[KAISER – POV]
Convergence.
Yeah. That word didn't just leave my mouth—it exploded out of me like I'd been holding a grenade in my throat for too damn long. No fancy buildup. No dramatic wind machine. Just raw, gut-wrenching truth slamming into the pit like a meteor with my name on it.
The aura hit first. Not some pretty light show—nah, this was a black, slimy wave of nothing, slithering from my core like oil from a busted rig. It spread fast, crawling over the sand, snaking up into the stands, coiling around necks and squeezing lungs until the whole stadium felt like it was underwater in a nightmare. Hearts stuttered. Breaths hitched. Even the air tasted wrong—heavy, electric, like the world's about to glitch out.
I felt it in my bones. Traits fusing. Bloodforge drinking old scars like whiskey shots. Blitz fracturing my edges into ghost copies. Predator's Crown whispering every little twitch in the crowd—the fear, the hype, the awe. And the reach? Oh fuck, the reach stretched out infinite, black flames licking my skin, void tendrils linking me to every pounding pulse in the arena. Their dread fed me. Turned it into fuel. I zoned hard, world narrowing to a pinprick of killer clarity.
This wasn't power. This was me, unchained. The anomaly they whispered about in dark alleys. Ready to bite the hand that fed me scraps.
The crowd? They froze. Mid-cheer, mid-bet, mid-fucking-life. Faces drained white, eyes wide like they'd just seen God flip them off. A front-row thug clutched his rail, whispering, "What the hell is that?" Some chick in the tiers screamed, but it came out choked, like the aura had her throat in a vice. Bets clattered to the sand forgotten. The whole place hummed with it—dread twisting into something electric, hypnotic. They weren't running. They were watching. Hooked. Like moths to a black hole flame.
Up in the booth, I could almost hear the comms crackling. Tara's voice hit first, small and sharp. "Kaiser? Oh god, what was that? The air—it's pressing down, like everything's gonna crush. People are... stopping. Freezing up. What's happening to him?"
She sounded scared. Not the fun kind, either. The kind where your brain's spinning worst-case scenarios like a hamster on crack. Is he dying? Is this the end? What if the convergence eats him alive—what if it eats us? I could picture her pacing, hands twisting, eyes glued to the screens. Tara—sweet, fierce Tara—always the one holding the pieces together. Now? She was piecing together apocalypse.
Clara's feed glitched next, her digital voice fracturing like bad code in a storm. "Tara, hold. Readings... null. All vitals erased. Neural patterns? Gone. Trait flux? Void. This isn't interference—it's exclusion. Kaiser's signature is... absent. Like the system's blind to him. If overload hits, the feedback could shred his nervous system. Or worse—propagate. Spread to the grid. To us. We need evac protocols. Now. But... what if it's too late? What if he's already... changed?"
Clara didn't panic easy. She was all algorithms and ice, but this? This had her looping hypotheticals. Overload cascade. Systemic failure. Anomaly evolution. I bet her core was spinning scenarios: Kaiser wins, Kaiser breaks, Kaiser becomes something we can't predict. Something that rewrites the rules. Her "what's gonna happen next" wasn't fear—it was cold calculation cracking under the unknown. And that scared me a little.
Hawk? Her response was a low whistle, pure awe dripping like honey over gravel. "Holy shit. That's Kaiser? Look at him—standing there like the pit owes him rent. The aura's got teeth, but damn... he's owning it. Like a god kicking off his shoes after a long day. I've seen Apexes crack under less. But him? He's glowing void. Beautiful. Terrifying. Fuck, I could watch this all night."
No panic from Hawk. Just that wide-eyed respect, the kind she saves for legends. She wasn't thinking "what if"—she was thinking finally. The woman who'd danced with death a hundred times, now staring at her new favorite nightmare. Awe. Pure, unfiltered. Like she'd just found her spirit animal in a black fire suit.
The ribbon screens flared to life around the pit, kingpin feeds popping like fireworks in a funeral. Some of those shadowy queens leaned in, eyes hungry—murmuring about my history, the street-rat brawls, the scars that built this freak. Others shifted uneasy, worry etching lines under their masks. A few snarled threats: "Kill it now—before the anomaly unravels everything!" But Scourge? His face dominated the center, that smug bastard smirk widening as he watched me. He leaned back, voice booming over the speakers like thunder with a grin.
"So this is Kaiser, huh? Truly an anomaly. Look at that void—swallowing the light, the noise, the whole damn game. Not a fighter. A fracture. Beautiful chaos. Let him cook."
