(2022 – The Morning After)
The hotel suite was too quiet. The roar of the arena, the pounding music, the sound of Viktor Drozd's skull meeting canvas—they were ghosts now, echoes trapped in the plush carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows. Kyon stood at the glass, looking out at the Vegas dawn bleaching the Strip of its neon life. Below, the city was cleaning up the confetti and vomit of the night's festivities. He felt… nothing.
The belt, the new, unified belt, lay on the cream-colored sofa like a discarded toy. It was heavier, more ornate than the others. It meant less.
His body thrummed with a residual electricity, the afterburn of the god-like power he'd summoned. His knuckles were swollen, the skin split and stinging under the bandages Doc Hollis had applied. His muscles felt dense, used, humming with a deep satisfaction that was purely animal. But behind his eyes, where the fire had raged for months, there was cold ash.
The door to the suite's bedroom opened. Alana stood there, wrapped in one of the hotel's thick robes. Her face was pale, her eyes huge. She had watched from ringside, her artist's soul a captive to the brutality. She had seen the monster, and it had frightened her.
"You're awake," she said, her voice small in the vast quiet.
He didn't turn. "I haven't slept."
She came to stand beside him, not touching him, following his gaze to the empty streets. "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing."
"It was… terrifying what you did."
"It was necessary."
"Was it?" The question hung in the air, delicate as a shard of glass.
He finally looked at her. The coldness in his eyes made her flinch, just a little. "You think I should have danced with him? Painted a masterpiece while he tried to break my ribs? That man was sent to erase me. Solano's blunt instrument. I didn't just beat him. I broke the instrument. I sent a message."
"To who? Solano? The world?" She wrapped her arms around herself. "What message? That you're angrier? That you can hit harder?"
"That I can't be broken." The words came out flat, final. "Not by fists. Not by courts. Not by lies. That's the only message that matters."
She was silent for a long time. The sun climbed higher, throwing hard light into the room. "And what about us, Kyon? Where do I fit in the world of a man who can't be broken? A world that only understands breaking?"
He had no answer. The furnace that had fueled him had incinerated the bridge between the man he was and the woman who loved the ghost of that man. He saw the fracture in her eyes, and for a second, the ash behind his own eyes stirred, a pang of something like loss. But it was buried under the weight of what he'd had to become.
"I don't know," he said, and it was the truest thing he'd said in months.
She nodded, a slow, accepting motion. She walked to the sofa, picked up her small overnight bag she'd brought from Berlin. "My flight is this afternoon. Back to Berlin."
"You're leaving." It wasn't a question.
"I came to see the fight. To see you." She looked at him, her green eyes glistening. "I saw both. I need… I need my studio. I need my own work. I can't live inside this… this aftermath."
He wanted to stop her. To say the words that would make her stay. But the words were ash, too. All he had left was the truth of what he was: a weapon, cooling from the forge, dangerous to hold.
"Alright," he said.
She walked to the door, paused with her hand on the knob. She didn't look back. "Come find me, Kyon. When you know who you are without a fight to define you. If that man still needs me."
Then she was gone. The door clicked shut with a sound of terrible finality.
The emptiness of the suite yawned wider. He was alone with his belt and his broken hands.
The next few hours were a parade of hollow rituals. Hayes arrived, vibrating with triumph, spewing numbers and future plans. "The PPV estimates are through the roof! We're talking nine figures for the next one! Terence Monroe is already calling you out—says you're a 'one-trick brute' now! Can you believe the nerve? We can do that in December! Keep the momentum!"
Kyon listened, his face a mask. "No."
"What? Kid, this is it! The top of the mountain! We strike now!"
"I said no." Kyon's voice cut through Hayes's fervor like a blade. "I'm going home. To Detroit. I'm not talking to anyone. No interviews. No appearances. Cancel everything."
Hayes spluttered, but one look at Kyon's eyes silenced him. The champion's gaze was not that of a man making a request.
