Location: Chongqing Underground Flood Control Tunnels 5:47 AM
Katzuki's armor screamed like a dying animal.
The red yellow plates across his ribs split open with a wet, tearing sound, black bio-fluid oozing out and mixing into the fetid knee-high sewage. The stench of rot clawed into his nostrils. Around him, the Drowned King's spawn dragged themselves forward half-digested corpses stitched into carp skeletons, their jaws snapping sideways, like broken elevator doors, twitching with maggot-pulses.
He winced as the armor pulsed against his exposed flesh.
"Fuck this."
He raised the pulse cannon, locked it into place with a sharp clack, and fired point-blank at a charging mass of rotten muscle and scale. The blast caved in the thing's skull and vaporized six more behind it into a cloud of steam, bile, and bone fragments.
But the pain was instant his wrist shattered again, bones grinding like gravel inside the gauntlet. Katzuki dropped to a knee, gritting his teeth, nearly vomiting as the hunger clawed its way through his chest.
The biomass wasn't enough. His armor barely held shape, tendrils shaking, twitching like starved worms.
Beside him, the Plague Doctor danced in the chaos fluid and silent, dagger spinning like a silver crescent moon. His black coat tore at the seams, soaked in blood that shimmered slightly silver. But his movements were slower now, breath ragged. A long gash down his side hissed and bubbled Echo-Steel poisoning. Even his unnatural body was rejecting it.
Another fish-creature lunged from the side, sinking its jagged teeth into Katzuki's thigh. He let out a strangled roar and ripped its head off, chunks of cartilage trailing behind, before crushing the skull in his fists, black gore dripping between his fingers. He slurped in the biomass instinctively, armor absorbing it with a horrid slurping sound.
Still not enough. His vision blurred at the edges. His jaw clenched so hard it cracked.
"You're slowing."
The Plague Doctor didn't even turn. His voice was calm. Cold. Tired.
From behind his back, he tossed something through the air a severed demon arm, its skin mottled with fungi and black scales, the claws twitching as if still alive.
"Eat. Or die."
Katzuki snarled and grabbed the arm. His armor's feeding tendrils lashed out like starving serpents, piercing the flesh and sucking it dry. He shook as the energy flooded him, his spine arching from the surge.
His teeth chattered. His eyes burned.
Then a glitch.
A whisper of foreign memory, hot and jagged, tore through his brain like a nail:
a small room reeking of iron, a child screaming, hands holding down his skull, the crackle of broken lightning in the air a face young, broken, not masked.
The Plague Doctor, unmasked. Soft eyes. Whispering:
"Kur-Bai'el, run "
Katzuki jerked like he'd been electrocuted, coughing up blood.
"What the fuck was that?!"
The Plague Doctor paused. His dagger's cracked edge pulsed with a red hue.
"You saw nothing."
A lie.
Then.
The world ruptured.
The Feast
The Drowned King's Herald arrived in a tsunami of bile and concrete, crawling up from a collapsed shaft like a spider born from vomit.
It was a monstrosity seven feet tall, its skin a patchwork quilt of drowned sailors, barnacles and bloated limbs stitched with rusted barbs. Its face twisted every second new features blooming from under the skin, eyes blinking sideways, lips muttering prayers from dead throats.
"Little thief," it gurgled, its voice a symphony of the eaten, every syllable soaked in salt and blood. "You stole from the King's larder."
Katzuki snarled. His right arm split open with a sickening crackle, revealing a serrated biomass blade, steaming from inner heat.
"Yeah?" His voice was cracked. Feral. "And I'm still fucking hungry."
The Herald laughed, a choking, bubbling sound that made the water tremble. Then it lunged.
It was too fast.
Its fist caught Katzuki mid-sentence, sending him flying through a concrete pillar with a sound like thunder and bone. His lungs imploded on impact. His armor buckled.
He rolled, coughing blood, and collapsed against the slick tunnel wall.
Everything hurt.
The Plague Doctor didn't hesitate. He launched forward, a blur of black and silver, his dagger aimed right for the creature's spine.
But the Herald twisted unnaturally, catching his wrist mid-air.
"Kur-Bai'el," it crooned, "the Archons miss you."
Then it bit his hand clean off.
Screaming. A fountain of silver blood, bright and burning.
The Plague Doctor dropped. His breath came in wet, stuttering gasps. His eyes dimmed.
Katzuki roared.
The Choice
The Plague Doctor's hand hit the ground with a splat, still clutching the Echo-Steel dagger.
It whispered.
Katzuki's armor convulsed. His muscles ached to tear, to feed, to consume. His heart thundered, mouth flooding with saliva. Every cell screamed for fuel.
The Herald towered over them, licking its stolen lips, savoring the delay.
"Eat it!" the Plague Doctor rasped, cradling his stump. "Or we both die."
Katzuki didn't hesitate this time.
He grabbed the severed hand then the dagger and rammed it into his own mouth.
And swallowed it whole.
The Aftermath
The world split like skin beneath a blade.
Echo-Steel was not just metal. It was memory crystallized, pain compressed, a record of horror etched into every atom.
And it poured into him.
Visions assaulted him:
The Plague Doctor's true name, a cursed syllable even the Archons sealed away.
The Archons' first sin, an ancient drowned city, buried beneath myth and ocean.
Katzuki's birth, not from womb, but from machines, from screams and wet operating tables he was carved, not born.
His armor melted, then reformed black as void, gold veins pulsing like arteries, his eyes burning brighter than plasma torches.
The Herald took a step back.
"No. You're not "
Katzuki moved.
No more blades. No more weapons.
Just a fist. His fist wrapped in Echo-Steel, heavy and unyielding slammed into the Herald's chest with a sickening crunch. Ribs cracked instantly, folding inward like brittle twigs. The steel knuckles tore through skin and muscle, punching clean through flesh with the sound of meat splitting open. Warm blood sprayed across his arm as the Herald staggered back, gasping, a ragged hole gaping where its sternum used to be. It didn't scream it just collapsed, twitching.
The creature let out a ragged scream cut short as its body ruptured. Flesh tore open with a wet rip, and chunks of bone and tissue splattered across the walls, the ceiling, and the Doctor's motionless form. The air filled with the stench of blood and ruptured organs, thick and choking.
Silence.
The water still.
The tunnel reeked of burnt blood and forgotten gods.
Katzuki stood over the corpse, shoulders heaving. His visor had cracked open one gold eye burning with unnatural intensity, the other still human, barely holding onto its humanity.
He crouched down and tore into the body, hands digging through the torn flesh. He didn't hesitate. Muscle and bone were crushed between his teeth, the raw meat slipping down his throat. His breathing steadied as he consumed, the wounds that had marred his body slowly beginning to heal, flesh knitting together, cuts closing, bruises fading. The exhaustion, the pain, all of it washed away, replaced with strength and vitality.
Within moments, the bloodstains on his skin disappeared, his body restored healthy, whole, no trace of the battle left behind. He stood, looking down at the empty shell, now nothing more than a discarded meal, his gaze cold and calculating.
The Plague Doctor coughed behind him gravel scraping through the mask, the sound raw, barely even human.
"What did you see?"
Katzuki turned, chest heaving with every breath, his gaze sharp, pupils wide and wild.
"Enough."
The word came out like a growl, thick with the weight of what he'd just consumed, of what he'd just witnessed. It wasn't a statement it was a promise, dark and final.
To Be Continued…