Scourge wasn't scared. He was intrigued. Like I'd just handed him the keys to a bomb and said "your turn." The other kingpins pulled back—some logging off, feeds flickering out—but Scourge stayed glued, eyes gleaming. This was his show now. My show. And the pit? It trembled under the weight of it all.
Kane stood across from me, unmoved, axe loose in his grip. His visor caught the black flames, tilting just a fraction. voice crackled low, almost amused. "Brother... that aura's got the whole place by the balls. You sure you can handle the beast, or is it handling you?"
I grinned, blood on my teeth, hype coiling like a snake in my gut. "Handle? Broski, this beast's me. Fused and furious. Ready to dance?"
The crowd caught the spark—fear flipping to roar. "Anomaly! Fracture the pit!" They weren't spectators anymore. They were witnesses. To whatever the fuck came next.
[Kane — POV]
The pit turns into a whirlwind of raw power and unrelenting fury, with every swing of my plasma axe carving through the air like a blade from hell itself, the blue-hot edge slicing wide arcs that ignite the space around me in blistering trails of super heated energy. Those Blitz afterimages of Kaiser's rip across the sand toward me like hungry shadows armed with claws, swarming my flanks and forcing me to pivot sharply to meet them, but I hack through two of them immediately, vaporizing the illusions in explosive bursts of steam that scorch the edges of the remaining decoys and send shockwaves rippling back toward where he dodges just in time, the ground charring black under the residual heat. His Mirage phantoms layer in deeper now, slipping through the gaps in my guard like elusive smoke, their phantom jabs probing my defenses and forcing my axe to overcommit on swings that leave me momentarily exposed, and that's exactly when he strikes true, his Ashen Gauntlets flaring with those cursed black flames that sink into my pauldron like liquid acid devouring bone, the metal bubbling and sloughing off in thick, molten rivulets that drip to the sand with sizzles. The diamond plate fractures under the assault with a high-pitched screech that grates against my ears, and the flames lick deeper into the exposed muscle beneath, cauterizing the torn flesh on contact and filling the immediate air with the sharp, acrid stink of burning meat that makes my stomach twist even through the pain. My ribs grind audibly against the pressure of the blow, one of them popping with a wet, resounding crack that shoots jagged agony straight up my spine, and blood wells hot and immediate from the seams of my armor, trickling warm down my side.
His convergence hits him full force in that moment, pulsing through his body like liquid fire igniting every vein, and I can see it in the way his eyes zone out deeper than I've ever witnessed, the traits fusing together seamlessly into something unbreakable, while his reach extends like invisible tendrils that taste every micro-shift in my stance, every subtle flex of my shoulder, every hitch in my breath that betrays the building fatigue. Bloodforge throbs visibly in his veins as it guzzles down the residual plasma burn from my earlier aura blast across his arms, those old scars of his flaring bright as they transmute the agony into raw, explosive velocity that coils his next punch tighter and more lethal than before, turning my own attacks against me in a way that feels like fighting a mirror of my worst lessons. I detonate my nuclear aura in a point-blank radial explosion to counter, the force slamming his remaining decoys into nothingness and hurling him backward across the sand with a wall of inferno heat that peels the skin from his chest in stinging, instant layers, blisters rising raw and angry on his flesh. Glass shards from the impact slice shallow gashes into his legs as he skids, blood welling warm and sticky along the cuts, but he rolls to his feet with that feral grin plastered on his face, his hype clearly drowning out the burn as Dragon Vein siphons the damage down like it's nothing more than fuel for the next assault. "Those ghosts have real bite to them, brother," I scream through the modulator, my voice coming out gravel-rough and edged with the strain, "but they pop like fucking bubbles under pressure. Lock in close now—no more tricks between bros. Let's make this fusion spill some honest blood."
The illusions dissolve into wisps of fading smoke that curl away on the heated air, and he charges forward raw and reckless, closing the gap before I can fully reset my stance, his hook slamming into my chest plate with the full Juggernaut force behind it, the Ashen Gauntlets feasting even deeper as the black fire corrodes the metal inward, compressing my already protesting ribs further with a series of muffled snaps that vibrate up through my arm and rattle my lungs like loose gravel. I wheeze out a ragged breath, a gout of blood foaming from the vents in my helm in a hot crimson mist that splatters across his face, but my retaliation comes vicious and immediate, the axe haft whipping low in a sweeping arc that catches him off-guard, the plasma tip carving a deep furrow across his thigh where muscle parts like wet paper under the edge, charring instantly to blackened sinew that smokes and sizzles with every movement. Pain lances up his leg like a lightning rod straight to his spine, his knee buckling hard and nearly dropping him to the sand, but Dragon Vein clamps down on the torment without mercy, coiling the agony into a vicious spring that fuels his counterattack, his knee driving up into my midsection with enough force to dent the plate inward and force a guttural grunt from the depths of my chest as the air whooshes out of me.
