The chemical plant was supposed to be dead.
Instead, the guttural screams of the dying echoed through its rusted halls.
Daniel moved silently down the cracked concrete aisle, his boots whispering against the dust. The sounds grew weaker with every step, fading into broken sobs, then into a suffocating silence that pressed down on the air.
The building was massive, a labyrinth of abandoned workshops scattered across the fringe of the property. Each workshop functioned like its own secret chamber, isolated from the others, each carrying a darker horror than the last.
Daniel glanced through the grated window of the first workshop.
And froze.
Inside, over a dozen people — men, women, young and old — were crammed into filthy cages. Their skin was pale, their bodies weak. Needles pierced their arms, thick tubes draining their blood into a central iron pipe that ran through the workshop floor, carrying the dark crimson flow deep underground.
It was a blood bank.
A living, screaming blood bank.
Some of these captives looked like they'd been taken just hours ago. Others… had been here for weeks. Their lips cracked, their eyes glassy with exhaustion.
The Hand wasn't killing them, not immediately. No, these people were kept alive, their blood harvested when needed. Those who died were simply replaced.
Daniel's stomach churned. Even after all he had seen, this was something else.
He recognized the pattern.
This was a project. A collaboration between the Hand and Kingpin's network. Kidnappings across South Asia, South America, Africa… even from New York's own streets.
And tonight, the Hand was draining these people again. Their lifeblood was being pumped into something beneath the factory, something that could bring the dead back to life.
Daniel clenched his fists.
'Life and death… they've found a way to play with it.'
But he couldn't free them yet. If he struck now, the Hand would scatter. He needed to know how they were doing this.
He crept deeper.
Three hundred and forty-seven people, that was his rough count of the "blood slaves" in this hellhole.
The guards here were minimal, two, maybe three per entrance. The bulk of the Hand's force was deeper underground. It was a mistake on their part.
A mistake Daniel intended to exploit.
At the far end of the workshop level, a heavy steel door waited.
Daniel paused, his instincts screaming for caution. He stepped back, retreating to the upper levels. Using chalk and raw mana, he carved an intricate spell circle across three floors, embedding his magic into the structure itself. The array pulsed faintly, infused with the combined essence of ice, wind, water, and thunder.
If things went wrong, he could summon a storm here — literally.
Half an hour later, the circle was complete. Daniel returned to the steel door.
With a whisper of magic, the lock yielded. The door closed behind him just as silently.
The basement was black as pitch.
Daniel's palm sparked, and frost spread across the walls, sealing the entrance behind him. Jagged ice thorns slid from the shadows, skewering the two hidden guards before they could even gasp.
The underground passage opened into a vast chamber — at least two hundred square meters wide.
And in the center, Daniel saw it.
A pool.
No… a blood pool.
Rivers of blood from above flowed into this basin, its dark surface rippling like liquid fire under the dim lights.
And at the heart of the pool stood an ancient black cauldron — a colossal, three-legged ding etched with carvings of dragons, phoenixes, and predatory beasts. Ancient characters, far older than any modern script, coiled across its surface like living things.
The cauldron was alive.
Daniel could feel it.
The blood didn't just fill the pool; it was being drawn into the cauldron, absorbed and transmuted into something unholy. The cauldron exhaled energy back into the blood, an energy that seeped into the corpses of Hand ninjas floating at the edges of the pool.
They were… moving.
Their bodies, pale and stiff, were reawakening.
Daniel's breath caught.
'They're resurrecting them.'
Death, as Daniel understood it, was simple:
The body fails. The cells die. The soul drifts apart — quickly, in three days; slowly, in seven. After that, the human vessel is nothing more than an empty husk.
But these ninjas… their cells were coming back to life, one by one, as though time itself were being reversed.
This was sorcery, the kind of sorcery that should not exist.
Daniel tightened his grip on his weapon. His disgust burned into something sharper, fury.
These weren't humans anymore. They were puppets, stripped of self, reborn as mindless weapons.
The chamber was silent. No one sensed him.
Daniel's eyes narrowed on the cauldron.
Inside it sat the Japanese swordsman he'd killed earlier, his body half-submerged in the blood, his wounds sealing with unnatural speed.
There were no Hand leaders here. No one of the Five.
Which meant Daniel had a rare opportunity.
He stepped forward, his boots finding invisible footholds as he walked across the surface of the blood pool as if it were solid ground.
Closer now, he could see the carvings on the cauldron's surface — hieroglyphs so ancient and complex they pulsed with raw power.
Not Chinese. Not Japanese.
Older.
Runes, Daniel realized, but not of any Asgardian lineage he'd studied. There was something far more primal at work here, something that felt alive.
Before he could examine them further, a sudden shift in the air made him freeze.
From within the cauldron, two blood-red eyes opened and stared straight at him.
—
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