Bia stood at the top of those stairs.
Her presence pressed on them like gravity, like pressure under the ocean. She didn't need to yell to be heard — silence formed around her on its own.
She looked down at them the way a queen studies an army, not to measure their worth… but to measure what she is about to make of them.
"Listen," she said.
The entire base went silent at once.
Her voice carried, steady and resonant, even though she spoke like someone giving a promise, not a speech.
"We raid two gangs tonight."
A murmur rose — shock, disbelief, excitement — and then died instantly, because her gaze flicked across the crowd and that alone was enforcement.
"In one night," she continued, "we take the Iron Saints and we cripple the Black Flame's backbone. By dawn, there will not be four names in these streets. There will be one."
Her eyes burned faint gold.
"Kogane Dragons."
The sound rolled through them like a physical thing.
Every man felt it in his chest.
Every man straightened when he heard it.
She let it sink in for a heartbeat, then continued.
"I don't normally ask mortals to worship me." Her tone didn't swell with pride — it turned honest. Almost intimate. "I am a goddess of force and strength. I do not beg for reverence. I do not need it."
A few of the older Bulldogs, men who had once survived only by refusing to kneel for anyone, swallowed hard.
"But tonight," she said, voice lowering, "I ask."
The air tightened.
"What we are about to do should not be possible. We are fifteen hundred. The Iron Saints alone are four thousand. And after them, we move again. We will break two pillars of the slums in a single night."
Her expression didn't waver.
"I will not sacrifice you to prove a point. I will not throw you at a wall just to watch you die in the name of a banner."
She pointed to her own chest.
"I take responsibility for you. I claim you. You're mine."
Her aura flickered, and for an instant the air hummed — WHUMMM — like metal under pressure.
"And because you are mine… I will give you my hand."
Quiet shock spread like fire across the gathered men.
"If you accept me — not just as commander, not as boss, not as warlord — but as your goddess…"
Her eyes glowed, and a faint radiance traced itself across her shoulders, like sunlight trying to escape her skin.
"…then I can give you a fraction of what I am. Your bodies will not break as easily. Your strikes will carry more weight. You will not shatter when met with hate."
Her voice softened.
"It will not make you me. You will still be human. You will still have to stand. You will still have to fight. But I will carry you where I can."
The chamber was silent.
Then it happened.
Without command. Without signal.
One by one, then all at once — they dropped.
Fifteen hundred men bowed.
Not halfway. Not lazy. Not sloppy.
Full. Knees to concrete. Backs bent. Heads low.
The sound of it — KNEEL — rolled like thunder through the tunnels.
Riku Kazanari — former commander of the Blood Rats — bowed first among their leaders, head low, eyes shut.
Ren knelt beside him, fist planted against the ground like a vow.
Drex Vane, the old Bulldog warlord, dropped without hesitation, forehead nearly touching the concrete.
Ty "Steel" Graven followed, jaw tense, chest flooded with something not fear but reverence.
Even the Division Commanders lowered themselves:
Rai and Rei Kazanari — speed and chaos.
The Crimson Twins, Kazu and Kai Arata — brutality and rhythm.
The men who once ruled pockets of the underworld now knelt like disciples at a shrine.
And then, together, like a sound the earth had been waiting to hear:
"Goddess Bia," they said.
The title shook the air.
Her lashes lowered.
For a heartbeat, her expression betrayed something almost… soft.
It had been a very long time since people knelt for her like this.
And never before — never in any age — had she accepted that worship while belonging to someone else.
Zumi, she thought, and the thought alone warmed her chest. You see? They're already yours.
She descended the stairs.
The kneeling men parted for her, opening a path through the crowd. Her steps echoed — tok… tok… tok… — steady and unhurried, like a heartbeat walking.
She reached the center of the chamber.
"Raise your heads," she said.
They did.
Bia pressed her palms together at her sternum.
When her hands met — CLAP — a shockwave of golden force exploded outward, rippling through the entire den like a bell struck inside their bones.
Light flared — not blinding, not burning. Warm. Heavy. Living.
It washed over all fifteen hundred like a tide.
Men gasped. Shoulders straightened. Pain in old joints let go. Breath filled deeper, cleaner, easier. Muscles surged with contained pressure that felt like coiled thunder begging to be used.
Some of them shook. Some of them laughed, choking on disbelief. Some of them pressed hands to their chests, wide-eyed at the steady, thrumming power that hadn't been there a heartbeat ago.
Ty flexed his fingers and stared at his own hand like it belonged to someone else. "What… is this…?" he whispered.
Riku just smiled and exhaled through his teeth. "Oh, that's unfair," he muttered, awed. "That's so unfair. I love it."
Bia lowered her hands.
"Stand," she said.
They rose in one motion. Not as Bulldogs. Not as Rats.
As Dragons.
"March."
And together — fifteen hundred bodies moved.
They rose from the tunnels like night itself breaking the surface.
The slums weren't used to seeing order. Gangs normally bled out across the streets in clusters — squad here, patrol there, a loud argument at the corner, some idiot with a bat thinking he owns a block.