I lunge next with a knee thrusting high toward his exposed ribs, aiming to shatter them clean and end this exchange on my terms, but Rhythm of Life syncs to my pattern in a single heartbeat—inhale, hold, explode—and he twists away at the last millisecond, the blow grazing his side with bruising force that leaves a welt rising under his skin, then he fires back with a knee of his own that buckles my unbreakable stance, sending cracks spiderwebbing through the sand beneath my boots from the impact. "Hawk's words on the zone hit true for you," I yell back, my gravel voice laced with the growing strain over the persistent hiss of leaking plasma from my axe, his heat blasting close enough now to blister the sweat on his face as we lock eyes through the fight. "That ocean's drowning deep in your stare, brother. Remember the factory days? You nearly choked on your own blood back then from pushing just like this. Anchor that beast inside you, or it'll anchor you harder than my next swing ever could."
The zone drags him under for a flash in that instant, and I see the memory flicker across his features just as it surfaces brutal and immediate in my own mind, pulling the edge of the fight sharper with the weight of our shared history.
The abandoned factory squatted there like a bloated, decaying corpse under the dim flicker of half-dead lights, its walls veined with rust that spider webbed across every surface in ugly red-brown patterns, while chains dangled from the rafters overhead like goddamn nooses waiting patiently for the next set of necks to claim. The air hung thick and oppressive with the stench of stale oil mixed with rot and that unmistakable metallic tang of blood already drying somewhere in the shadows of the scrap piles, those twisted heaps shifting treacherously under your boots like they were alive and hungry, ready to swallow your sorry ass whole if you slipped even once. Kaiser stood across from me at 16 years old, his frame lean as a switchblade honed for the kill and his eyes burning with that unkillable fire that refused to dim no matter the punishment, pipe clutched in a white-knuckled death grip that turned his knuckles pale, his face a fresh canvas of brutal cuts from the morning's so-called lesson: his lip split wide and oozing thick red rivulets that trailed down his chin, a deep gash above his eye pouring fresh blood that matted his hair into sticky clumps and dripped steadily down his cheek like some twisted war paint. Bruises bloomed purple and black across his jaw and ribs, every shallow breath he took probably feeling like knives twisting slow and deliberate in his gut, but his stance screamed pure defiance all the same, that inner blaze outshining the flickering, half-dead fluorescent that buzzed overhead like a swarm of dying flies trapped in the gloom.
"Swing that fucking pipe already, brother," I snarled at him, my arms hanging loose and ready at my sides as I sidestepped his wild overhead swing with ease, treating it like nothing more than a drunk's fart lost in the wind. "That thing only becomes your buddy if you learn to bash sneaky and without warning—the streets don't give a single shit about fair play or announcements; they gut you blind and laugh while you bleed out slow on the concrete. Strike true right now, or you'll eat a face full of this filthy, bloodstained floor, you hear me?"
He vaulted over a rusted crate like a feral cat pouncing on prey, the pipe slicing through the air with a high-pitched whistle that cut the stale atmosphere, slamming hard into my open palm block where the impact jarred up through his arms so violently that I swear I heard his teeth clack together from the shockwaves, probably rattling his goddamn skull inside that stubborn head of his. I countered smooth and vicious without hesitation, my palm thrusting forward like a sledgehammer exploding into his chest, sending the fucker skidding ass-first into a twisted pile of jagged metal scrap that ripped through his shirt on contact and gouged bloody furrows down his back, the entire crash echoing like a death knell through the empty shithole of the factory. Blood sprayed in a fine mist from his mouth as he hit the ground hard, coughing up pink froth that bubbled on his lips, but the stubborn prick scrambled back to his feet anyway, his pipe bent all to hell but his fists balled tight and ready once more, that grin splitting his already bloody lip even wider and sending a fresh dribble of crimson down his chin. "You trying to gut me whole like that, you bastard?" he rasped out, his voice thick and ragged with the pain lacing every word, wiping the blood from his eye with the back of a sleeve that came away completely soaked in it. "This ain't no fucking training session—it's you straight-up trying to crack my skull open like a goddamn egg and watch the pieces scatter."
