(2023 – January 3)
The silence after the storm was more unnerving than the violence. The medical report on Terence Monroe was a clinical ledger of ruin: orbital bone fracture, broken nose, three fractured ribs, severe concussion, a bruised larynx that had threatened to close. He would recover, the doctors said, but the "Trigger" was forever broken. His silky voice was gone, replaced by a permanent, painful rasp. His lightning reflexes were dulled. The ghost had been exorcised with a sledgehammer.
Kyon Wilson sat in his Detroit loft, the winter sun weak through the glass. The new belt, the one that now definitively said "Undisputed," lay on the floor by the door where he'd dropped it. It was just metal and leather. The screaming headlines on his tablet—"MURDER IN MOTOWN", "THE END OF BOXING'S HUMANITY?", "WILSON: SPORT OR SPECTACLE OF HORROR?"—were just noise. The multi-million dollar offers that poured in from Saudi princes, Las Vegas moguls, and London syndicates were just numbers on a screen.
He felt nothing. Not the cold satisfaction of the forge. Not the hollow ash of the Drozd aftermath. Just a vast, yawning emptiness. The monster had been unleashed, had feasted, and now its belly was hollow again. The hunger was worse than before. It was no longer for revenge, or validation, or art. It was a pure, insatiable hunger for more.
He hadn't spoken to Alana since a terse text the night of the fight: You're alive. He's alive. That's something. She was in Berlin, metabolizing the horror into new, darker paintings he hadn't seen. Eleanor called weekly, her voice laced with a worry too deep for words. She didn't ask about the fight. She asked if he was eating, sleeping. He lied.
The only thing that stirred the stagnant pool inside him was a single piece of paper Lena brought him. It wasn't a contract. It was a medical report and a fight ledger. The subject: Ilia "The Siberian Bear" Volkov.
"Middleweight champion," Lena said, dropping the file on his kitchen island. "26-0. 24 knockouts. He's 6'2", walks around at 190 pounds of what they say is pure Siberian granite. He doesn't box. He invades. He maims. He's knocked out his last five opponents in under four rounds. The media is already screaming for it. 'Monster vs. Bear.' The only fight that makes the world nervous."
Kyon picked up the file. There were pictures. Volkov wasn't a sculpted athlete. He was a force of nature—thick neck, sloping shoulders, hands like Easter hams. His eyes in the photos were small, blue, and utterly devoid of anything resembling thought. They were the eyes of a landslide.
"He fights at 160," Kyon said, his voice a dry rasp.
"You walk around at 170 right now," Lena countered. "Seven pounds. You could put on muscle, good weight, with your frame. Or you could drain yourself and be weak. But that's not the question."
"What's the question?"
"Are you hungry enough to go into a bear's den and take its food? This isn't moving up a weight class for a challenge. This is moving into a division of naturally bigger, stronger men who hit like trucks. Volkov would be the heaviest puncher you've ever faced. By a lot."
Kyon stared at Volkov's picture. The emptiness inside him yawned wider, and this image of brute force seemed to fill it, just a little. This was a new mountain. Not of skill, but of sheer, terrifying mass. To conquer it wouldn't be about artistry or even calculated brutality. It would be about proving his will, his forged godhood, could break anything. Anything.
"I want him," Kyon said, the words simple and final.
Lena nodded, a flicker of grim excitement in her eyes. "Then we make the offer. But Kyon... this changes everything. You beat Volkov, you're not just a champion. You're a legend killer. You're a freak of nature. And every big man from 160 to 175 will see you as the ultimate prize. There's no going back."
"Good," he said. He tossed the file back on the island. "I'm not going back."
The decision sent seismic waves through the sport. A champion moving up one weight class was news. An undisputed champion, known for brutalizing men his own size, calling out the most feared puncher in the division above? It was madness. It was mythical.
The reaction from Volkov's camp was immediate and predictably savage. A video emerged from a gym in Chelyabinsk. Volkov, shirtless in the freezing cold, was using a sledgehammer to pulverize a giant tractor tire. He didn't speak English. His manager, a slick Russian in a tracksuit, spoke for him.
"Kyon Wilson is little boy playing monster," the manager sneered. "He beats up pretty boys and broken men. Ilia breaks men's souls. Wilson comes to 160, Ilia put him in hospital for long time. Maybe forever. We accept. We welcome little boy to land of real men."
The gauntlet was thrown. The fight was made for June, in Moscow. An American monster invading the Siberian Bear's den. The promotion wrote itself.