Lena arrived next, more subdued. She analyzed the fight like a general reviewing a victorious campaign. "You dismantled their entire strategy. You didn't just win; you rewrote the book on how to beat a pressure fighter. The media is calling it a seismic shift. But…" She hesitated, studying him. "The performance was… brutal. Some are calling it cruel. The narrative is shifting from 'avenger' to 'destroyer.' We need to manage that."
"Let them talk," Kyon said, pouring himself a glass of water. His hand, wrapped in white gauze, was steady. "I don't care what they call me."
"You should. Legacy isn't just about winning. It's about the story."
"My story is mine. They don't get to write it anymore." He set the glass down. "I need you to do something for me. Quietly."
"Anything."
"Find Marcus Thorne."
Lena's eyebrows shot up. "Why?"
"Just find him. Get me an address. Don't contact him."
She searched his face, found no clue, only granite determination. "Alright."
Gregor came by to collect his things. The Belarusian looked at Kyon, gave a single, sharp nod of professional respect. "Work is done. You are champion. What is next?"
"I don't know," Kyon said honestly.
Gregor shrugged, a philosophical gesture. "For man like you? There is always next fight. Or there is nothing. Is same thing." He clapped Kyon on the shoulder, a surprisingly gentle gesture from the brute, and left.
Alone again, Kyon finally moved. He packed his bag, the simple duffel from Berlin. He left the glittering championship belt on the sofa. Let the hotel staff deal with it. He called a car to take him to the airport. Not the private jet Hayes had arranged—a commercial flight, first class, anonymous.
He flew back to Detroit as the sun set. He watched the patchwork of America slide beneath him, feeling disconnected from all of it. The Reckoning Engine was powering down. What was left underneath?
He went not to the sterile loft downtown, but to The Crucible. He still had a key. The padlock was still on the fence, but he broke it with a single, furious twist of his wrist, the god-strength flaring for a useless, symbolic moment.
Inside, the gym was a tomb. Dust motes swam in the shafts of streetlight cutting through high, dirty windows. The heavy bag hung still. The ring, empty. The ghost of ten thousand pains and triumphs whispered in the silence.
He walked to the office, the scene of the betrayal. He pushed the door open. It smelled of mildew and despair. He sat in the chair behind the desk, the chair Thorne had sat in that night. He looked at the space where he had stood, hearing his world end.
He didn't feel the rage anymore. Just a vast, empty sorrow. For the boy who had trusted. For the man who had broken that trust. For the artist who had been consumed by the weapon he'd had to become.
His phone buzzed. A text from Lena.
Thorne is in a halfway house on the east side. St. Jude's Men's Shelter. Room 7. He works kitchen detail.
Kyon stared at the address. The ashes stirred.
The next morning, he drove. The shelter was a grim, brick building in a neighborhood that had never known prosperity. He parked and sat for a while, watching men come and go, their shoulders slumped, their eyes vacant. Broken instruments.
He got out and walked inside. The air smelled of disinfectant and boiled cabbage. A tired-looking woman at a desk looked up. "Can I help you?"
"I'm here to see Marcus Thorne. Room 7."
She peered at him, recognition dawning slowly, then with dawning shock. "You're… are you…?"
"Is he here?"
"He's… he's in the back. Kitchen. He's on pots today." She pointed down a hallway.
Kyon walked past her, down a linoleum-floored corridor to a swinging door. He pushed it open.
The kitchen was steamy, loud with the clatter of industrial dishwashers. And there, at a deep stainless-steel sink, up to his elbows in greasy, gray water, was Marcus Thorne.
He wore a stained apron over a faded sweatshirt. His hair, once kept military-short, was long and greasy. He scrubbed a huge pot with a worn brush, his movements slow, mechanical, devoid of the old, fierce precision. He was a ghost of a ghost.
