(2022 – Fight Week, Las Vegas)
Las Vegas welcomed the monster with open arms and hungry eyes. The city of desperate transactions recognized a kindred spirit in the new Kyon Wilson. He wasn't here for art or redemption. He was here for a transaction of violence, and Vegas was the perfect marketplace.
His energy was a physical thing, a low-grade hum that silenced rooms. He moved through the sterile corridors of the high-roller hotel with the coiled grace of a panther, trailed by a pared-down team: Lena, her eyes sharp with assessment; Gregor, a silent, looming shadow; and a new cutman, a grizzled Texan named "Doc" Hollis who'd seen it all and didn't flinch.
They'd set up a private gym in a warehouse space off the Strip. No cameras. No observers. Just iron, sweat, and intent. The final days of camp were not about learning. They were about sharpening the weapon to a razor's edge and stoking the furnace inside it.
Kyon's public demeanor was a controlled burn. At the final press conference, he didn't sit silently. He leaned into the microphone, his gaze locked on Viktor Drozd, who glowered from the dais.
"You talk about breaking me," Kyon said, his voice a gravelly rasp that carried through the quieting room. "You talk about pressure. You have no idea what pressure is. Pressure isn't walking forward. Any idiot can walk forward." He paused, letting the insult hang. "Pressure is knowing that every single person in this city, everyone watching, thinks your story is over. That you're damaged goods. A fraud. A ghost. Pressure is carrying that, letting it fuel you, letting it forge you into something they can't even imagine. You're a bulldozer, Viktor. I'm a volcano. You try to bury me, you're just giving me more fuel to erupt."
Drozd, his English limited, caught the tone. He stood up, knocking his chair over, and shouted in Ukrainian, his translator quickly converting: "You are words! I am action! I will bury you in actions!"
Kyon just smiled. It was that same cold, ugly smile from the Berlin mirror. He stood up, not in response to Drozd, but as if the press conference was beneath him. He looked at Lena, gave a single nod, and walked off the stage, leaving a stunned silence and a raging champion behind him.
The clip exploded. Wilson's Mental Warfare! The Phantom is a Psychopath! The hype was at a fever pitch. The odds, which had heavily favored Drozd, tightened.
Behind closed doors, the work was apocalyptic. Gregor had him on a regimen of pure fury. They didn't do rounds on the pads; they did three-minute explosions. Gregor would hold the mitts and scream in Russian, calling him weak, a coward, the son of a dog, anything to trigger the rage. Kyon would unleash barrages that sounded like car crashes, his overhand rights snapping Gregor's head back even through the pads. The Belarusian would spit, grin his broken-tooth grin, and yell for more.
One afternoon, after a particularly savage session where Kyon had shattered a heavy bag's chain, he stood in the middle of the gym, chest heaving, sweat dripping from him like rain. He felt it—the god-like ability, not as a thought, but as a fact in his sinews. He picked up a 100-pound dumbbell in each hand and did upright rows, not for reps, but just to feel the immense, effortless power. He looked at Gregor.
"Again," he said.
Gregor shook his head. "Net. Sharp is enough. Now we keep hot."
The mental work was the opposite of Berlin. There was no calming, no geometry. Elias was gone. In his place was pure, visualized vengeance. Kyon would lie in his dark hotel room and not sleep. He would run the fight in his head, but not as a technician. He would imagine Drozd's face crumpling under his fist. He would hear the crunch of cartilage, see the spray of blood, feel the resistance give way. He stoked the anger, fed it with every memory of betrayal, every headline that had called him a con, every doubter who said he was finished.
He called Eleanor the night before the weigh-in. Her voice was a touchstone of a different world.
"You sound different," she said softly.
"I am different."
"Are you... alright in there, Kyon? In your head?"
"I've never been more alright. I see everything clearly for the first time. I see the path."
"Just... come home after. However it ends. Come home."
"I will."
The weigh-in was a spectacle of contrasting archetypes. Drozd came out shirtless, a mountain of hairy, grimacing muscle, pounding his chest and roaring at the crowd. He made weight easily, glaring at Kyon with naked hatred.
Kyon walked out last. He didn't rush. He wore a simple black hoodie and sweatpants. He moved with a chilling, relaxed economy. He stepped on the scale, stared straight ahead as the commissioner announced the weight—153 pounds, ripped to the bone, every ounce functional. As he stepped off, he finally turned to face Drozd during the staredown.
He didn't glower. He didn't trash talk. He just looked at Drozd, his eyes like chips of obsidian, and he smiled. A small, knowing, terrifying smile. He leaned in, close enough that only Drozd and the referee between them could hear.
"Tomorrow," Kyon whispered, the word carrying the weight of a death sentence, "I'm going to show you what a real monster looks like."
Drozd flinched. It was just a tiny, involuntary twitch in his right eye. But it was there. The first crack.
Kyon turned and walked away, the crowd's noise a distant ocean. The predator had scented fear.
The final day was a study in focused rage. He ate his plain meal. He went through his stretching routine, his muscles sliding under his skin like cables. He didn't listen to music. He listened to the silence in his own head, a silence filled with the coming storm.