I closed the gap fast as a striking viper, wrenching the mangled pipe right out of his grip mid-swing and hurling it clanging into the dark corners of the factory, my fingers digging into his wrist hard enough to bruise the bone beneath the skin. "Crack your skull wide open? Fuck no, broski—I'm forging you into something unbreakable, you dumb shit, whether you like it or not. Pain's the rusty chain that strangles all the weak-willed pussies until they choke on their own vomit and quit for good. You, though? You shatter that bitch wide open and step through. I see the reach burning in you already, that wolf clawing desperate to rip free from your skin—my old kin? Those sorry fucks buckled like wet cardboard under pressure, got their guts spilled out in filthy alleys for their troubles, died choking on their own blood without a fight left in them. Not you, not on my goddamn watch. Fight like the fire's branded your fucking name right on it—own that blaze completely, or it'll own your ass and leave you nothing but a charred husk smoking in the dirt."
He detonated forward like a live grenade in that moment, surging with everything he had left to headbutt my nose with a sickening crunch that exploded white-hot pain through my entire face, blood gushing down my chin in a hot, sticky flood that soaked my collar, the cartilage snapping like dry twigs under the force while stars burst behind my eyes in a dizzying haze. The little maniac laughed through it all anyway, a wet and ragged cackle that bubbled even more blood from his split lips, swinging a wild hook that grazed my jaw and split the skin open in a stinging line. "If the fire owns my ass like that, then let the motherfucker roast us both to ashes—hit back harder right now, brother! Teach this wolf to howl bloody murder at the moon, not just bleed out pathetic like a stuck pig in the mud!"
We tore into each other for hours straight in that metal slaughterhouse of a factory, the pipes warping and shattering under bone-crushing blows that echoed off the walls, our knuckles splitting open all the way to the bone with every landed punch that drew fresh blood—arcs of it spraying through the air, flesh tearing ragged where metal met meat in brutal collisions, bones creaking right on the verge of snapping like brittle branches under too much weight. My elbow caved in a chunk of his side during one exchange, his ribs protesting with a sharp pop that made him grunt deep and spit a glob of bloody phlegm onto the floor, but he'd counter immediately with a knee that bruised my thigh black and throbbing, the pain shooting up my leg like fire. Words flew out sharper than any of the flying shards of scrap around us: "You're family through and through, not some disposable fuck-meat to be tossed aside—rise the hell up now, or the rust claims your rotting corpse eternal, you hear me clear?" He adapted to every single goddamn move I threw at him that night, staggering taller through the mounting pain each time, his face matted with blood like a savage mask, the bond between us forging deeper in the sweat, the blood, and the unyielding grit that neither of us would back down from. In that factory hellhole, the wolf inside him finally ripped free and roared its challenge to the world: own the fucking fire completely, or get burned to a screaming crisp without mercy.
The memory ignites like fresh gasoline poured straight onto the blaze raging between us, his zone's ocean crystallizing into something lethally focused now, every nerve in his body humming with the grit I helped forge all those years ago. "That factory fire's carved deep in us both, brother," he growls back at me, driving a shin into my flank with the full fury of Dragon Vein behind it, the plate crumpling inward under the brutal impact as my breath erupts in a bloody wheeze, another rib fracturing with a sharp pop that vibrates straight up his leg like feedback from a live wire snapping. My axe dips for a split second as the plasma flickers unstable from the strain, but I roar through the pain and recover, my backhand clipping his shoulder with enough force to spin him half-around, the plasma edge searing a line across his muscle that blisters instantly and exposes raw pink flesh beneath the burn.
"Roar it out full, bro!" I yell back, the modulator grinding through the building pain in my voice, my visor cracked but my stance holding firm as he surges forward again without pause.
The tide of the fight crushes down hard in that instant, his convergence peaking to a level I've never seen before, the traits inside him aligning into an unstoppable surge that lets him read every falter and twitch in my movements through that damn reach of his, pulling him ahead while I fight to keep up. He feints left with a Blitz shadow that draws my axe high for the overhead counter, but then he explodes to the right without warning, his fist hammering down my guard and raking across my chest in a cross-slash with the Gauntlets that peels away the remaining armor like flayed skin under a butcher's knife, the black fire devouring the diamond layers completely and charring the muscle beneath to smoking ruin that fills my lungs with the taste of my own burning flesh. Blood pours in thick, unrelenting sheets from the wounds, my grunt turning into a ragged curse as the haft trembles in my weakening grip, the pain lancing through me like shards of glass embedded deep. "Fuck, that's the wolf I forged right there, broski," I yell through gritted teeth, "but you're pushing that edge raw now—don't let it cut you too."
