The room reeked of power, thick and suffocating like a poison you swallowed without knowing.
Gold-veined marble floors stretched beneath them, cold and unyielding, reflecting the flickering dance of candlelight from an ancient chandelier. Diamonds dangled from thin, fragile threads overhead, catching the light like frozen tears, or severed lives.
A dozen men stood silent around the chamber, shadows clad in tailored black. Their movements were controlled, deliberate. They didn't blink or breathe unless Crimson gave permission. Their presence was a warning etched into the air: here ruled a god.
At the throne-like table's head sat Emery Vane, a man who had conquered kingdoms hidden in the underbelly of the world. Seventy-two years old, his face was a map of scars and stories, hands inked with tattoos that told of bloodshed and victory. His eyes, sharp and calculating, still burned with the fire of a king who refused to fade.
He swirled a glass of aged rum between calloused fingers, the liquid catching the light like liquid amber. This was his final hour.
Born on the ragged streets of Guelph, he had clawed his way up from dirt and blood. A runaway at six, a kingpin by twenty. By twenty-five, he had sewn together the fractured gangs of Canada, Mexico, and the United States into a single, ruthless empire. By thirty, his influence threaded through every nation government agents, police commissioners, senators, royal guards, even prime ministers bowed to his silent commands.
No one touched him. Because Crimson owned them all.
His wars had been fought in shadowed rooms, jungle hideouts, gleaming palaces, and skyscrapers that scraped the sky. He crushed rebellions before breakfast and rewrote laws with the cold precision of a surgeon's blade. He was the ghost beneath governments, the king in a world that never dared show him its face.
And now, after decades of unchallenged reign, he was dying.
Yet he laughed.
"Can you believe it?" Crimson's voice rasped through the silence, rough as gravel but edged with amusement. He raised his glass toward the four men seated opposite him, the only ones trusted enough to share this moment. "All the bullets. All the bombs. And we go out like this."
Grim, the underboss, sat with a calm that barely masked the weight of years. Tall and lean, his posture was precise, eyes cold behind sharp rectangular glasses that caught the dying sunlight. A worn checkbook lay open in his lap, an odd relic in this room of steel and blood. "Old and ugly," he muttered, voice low but biting. "Fucking tragic."
"Ugly?" Vice snorted, a lanky figure with a devil's grin that never quite reached his eyes. "Speak for yourself, you French bastard. I'm aging like fine wine. You? You're milk left out in the sun, sour and spoiled."
Grim flicked a glance toward his checkbook without looking up. "Is that why your spine snaps every time you take a step?"
"Better a broken back than a fucked eye," Vice shot back, smirking.
Bison's dark chuckle filled the room as he folded his arms. "Grim's nose looks like God gave up halfway through construction. A red button ready to blow."
Grim's smirk was sharp. "And you still haven't pushed it."
"Hey," Bison grinned, raising his hands in mock surrender, "I'm soft on deformities."
"Soft in the brain, maybe, fatass," Dragu growled, a hulking mass of muscle and scars, his voice a rough rumble. "You girls done whining? Can we drink in peace now?"
"Don't act tough," Vice sneered. "You cried when your dog died."
Dragu's glare cut through the room. "He was a better man than you'll ever be."
Crimson's laughter cracked the tension like thunder. The glass in his hand trembled. "You feel it?"
They did.
Something deeper than pain or sickness tugged at their bones, a primal, ancient weight.
Suddenly, the lights dimmed without warning, no flicker or buzz, just a slow, creeping darkness washing over the walls like a tide swallowing the shore.
Dragu sprang to his feet. "That ain't normal."
"No," Crimson said, rising unsteadily. He drained his glass in one rough swallow. "This… feels like karma."
Then the world cracked.
Their bodies gave way, not to poison or disease, but to the relentless march of time. Fate stretched their souls beyond breaking. The guards remained statues, unmoving. Crimson had warned them once: their duty was to bury the old and place the new upon the throne.
The last thing Crimson saw was the Mexico City skyline ablaze in golden sunset fire.
Then darkness.
And in that void, a voice.
It did not speak words. It spoke certainty.
You've had your kingdom.
Now earn it again.
Crying. Cold.
A wet cloth brushed his forehead. Crimson blinked, disoriented. Above him hovered a woman with sunken eyes, tangled brown hair, and calloused hands. Her breath was ragged, her muttering foreign, neither Spanish, English, or Korean.
He couldn't move. His body was… small.
A crib.
His head flopped weakly, a prisoner of fragile limbs.
His mind raced. This was no dream. He remembered everything.
He was Crimaon Vane, crime god, warlord of the modern age. So why was he trapped in a baby's body?
Crimson, trapped in this infant shell, stared up at the shattered ceiling, confusion flooding his mind.
None of it mattered.
Because he was back.
And the world did not yet know what it had unleashed.