This wasn't that.
The Kogane Dragons moved like a column of quiet force.
No shouting. No bragging. No wasted noise.
Boots pounded in sync — THUMM. THUMM. THUMM. THUMM.
Shadows moved with purpose, flowing like a river down the fractured street.
They passed watchers and lookouts and desperate corner crews — and those men, hardened by survival and violence, stepped out of the way without needing to be told.
They could feel it.
Something greater than "gang power."
Something heavier than fear.
Divine momentum.
At the front walked Bia.
Behind her:
— Riku and Ren Kazanari, the minds of swarm control.
— Drex Vane, now vice commander of the Dragons, his jaw set like carved stone.
— Ty "Steel" Graven, silent and coiled.
— Rai and Rei Kazanari, Speed Division and Chaos Division.
— Kazu and Kai Arata, the Crimson Twins, hands resting loosely at their sides like loaded cannons in human skin.
Fifteen hundred behind them, silent, focused, breathing in rhythm.
They moved past ruined industrial yards and broken rail lines, deeper into District 2 — Iron Saints territory.
The air thickened.
You could smell it before you saw it.
Metal. Oil. Burned voltage.
The Iron Saints didn't just take territory. They fortified it.
They were ranked second in the slums, and they acted like it. They wore reinforced vests, carried heavy batons and reinforced rods, moved in work-crew units trained to hit hard and hold ground. Rumor said their leader, their "saint," had bones that didn't break and skin that barely dented. Rumor said he didn't sleep.
Rumor called him Magnus Virel.
On the streets, they called him something else.
The Iron Titan.
The Iron Saints' base wasn't subtle.
It sat in what used to be the mayor's mansion — back when the slums weren't called the slums. The mansion rose like a broken cathedral of wealth, cracked pillars, stained marble, boarded windows. But that wasn't the threat.
The threat was what wrapped around it.
Massive iron barricades. Reinforced gateframes. Scrap-metal layers welded into walls so thick you couldn't see through them. Floodlights mounted on jury-rigged towers. Chains coiled through locking points big enough to hold down a truck.
This wasn't decoration.
This was a fortress.
The Kogane Dragons stopped before it in a great formation, spreading out across the dead plaza like a dark tide.
No one spoke.
Bia walked forward alone.
The front barricade was a towering slab of reinforced iron gates welded into each other, sheeted and braced and plated, easily a meter thick in places. Whoever designed it built it to say one thing:
Nothing gets in.
Bia lifted her right hand and placed her palm flat against it.
For a moment, nothing.
Then her eyes narrowed.
Her aura tightened.
And she pushed.
Not with her arm.
With force.
FWHOOOM—
A wave of invisible pressure rippled out from her palm and surged into the metal. The gate didn't swing. It didn't creak. It didn't bend.
It shattered.
The iron didn't even get the dignity of breaking in pieces. It unstitched. It unraveled. It blew outward in a soft, collapsing eruption of powdered ruin, the entire gate dissolving into fine metallic dust that flowed across the concrete like gray sand in the wind.
The barricade.
The secondary frame behind it.
A third-layer bulkhead deeper in.
Gone.
As if a giant had taken a breath and exhaled them out of existence.
The chained supports around the mansion cracked — KRRRK—KRRRK—KRRRRRK — and dropped, entire structural cages collapsing into glittering debris.
In less than five seconds, the Iron Saints' primary defense vanished into a drifting cloud of what used to be iron.
The Kogane Dragons behind her saw it happen.
Hundreds of hard men who had lived their whole lives knowing exactly how tough metal is — seeing it erased like mist.
Riku let out a soft, reverent whistle through his teeth. "Oh," he murmured, grinning. "Oh, that's just disrespectful."
Ty's jaw flexed. For a moment, even he forgot to breathe.
Drex stared at the powdered ruin and muttered, almost to himself, "Zumi… I see you now. I see what you're building."
Bia didn't turn around.
She raised one arm and made a small circling motion with two fingers.
Forward.
"Move," Drex commanded.
And the Kogane Dragons stormed the mansion.
The Iron Saints were already mobilizing.
Four thousand bodies poured into the entrance halls, stair hubs, and courtyard like an alarm had rung straight through their bones. Their uniforms weren't flashy — matte greys, heavy vambrace wraps, reinforced collars — but everything about them felt industrial, grounded, efficient. They didn't look like street gangs.
They looked like a private army.
They came in tight formations, gripping heavy batons, lengths of pipe, reinforced striking rods. They fought in wedges — break and hold tactics — meant to smash a line and lock it down.
"SAINTS HOLD!" someone roared.
"SAINTS! SAINTS! SAINTS!" they answered, their chant slamming against the cracked mansion walls.
Then the clash hit.
The Kogane Dragons met them like a collision of storms.
The impact when both lines struck was a quake.
THOOOOOM—
Bodies slammed. Arms hooked. Weapons crashed. Concrete dust burst off the floor in rings.