He shows no mercy in response, his Bloodforge converting the echoes of my pain into pure fuel for himself as the roundhouse kick whips around with Juggernaut's full power, his boot slamming into my side like a battering ram forged from steel and spite. The remnants of my plate cave inward completely under the force, my ribs shattering in a cascade of wet, final cracks that echo through my chest cavity, my body twisting mid-air from the sheer momentum before I crash down to one knee in the sand, blood vomiting from my helm in a choking spray that splatters hot across the ground. That kick's impact echoes straight back to the yard brawls of our past in my mind, the vox crackling faint as I force the words out: "That spin kick... shit, brother, it takes me right back to those yard brawls we had. You were a bloody mess every single time—your face split open from the hits, ribs feeling like broken glass grinding inside, coughing up chunks of blood after every exchange I landed on you. But you wouldn't fucking quit no matter what, would you? Kept coming at me with your fists up high, refusing to drop until you matched me blow for blow and proved you were the best hand-to-hand fighter I'd ever pulled from the dirt."
The zone flickers with the same yard memory in his eyes too, those endless rounds of blood and unyielding bruises where he refused to tap out until his hands turned to pulp and his vision swam red with exhaustion, but now he's the one towering over me. "Quit? I never did back then, bro," he snarls, his voice steady despite the strain, "and I learned it all from the best—you. Now feel what the master can do." Overload hums at the edges of his form, blackening the veins visible under his skin, but he channels it straight into the final push without hesitation, his Mirage splitting him into a swarm of decoys that overwhelm my defenses completely, the ghosts pinning my axe arm down while the real him closes in fast, his knee driving up into my jaw with a crunch that dents the helm even deeper and grinds my teeth together audibly through the metal, fresh blood flooding my mouth bitter and coppery.
I reel back from the blow, my aura sputtering like a dying engine on its last gasp, but I swing wild one last time anyway, the haft grazing his arm in a desperate plasma kiss that sears all the way down to the bone, the pain exploding white-hot through him as payback. He absorbs it without flinching though, Dragon Vein coiling the agony into one final, lethal surge that builds in his frame. "Playtime's over, brother," he says, his tone cold and final as the convergence detonates in his core, the traits fusing together into a one-shot kill move that I've never seen him pull before: Bloodforge channels all that rage straight through the Gauntlets into a palm strike aimed right at my chest, the black fire erupting like a void bomb exploding outward, corroding through the last scraps of my armor, the muscle, and even the bone in an instant of implosive force that cracks my sternum wide and sends shockwaves rippling through my entire frame. The sheer power of it lifts me clean off my feet for a heartbeat, hurling me backward to crumple hard into the sand where my axe clatters free from my numb fingers, blood pooling dark and thick around me as my vision blurs at the edges.
I can't rise anymore, the pain too deep and the damage too extensive, so I push myself up to one knee instead, tilting my cracked helm upward to meet his gaze, my vox coming out weak but laced with undeniable pride: "You win this one, brother. Fused and unbreakable—just like I always knew you'd become."
The arena drops into complete silence in that moment, every breath held collectively as the weight of the upset sinks in, no chants breaking the tension, no screams echoing off the walls, just a vast, echoing void that hangs heavy like the calm before a storm. Then it shatters all at once, the crowd exploding into roars that thunder through the stands and shake the barriers: "Kaiserrr beat Kaneeeeeeeeee!" The worship turns to frenzy, voices overlapping in a deafening wave that builds and builds, but I barely register it through the haze.
He walks over to me cold and deliberate, the hype in his zone fading away into something like ice, and he pats my shoulder— the touch sending a fresh grind of shattered bone under the contact that makes me wince. "No kneeling needed, Kane," he says, his voice steady and matter-of-fact. "This was all part of my plan from the start. I knew I had to master convergence completely before I go kick Ryzen's ass for real."
My frame shakes involuntarily at his words, a laugh building up in my chest and starting to bubble through the modulator—ragged and almost joyful in the pride of it all—but before it can fully break free, the overload crashes through him like a blackout storm unleashed, his veins erupting in those black cracks that spiderweb across his skin, the traits feedback-looping wild and out of control, his vision tunneling down to nothing as his body gives out. He collapses right beside me in the sand, unconscious and limp, the world dissolving into void for him while I watch helpless.
That's when Baron Varn makes his move, shadows erupting from the edges of the pit like a plague unleashed, around fourty thousand of his forces swarming in fast and brutal as vultures descending on fresh, vulnerable meat.
END OF CHAPTER