Kyon stood in the doorway, watching. No one noticed him; the other kitchen workers were lost in their own drudgery.
Thorne felt the presence. He turned slowly, water dripping from his hands.
When he saw Kyon, his entire body stiffened. The pot slipped from his fingers, clattering into the sink with a deafening bang. The other workers looked over, then quickly away, sensing a private earthquake.
The two men stared at each other across the steamy room. The distance between them was not feet, but canyons of betrayal, prison, violence, and ruin.
Thorne's face was a roadmap of defeat. The eyes that had once bored into Kyon with merciless intent were now hollow, scared. He looked old, frail, used up.
Kyon didn't speak. He just looked. He looked at the man who had been his only constant, his torturer, his creator, his destroyer. He looked at the hands that had wrapped his, held mitts, stolen his future, now red and raw from scalding water.
Thorne finally broke the silence, his voice a raspy whisper lost in the kitchen noise. "Kyon."
Kyon walked forward, stopping a few feet away. The dishwashers hummed. Someone dropped a tray.
"I saw the fight," Thorne said, his eyes dropping to the floor. "You… you killed him."
"He'll wake up," Kyon said, his own voice flat. "Eventually."
Thorne nodded, a jerky motion. "You looked… different."
"I am different."
Another long silence. Thorne gestured vaguely with a wet hand. "I'm… I'm waiting. For the sentencing. The theft. The conspiracy. My lawyer says… maybe five years. With good time…"
"I know."
Thorne finally met his eyes, a desperate, pleading look in them. "Why are you here?"
Kyon didn't have a clear answer. Revenge? To gloat? To understand? The ashes of his godhood were confusing.
"You told me once," Kyon said slowly, "that the forge was all that mattered. That it made us what we were."
"I was wrong," Thorne choked out. "It just broke us. Both of us."
"Maybe." Kyon looked around the pitiful kitchen. "Is this what's on the other side of the forge? For you?"
"It's what I deserve."
"Maybe." Kyon repeated. He reached into the pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a small, worn leather case. He placed it on the stainless-steel counter next to the sink.
Thorne stared at it as if it were a live snake. The Professor's hand wraps.
"I don't… I can't…" Thorne stammered.
"I don't want them," Kyon said. "And I don't think the Professor would want them in a drawer in my empty loft. They belong to the craft. To the gym. Even a broken gym." He pushed the case a little closer. "Do what you want with them. Burn them. Bury them. Use them to wash pots. I don't care."
Thorne looked from the case to Kyon's face, tears welling in his sunken eyes. This was not forgiveness. It was something colder, more absolute. A severing. A return of the one artifact of their shared history, because Kyon had moved beyond needing any artifact at all.
Kyon turned to leave.
"Kyon!" Thorne's voice was a raw scrape.
He stopped, didn't turn.
"I'm sorry." The words were the same, but they carried the weight of the kitchen, the shelter, the looming prison cell. They were the apology of a broken man, not a defiant one.
Kyon stood still for a moment. He thought of the ashes inside him. He thought of Alana's departing back. He thought of the belt on the sofa.
"I know," he said quietly.
And he walked out, leaving Marcus Thorne standing over a sink of dirty water, sobbing silently next to a pair of antique hand wraps, the last relics of a kingdom they had built and burned together.
Outside, the Detroit air was cold and clean. Kyon got in his car but didn't start it. He sat in the silence, the ghost of The Crucible and the reality of St. Jude's Men's Shelter colliding in his mind.
The Reckoning was over. The monster had won. And now, sitting in a car outside a shelter, utterly alone, Kyon Wilson, the unified champion, the unbeatable destroyer, had to face the most terrifying opponent of all:
The rest of his life.
He started the car and drove, not knowing where he was going, only knowing he couldn't stay here, in the shadow of the forge that had consumed everything. The ashes of godhood were blowing away in the wind, and for the first time since he was a boy in a cellar, he had no idea who would be left standing when they were gone.