The mansion's grand hall — once lined with portraits and velvet banners — became a living arena of force and will.
This wasn't chaos. This wasn't a street brawl.
This was war.
And one by one, the commanders Bia had claimed showed why she claimed them.
Riku moved first.
"Cells of ten!" he barked. "Break and wrap!"
His people — the former Blood Rats — flowed instantly. Clusters of Dragons fanned, split, and slipped between the Saints' wedge formations. They didn't try to overpower from the front. They ate the edges.
Riku ducked under a swing, pivoted, and drove his palm into a Saint's center mass — WHUD — dropping him breathless. He spun on his heel, swept another's legs, and snarled, "MOVE LIKE WATER, NOT LIKE PRIDE!"
The Dragons he led obeyed like a living tide, closing in on gaps and collapsing squads from the sides. The Rats hadn't lost their swarm. They'd just put armor on it.
Ren didn't shout. Ren hit.
He stepped into a Saints formation like it was a doorway and broke it with his shoulders alone. His movement wasn't pretty; it was efficient. He redirected swings with forearms so tight they sounded like metal on metal — CLANG—TUNK—KLAK — then hammered men down with short, shocking body shots that folded them without theatrics.
But his true weapon wasn't his fists. It was control.
Every time he slammed his knuckles against a wall, railing, pillar — TUNK. TUNK. TUNK. — the Dragons shifted. They moved as one organism, adjusting positions mid-fight based on Ren's signal echoes. Ren didn't need to see every corner. He felt it.
He was nervous system.
Drex was different.
Drex didn't move like a rat. Drex moved like a wrecking ball.
The former Bulldog commander threw himself into groups of five, six, eight at a time, his Supersonic Fist Style igniting in his arms with terrifying explosiveness. His punches cracked the air when they launched — VOOM—THUD — and the Saints that caught them dropped instantly, skidding across marble.
At one point, three Saints rushed him together with heavy staff strikes aimed high, mid, and low.
Drex stepped in.
Not back.
In.
His right arm blurred — VSHOOOOM — and all three men went airborne at once, crashing into a shattered column.
He grinned through gritted teeth. "That's right! You feel that!? That's devotion power, baby!"
"LESS YELLING, MORE ENDING," Ty called flatly from somewhere behind him.
Ty fought like gravity itself.
He didn't waste motion. Didn't showboat. Didn't smile.
A Saint swung a reinforced rod at his head — WHAM — and Ty caught it in one palm. Just stopped it. The Saint stared, confused in real time.
Ty squeezed.
KRRRK.
The rod bent.
Calmly, Ty drove his forehead into the man's sternum — THUNK — and the Saint dropped, wheezing, unable to rise.
Another charged from behind. Ty turned, shouldered forward, and used the man's own momentum to throw him down so cleanly it looked like the floor had leapt to meet him.
Everywhere Ty moved, Dragons stabilized. Wavered formations stopped wavering. Frantic swings calmed.
Ty wasn't the kind of force you notice first.
He was the force that meant you never broke.
Rai was pure velocity.
He ran the bannisters like they were flat ground, leaping from railing to railing, dropping on Saints from above in bursts of tight, surgical strikes. A knee to the back of the shoulder — WHAP — a palm strike under the chin — TAP-THUD — and gone.
Saints tried to track him, eyes whipping left, right, up.
They couldn't.
Rei, behind him, was disorientation given muscle. He'd throw feints that felt real, send three Saints stumbling into each other, then break all three with two strikes that barely seemed to touch.
"Lose your line," Rei murmured in a Saint's ear as he twisted the man's stance off-balance with a single ankle hook, "and you lose your breath."
The man hit the floor a heartbeat later, stunned, clutching his ribs.
Together?
Rai and Rei turned entire hallways into traps.
The Crimson Twins did not fight quietly.
They slammed into Saint clusters with mirrored brutality, two bodies moving at once, perfectly synchronized. Kazu struck forward, Kai struck backward, and the Saints caught in between them were hit from angles their bodies weren't built to process.
"MOVE WITH ME—" Kazu shouted.
"—OR DON'T MOVE AT ALL," Kai finished.
Their rhythm built pressure in the room.
Saints found their hands shaking before the twins even touched them, their hearts tripping into the twins' rhythm and throwing off their timing. Their stances broke. Their confidence cracked.
It wasn't magic.
It was psychological dominance made physical.
By the time Kai swept a Saint's legs, Kazu was already driving a shoulder into another's chest with a crunching BHMP that planted him flat.
"Saints my ass," Kazu spat, grinning. "You ain't holy."
Kai smirked. "Not anymore."
The Iron Saints fought hard. Harder than the Bulldogs had. Harder than the Blood Rats had. They were trained, coordinated, relentless. They hit like reinforced concrete and they did not fall easy.
But the Kogane Dragons — with Bia's blessing humming in their bones — did not break.
Not one of them backed down.
Not one of them hesitated.
Not one of them let the line collapse.
They weren't different gangs anymore.
They were one organism.
They were one banner.
And the mansion shook under their roar.