HARLEM - LENOX AVENUE SAFE HOUSE - 11:58 PM
The building didn't look like much.
Three stories of weathered brick tucked between a bodega and a laundromat that had been "temporarily closed" for six years. Barred windows. Graffiti tags layered like geological strata. The kind of place you walked past without seeing.
Perfect camouflage.
Seraph had been inside for seventeen minutes.
He stood in the third-floor hallway shadows, motionless, breathing synchronized with the building's ambient noise. A radiator hissed. Pipes groaned. Someone two floors down laughed at a television.
He'd entered through the basement—rusted service door with a lock that took eight seconds to pick. Up the back stairs, past two guards who never saw him, never heard him, never knew death had walked three feet away.
Now he waited outside Tombstone's room.
Observing.
Through the door gap, he could see movement. Thermal signatures. Two bodies. One massive—Tombstone. One smaller—lieutenant, probably jack based on intel.
Inside, muffled conversation:
"—third sweep in an hour. Nobody's coming."
"He sent the message. He's coming." Tombstone's voice, gravel scraping stone. "Question is when."
"Maybe he's smarter than we thought. Saw the defenses, backed off."
"Nobody's that smart."
Seraph's lips curved behind his helmet. Adequate arrogance.
He checked his internal countdown. Tombstone had twelve hours to prepare.
Eleven hours, forty-three minutes had passed.
Time to collect.
Seraph placed his palm against the door handle. Chakra flowed—subtle, precise. The metal lock mechanism softened, components losing molecular cohesion. He turned the handle.
It opened silently.
He stepped through.
Marcus saw him first—eyes widening, hand dropping toward his shotgun.
Too slow.
Seraph crossed the room in a heartbeat. Body Flicker made distance irrelevant.
His hand closed on jack's throat, thumb pressing the carotid. The man's eyes rolled back—unconscious in three seconds from the choke.
Seraph lowered him silently to the floor, then drove his hidden blade through the base of the skull.
Snikt.
Marcus died without waking up.
Tombstone turned from the window, shotgun already rising—
"So Midnight Cinderella finally—"
"Arbor," Seraph interrupted. "The media name is irrelevant."
Tombstone's smile widened, but the shotgun stayed level. "Arbor. Another spider crawling around my city? What is this, an infestation?"
"I'm nothing like Spider-Man."
"Sure you're not." Tombstone's eyes tracked the bone-white armor, the arachnid emblem, the bronze plating. "You come to my house, dressed like that, kill my lieutenant, and think you're special?"
"I came to make you an offer."
"I'm listening."
"You work for me now. Your operation continues. Your territory remains yours. Fifteen percent oversight fee. You provide resources when I require them."
The silence stretched.
Tombstone lowered the shotgun. Then he laughed—deep, genuine, utterly dismissive.
"You want me to work for you?" He set the shotgun aside, started rolling up his sleeves. "Kid, I don't know who you think you are, but let me educate you on how power works in this city."
Footsteps thundered up the stairwell.
The door burst open—eight men, heavily armed. AR-15s, tactical gear, professional spacing.
They saw jack's body, saw the white armor, saw Tombstone standing calm.
"Boss?" one asked.
"Kill him," Tombstone said casually. "Slowly if you can manage it."
The room erupted.
Seraph moved before the first shot fired.
Shunshin no Jutsu. He was between them before they could track.
His hand shot out—Raiton chakra crackling along his fingers—and touched the first man's chest.
Electricity arced. The man convulsed, dropped, heart stopped.
The second man turned his rifle—
Seraph's palm strike caught him in the solar plexus. Not just strength. Chakra-enhanced strength.The strike sent a shockwave through internal organs. The man flew backward, hit the wall, slid down leaving a blood smear.
A shotgun roared.
Seraph's hand was already there—catching the barrel, redirecting. The blast went wide.
He yanked the weapon away, reversed it one-handed, and fired into the wielder's face.
Five seconds. Three dead.
The remaining five opened fire—full auto.
Seraph formed hand seals mid-movement.
Doton: Doryūheki.
Earth chakra flowed. The hardwood floor rippled, then erupted—a wall of compressed soil and stone rising between him and the gunfire.
Bullets thudded into earthen barrier. None penetrated.
Confused shouting. Reloading sounds.
