[Third Person POV]
The city didn't forgive.
When a gang fell, the streets smelled it like blood in the water. And the vultures always circled.
For weeks after the Black Vultures disbanded, Kyle was a ghost. His name had once carried fire, but now it was a bounty. The Razorbacks and Iron Fangs had tasted his blood, and they weren't finished. Every alley, every cheap hostel, every diner where he stopped for a meal—there were eyes, waiting, whispering, planning.
Kyle couldn't stay in one place. The city he had tried to rule was no longer his to walk.
[Kyle's POV]
Every night was the same. A door creaking at 3 a.m. had me awake with a blade in my hand. A shadow in the streetlights sent my heart pounding like a war drum.
I kept moving. A new room every two days. Cash only, no questions asked. I ate little, slept less. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw coffins being lowered, mothers screaming, Arjun's pale face in the hospital bed.
But more than grief, there was the weight of hunters.
One night, I caught a pair of Razorbacks tailing me from the bus station. I let them follow me into a dead alley. When they drew their knives, I didn't even hesitate.
Two broken jaws. One shattered wrist. I left them bleeding in the gutter. I didn't kill them—I wanted them to crawl back to their boss with a message: Kyle's still alive.
But messages like that carried a curse. Every time I struck back, they came harder, wider, sharper.
This city would never let me rest.
[Third Person POV]
By the third week, Kyle was running on fumes. The enemies weren't just gangs anymore; hired men from outside the district began sniffing around. Some nights, he'd see strangers in black sedans lingering too long at street corners, their cigarette tips glowing red like predators' eyes in the dark.
He realized then: this wasn't survival anymore. It was suicide, stretched out over nights and streets.
So he left.
---
[Kyle's POV]
It broke me to do it. Leaving the city wasn't just leaving streets and rooftops. It was leaving graves, memories, blood. It was leaving Arjun.
But I had no choice. I packed nothing but clothes, cash, and the knife I carried since the first fight. I boarded a train at midnight, hood up, head low, watching every face like it was a gun aimed at me.
When the city lights disappeared behind me, something inside me cracked.
I wasn't Kyle, leader of the Black Vultures, anymore. I was just another fugitive running from ghosts.
---
[Third Person POV]
The city he fled to was bigger, colder, indifferent. Here, no one cared who he was. No whispers of Razorbacks or Iron Fangs, no memories of broken promises. Just noise, glass towers, and strangers brushing past him on crowded sidewalks.
At first, he thought he might stay. He rented a cramped room above a garage, worked under the table moving crates for cash. Nobody asked questions, nobody looked twice. For the first time in years, the silence almost felt like peace.
But peace never fit him.
[Kyle's POV]
A month. That's all it took.
Every day I walked the streets of that city, anonymous, invisible. No one hunted me here. No one remembered the Black Vultures.
And yet… I couldn't sleep.
It wasn't fear anymore. It was rage. Rage that clawed at me every time I closed my eyes. Rage at the Razorbacks and Iron Fangs, at their blades sinking into my brothers' bodies. Rage at myself for running, for hiding like a rat in holes while their killers walked free.
The scars on my hands healed. The cuts across my ribs faded. But inside, something darker was growing.
I wasn't broken anymore. I was sharpening.
The day I bought my ticket back, I looked into a cracked mirror in my rented room. For the first time since the funerals, I saw myself clearly. My eyes weren't the same. They were harder, colder. My smile was gone, replaced with something like steel.
I wasn't going back to grieve. I wasn't going back to survive.
I was going back for revenge.
---
[Third Person POV]
One month after disappearing, Kyle stood at the airport gate. The fluorescent lights hummed above him, the crowd buzzed with chatter, but he was silent. His black coat hung loose over his shoulders, his boots heavy against the polished floor.
He moved with a calmness that unsettled the people around him. Not frantic, not nervous—just certain. The kind of certainty that came when a man had already made peace with hell.
His flight was called. He rose, shouldered his bag, and walked toward the boarding tunnel.
A stewardess smiled at him, but her eyes lingered longer than usual. Maybe it was the way he carried himself—like a soldier walking to war, not a passenger heading home.
But Kyle wasn't going home. Home had been burned, shattered, buried.
He was returning to the city as something else entirely.
[Kyle's POV]
When the plane lifted into the clouds, I closed my eyes. For the first time in weeks, my chest didn't feel heavy.
I saw their faces again—the boys we buried, Arjun in his hospital bed, the mothers who cursed me. But now, instead of breaking me, the memories burned like fuel.
They had taken everything from me. My brothers. My name. My peace.
Now I was taking everything from them.
The city thought Kyle was finished. That I had run. That I had buried myself in another life.
But they were wrong.
The storm was coming back.
And this time, I wasn't the boy who wanted to build an empire.
This time, I was the weapon.
---
[Third Person POV]
When the city skyline appeared beneath the plane's wings, thunder rumbled in the distance. Storm clouds gathered, thick and dark, rolling in over the steel towers and broken rooftops.
It was as if the city itself knew.
Kyle had returned.
And the streets would bleed for it.