Matt crouched in the shadows, every fiber of his being tuned to the tension coiling through the air. Below, SHIELD task forces moved into position—their footsteps like the clock ticking, each step closer to violence.
Through the comms, he heard it in their voices: fear. Static crackled along the sharp edge of Special Agent Knight's orders. He swallowed hard. Guilt gnawed at him.
His godson was down there. Caught in the chaos. Matt adjusted his grip on his billy clubs and moved, launching across a rooftop, landing like a breath of silk. The battlefield below pulsed with motion, every shift a living map in his mind.
Jessica and Luke were preparing to engage Jeremy. Fear simmered deep in Matt's chest. Not just for the boy, but for what Luke could do when pushed. For what Jessica might become.
Then, silence. Thick. Unnatural. The kind that pressed on your ribs and whispered that something was wrong.
He reached for his earpiece. "Hurry."
"We're here," Misty's voice crackled back. "Drones are airborne. Perimeter locked. He's not—"
He stopped listening. Because something else was here, he felt it—a shift in the air. Heavier. Darker. A sour breath of smoke, sweat, and something raw and wrong filled his nose. His skin prickled.
The rooftop grew colder. The shadows, deeper. Footsteps echoed across the gravel—wrong, uneven, inhuman.
Then—a heartbeat. Familiar. Too familiar. Followed by a sound: leather meeting flesh.
A glove. A fist.
"Get up, Matty."
A voice. Whiskey-soaked. Gravel-rough.
"You gonna cry again?"
"Misty?" he whispered, pulse spiking. "Someone here. Stay on the line—I might need backup."
He froze. His stomach dropped because, stepping from the darkness, came his father.
Jack Murdock. Exactly as Matt remembered him that last night—bruised, bloodied, exhausted. But his eyes… There was something wrong. Amplified. Cruel. Twisted.
"Afraid of the dark?" Jack sneered. Matt stepped back, breath catching. "You're not real," he whispered. "You're dead."
Jack laughed—low, mean. "So are you, kid."
Then the first punch landed. Matt didn't see it. Couldn't. His body tried to move, but his limbs faltered. The hit slammed him across the gravel, ribs screaming.
He tried to rise—another blow drove into his gut. Another across his jaw. Blood filled his mouth.
Jack didn't stop.
He hit like he used to on the bad nights—when the bottle was empty and rage spilled over. But this was more. Each punch landed with psychic weight—pain and memory, twisted into a weapon.
"You feel it, don't you?" the voice purred, dripping venom. "That fear crawling under your skin. You never stopped being that scared little boy."
Images sliced through Matt's mind—his father stumbling home, the clink of glass, blood in the sink—the silence after screams.
"You were never strong," Jack spat. "All that training? Bullshit. You couldn't save me. You couldn't save your best friend's kid. You've never saved anyone."
Matt staggered, dropping his billy clubs.
"I tried," he rasped. "I was just a kid."
Jack grabbed his collar, dragging him upright.
"Exactly. He's just a kid. You were one. Now you're weak. Blind. I remember it all now, you begging me not to fight again. Guess what? I died anyway."
He understood. His father had died outside of the ring, but he hadn't given up. He did. Matt collapsed. The guilt wasn't a metaphor anymore. It had mass. Gravity. It smothered him.
He was ten again. Crying behind the bathroom door. Blood was soaking the linoleum. The next hit snapped his head back. Something cracked. He couldn't breathe.
"You wanna be a hero?" Jack hissed. "You can't even stand." Matt's fingers twitched. His muscles failed him. The pain was real—the despair, worse.
"You're not the Devil. You're a scared little boy hiding behind a mask… with a leash around your neck. Matty the tame dog."
His head hit the rooftop. His vision—always a shimmer of senses—fractured. White noise surged in. Static danced across the edge of consciousness.
And through it, a voice broke through—
"MATT?! Matt—do you copy?!" Misty's voice—urgent, rising in panic. He couldn't answer. Not yet. He was still bleeding. Still afraid.
But her voice… anchored him. Steady. Fierce. A lifeline. And something shifted. The fear didn't bind him anymore. It ignited him.
He was the Man Without Fear.
Inch by inch, Matt rose. His spine straightened. His fingers curled around the forgotten clubs. The shaking stopped.
"No," he growled. The word came out hard—gravel and fire. "Not this time."
He hurled one billy club—clean, precise.
CRACK—
It struck the figure square in the head. The illusion shattered, and its face split with an inhuman screech.
The weight lifted.
"You shouldn't have done this," Matt said, stepping forward. No longer afraid. No longer trapped.
Every shadow that once held him captive bent to his will now.
"You think you can beat me, Daredevil?" the thing hissed—its form warping, teeth stretching, eyes boiling into slits.
Matt's smile was grim. He felt the shift. Power tipping back to him.
"Betrayal," it spat. "You're no hero. You're a coward."
The words were sliced. But Matt didn't flinch.
"What are you?" he asked, shifting into a stance balanced, razor-sharp.
The creature lunged. Its body stretched, draconian, lizard-like. Wings of shadow burst outward. Light shrank at their edge.
The rooftop buckled beneath it. Angles sharpened into knives of darkness.
Matt breathed deeply and centered himself.
The Jack-thing—now something ancient and hollow—snarled. Wings thundered. The rooftop exploded—shrapnel and dust.
Matt moved.
He ducked under a sweeping claw—serrated obsidian and hate—rolled low and struck upward, clubs slamming into exposed ribs.
The thing shrieked. The sound split the air—metal on bone, wrong and vile.
"Misty," he barked, grimacing. "I'm under attack. This thing is using fear and hallucination."
"Say again?" came Misty's strained reply.
"It's feeding off my fear—weaponizing it. I don't think I can win." He had deduced much from his recent experience, aware of such things from his master's teachings.
"Confirmed. Analysis are registering massive psychic spikes—."
He froze. Psychic. Not tech. Astrid… His blood ran colder. He'd been briefed. Astrid Bloom—powerful, unstable, mutant telepath. He couldn't deal with that now.
The creature crashed down again, like a cathedral collapsing. Claws. Fangs. Darkness incarnate.
Matt dodged left—but a tail lashed him from nowhere, flinging him into a rusted ventilation shaft. Metal shrieked. Pain lit up his ribs.
He hit hard, rolled low, and kept breathing. Blood traced his jaw.
"You were always afraid of him," the monster cooed—its voice flickering between Jack's and something hollow.
"Afraid of the truth: you were the reason he died. That fear? That's your grave."
It surged forward, fangs bared, wings blotting out the sky.