Training for Volkov was a descent into a new kind of hell. Kyon fired "Slick" Rick. Elusiveness was a joke against a force like Volkov. He hired instead a man named Bruno, a bald, silent Austrian strongman who had competed in the World's Strongest Man. Bruno's philosophy was simple: become an immovable object. The workouts were barbaric. Squats with weights that made the bar bend. Carrying refrigerators on his back. Pulling semi-trucks. Kyon's body, already a weapon, began to morph again. The sleek, defined muscle layered on thick, dense power. His weight climbed to 175 pounds of raw, functional mass. He looked less like a boxer and more like a heavyweight from a bygone era.
He also found a sparring partner. Not a technician. A 210-pound Polish cruiserweight named Marek, built like a brick shithouse, whose only job was to walk forward and swing as hard as he could. The sessions in the Detroit warehouse were apocalyptic. They didn't use headgear. The goal wasn't to learn; it was to desensitize. To get hit by a bigger man and not flinch. To learn to punch through resistance.
Day after day, Kyon would stand in the pocket with Marek. He'd take thudding hooks to his arms, his shoulders, his ribs. He'd absorb the shock, dig his feet into the canvas, and fire back with short, concussive shots to Marek's iron body. The sound was like butchers at work. Blood, sweat, and spit painted the ring. Kyon's face became a permanent mask of minor swellings and cuts. His hands ached constantly.
One afternoon, after a particularly vicious exchange where Marek had split his lip open with a clubbing overhand right, Kyon stumbled back, tasting copper. Marek lumbered forward, sensing injury.
Instead of covering up, Kyon laughed. A raw, bloody, joyous laugh that echoed in the warehouse. He spat a gob of red onto the canvas and charged forward, unleashing a five-punch combination of such horrifying power that Marek, the giant, was driven back into the ropes, his eyes wide with shock.
Kyon stepped back, breathing hard, his split lip stretched in a fierce grin. "Is that all you have?" he snarled. "A big man's punch? I've eaten harder shots from nightmares!"
He was changing. The cold, silent destroyer was giving way to something more primal, more vocal. A bravado born not from arrogance, but from the visceral knowledge of his own terrifying capability. He started giving interviews, short, explosive ones.
A reporter asked about the risk. "Risk?" Kyon scoffed, his eyes blazing. "You think that lumbering bear in Siberia is a risk? He's a test. A piece of meat to see if my will is harder than his bones. I'm going to Moscow to do one thing: prove that there is no force on this earth, in any ring, that can break me. And I'm going to do it in front of his motherland."
The cockiness wasn't an act. It was the overflow of the god-like strength he felt coursing through him, tempered now with the mass to back it up. He wasn't just a skilled fighter anymore. He was a force of nature believing its own press.
The final piece fell into place two months before the fight. He was running the bleachers of an empty football stadium at dawn, his body a machine eating up the steps. His phone buzzed. An unknown number with a Michigan area code.
He answered, breathing hard. "Yeah."
A long silence. Then a voice, frail and old, scratched down a bad line. "Kyon?"
He stopped mid-stride. He knew that voice. It was buried under decades of regret and prison walls, but he knew it.
"Professor?" The name felt strange on his tongue.
A weak, wet cough. "They... they gave me a phone call. For good behavior. I don't have long."
Kyon sat down on the cold concrete step. The winter wind bit at his sweat-soaked shirt. "What do you want?"
"To warn you," The Professor whispered, each word an effort. "I taught Marcus... but I taught others. In dark places. Men who owed me. The one who helped you... the 'friend'... he is not the only one. There are others. They watch. They... invest. You are becoming something they did not foresee. A natural force. Uncontrolled. They like controlled instruments, Kyon. Like they tried to make you. What you are now... it threatens their equations."
Kyon's mind raced. The anonymous laptop. The saved life. "Who are they?"
"A syndicate. Old money. Older grudges. They play with fighters like chess pieces. Solano was a pawn. A loud, flashy pawn. The real players... they are silent. They are in the foundations." Another racking cough. "Volkov... he is not just a fighter. He is a message. From them. If you beat him... you are not just beating a man. You are spitting on their board. Be careful, son. The game is deeper than the ring."
The line went dead.
Kyon sat on the bleachers as the sun rose, turning the sky the color of a fresh bruise. The Professor's warning slithered into the hungry void inside him. A syndicate? Silent players? It should have frightened him. It should have made him cautious.
Instead, it filled him with a dark, exhilarating thrill.
He wasn't a pawn. He wasn't even a knight. He was a wildfire. And they were worried he would burn their carefully laid board.
He stood up, the hunger in his gut sharpening to a fine, razor point. Moscow wasn't just a fight anymore. It was a declaration of war on an invisible enemy. He would break the Bear. And then he would see who emerged from the shadows to try and put out the fire.
He threw his head back and roared into the breaking dawn, a challenge to the city, to Volkov, to the silent men in the foundations. The sound was raw, unchained, and terrifying.
The Monster of Detroit was no longer just hungry.
It was ravenous. And it was headed east.