In the dressing room before the fight, the atmosphere was electric. Hayes paced, muttering about PPV numbers. Lena watched Kyon like a strategist watching a loaded cannon. Gregor just sat in the corner, sharpening a piece of gum with his teeth, his eyes on his fighter.
Doc Hollis wrapped Kyon's hands. He used no Professor's wraps. He used stiff, new cotton, winding them tight, creating not a tool for artistry, but a cast for a bludgeon. "Gonna need these hands to hold that belt, kid," Doc grunted.
When the hands were taped and gloved, Kyon stood up. He began to shadowbox, not the flowing Phantom dance, but sharp, explosive movements—jabs like piston shots, hooks that ripped the air, the overhand right that came down like a guillotine. The room seemed to heat up with the violence of his intent.
Gregor came over, put his mitts on. They didn't do a routine. Gregor held them up and Kyon destroyed them for ninety seconds, a final, furious eruption. When they stopped, Gregor's arms were shaking. He looked into Kyon's eyes, saw the inferno, and nodded, satisfied.
"It is time," Gregor said.
The walk to the ring was a descent into a new kind of madness. His entrance music was a pounding, industrial track with no melody, just rhythm and noise. He emerged from the tunnel not as a specter, but as a conqueror. The boos and cheers were a wall of sound he walked through untouched. His gaze was fixed on the ring, on the squared circle where his vengeance would be made flesh.
Drozd's entrance was a nationalist rally, all flag-waving and martial music. The arena shook.
In the ring, Kyon ignored the announcements. He went to his corner, knelt briefly, not in prayer, but in final communion with his rage. He stood, shed his robe. His physique was a shock. The sleek phantom was gone. In his place was a gladiator, muscles coiled and defined under skin glistening with vaseline. He looked across at Drozd, who was bouncing on his toes, snarling.
The referee gave final instructions. "I want a clean fight. Protect yourselves at all times. Touch gloves."
They met in the center. Drozd thrust his gloves forward aggressively. Kyon touched them with a casual, almost dismissive tap, his eyes never leaving Drozd's, the cold smile playing on his lips again.
Back in the corner, Gregor's final words were not strategy. They were a curse. "Razrushay yego." Destroy him.
The bell rang.
The arena's roar was instantly muted, replaced by the high-pitched ring of absolute focus. Drozd came out exactly as predicted—a low, forward-moving tank, his high guard like the front of a battleship. He threw a probing jab, more a feeler than a punch.
Kyon didn't slip it. He took it on his high guard, the pop loud in his ears, and fired back not one, but two jackhammer jabs of his own that snapped Drozd's head back. The force of them stopped the Ukrainian's forward momentum dead.
Drozd blinked, surprised. He tried to bull forward again, throwing a wide, hooking left to the body.
Kyon stepped in, meeting the charge. He let the hook glance off his elbow and brought his own left hook up from the floor. It landed with a sickening thump on Drozd's exposed right ribcage. Drozh grunted, a sharp exhalation of pain and shock.
For the first minute, Kyon didn't use the Phantom Reflex to evade. He used a new reflex—the Reflex to Meet. He stood his ground, in the pocket, and traded. His punches were shorter, harder, sharper. Every time Drozd threw, Kyon made him pay. A stiff right hand counter over a lazy jab. A digging uppercut as Drozd tried to clinch. It wasn't boxing. It was punitive damage.
By the end of the first round, Drozd's face was already red, his nose bleeding. Kyon was untouched, his breath even, his eyes cold and calculating behind the storm of violence. The crowd, expecting a chase, was witnessing a standing demolition.
In the corner, Drozd's trainers were screaming, slapping his back. Kyon's corner was a silent tableau. Gregor poured water. Lena watched, her jaw tight. Kyon just stared across the ring, his gaze a physical pressure.
Round two was when Drozd's pride overcame his game plan. Humiliated by being stood up, he abandoned technique and charged like a wounded bull, swinging wild, looping hooks meant to decapitate.
This was the moment. Kyon gave ground, not in fear, but to draw the overcommitted attack. Drozd threw a wild, telegraphed right hand. Kyon saw it from a mile away. He didn't just slip it. He crouched under it, letting it whiff over his head, and from that lowered stance, he unleashed the Berlin overhand right.
It started at his knee and ended on the side of Drozd's jaw. There was no artistry to it. It was physics perfected by hate. The sound was like a baseball bat hitting a side of beef. Drozd's eyes rolled back in his head before his legs even got the message. He crashed to the canvas, falling forward like a felled tree, his body going completely limp.
The referee didn't bother with a count. He dove between them immediately, waving his arms.
The arena erupted in a collective gasp, then a deafening, chaotic roar.
Kyon didn't celebrate. He walked to a neutral corner, his chest rising and falling steadily. He watched as the medics rushed in, as Drozd twitched once, then lay still. There was no pity in his eyes. Only a cold, grim satisfaction. The transaction was complete.
He was the unified champion again. But the man who had his hand raised was not the Phantom. He was something forged in betrayal, tempered in a Berlin bunker, and unleashed with apocalyptic fury. He was Kyon Wilson, the Reckoning Engine. And the boxing world, as he looked out at the flashing lights and screaming faces, knew it was looking at a different kind of danger. The artist was gone. The destroyer had arrived.