Seraph placed his palm against his own barrier.
Mokuton: Sashiki no Jutsu.
Wooden spikes shot from the wall's opposite side—six-foot stakes growing at impossible speed, punching through the barrier like it was paper.
Three men didn't have time to scream.
The spikes impaled them—through chest, through throat, through stomach. They hung there, suspended, bleeding.
One man gurgled. Wet, choking sounds.
The other two made no sound at all.
The last two survivors broke.
One ran for the stairs—webline caught his ankle, yanked him off his feet. His head cracked against the doorframe. The sound was like someone dropping a melon.
The final man dropped his rifle, hands raised. "Please—"
Seraph's fist caught him in the throat. Trachea collapsed. The man fell, clawing at his neck, suffocating.
Seraph watched him die. Counted the seconds. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
The struggling stopped at twenty-three.
He turned to Tombstone.
Eight men dead in fourteen seconds.
The room smelled like cordite, blood, and released bowels.
"You were saying?" Seraph asked. "About how power works?"
***
Tombstone stared at the carnage. His expression hadn't changed—still that small, knowing smile.
But his eyes had.
"Not bad," he said. "Fast. Creative. You've got tricks." He stepped over a corpse, alabaster skin almost glowing in the low light. "But tricks don't mean shit when you're built like I am."
He moved.
Fast—much faster than his size suggested.
His fist blurred toward Seraph's head.
Seraph slipped it. Spider-sense read the trajectory before Tombstone's neurons fired.
He countered—palm strike to the ribs.
The impact sounded like a hammer on stone.
Tombstone grunted. Shifted back half a step.
"Good hit," he admitted. " Way harder than Spider-Man, but you're close." His smile widened. "My turn."
He came in—combination punches, each one carrying three hundred fifty pounds of enhanced muscle.
Seraph blocked two. The impacts would've shattered normal bone.
The third—an uppercut—he wasn't there for.
Shunshin. Behind Tombstone now.
Seraph drove a kick into the back of his knee.
Tombstone stumbled—first time his balance broke.
He spun faster than expected, swinging a backfist.
Seraph ducked, drove an elbow into Tombstone's kidney.
Another grunt of pain.
"What the fuck ARE you?" Tombstone snarled.
Seraph didn't answer.
Tombstone's hand went to his waist—hidden gun, small caliber.
He drew and fired in one motion.
Seraph's hand was faster.
He caught Tombstone's wrist mid-draw, twisted. The gun fired into the ceiling.
Then Seraph pulled—using Tombstone's own momentum against him—and drove his knee into the bigger man's face.
Nose shattered. Blood exploded.
Tombstone roared, swinging wild.
Seraph released him, let him stumble.
The big man caught himself against the wall, breathing hard, blood pouring from his ruined nose.
"You're good," Tombstone spat blood. "Better than I expected. But you can't put me down. My skin—"
"Is irrelevant," Seraph finished. "Everywhere except your eyes."
Tombstone's expression flickered. Just for a second.
Fear.
He grabbed a decorative katana from the wall—ornamental but sharp—and swung it in a wide arc.
Seraph caught the blade bare-handed.
His armored gauntlet didn't scratch.
He ripped it from Tombstone's grip and drove it coated it with chakra and through the bigger man's thigh.
Tombstone screamed.
There it is, Seraph thought with clinical satisfaction.
He twisted the blade.
The scream went higher.
Seraph yanked the katana free—blood sprayed—and tossed it aside.
"Your durability stops at the skin," Seraph observed. "Penetrate that, and you're just meat underneath."
Tombstone collapsed to one knee, clutching his leg. "You fucking—"
Seraph's kick caught him in the chest.
The big man flew backward, crashed through the leather couch, hit the wall hard enough to crack plaster.
He tried to rise—
Wooden constructs erupted from the floor.
Thick as telephone poles, they wrapped around Tombstone's arms, legs, torso. Growing, spreading, immobilizing.
Tombstone roared, straining. His enhanced strength cracked two supports—
Six more grew to replace them.
Then twelve.
The wooden prison climbed his body.
"STOP!" Tombstone bellowed. "You made your point!"
Seraph walked over slowly. Each step deliberate.
He crouched, bringing his reflective lenses level with Tombstone's face.
"Have I?" he asked. "Because you still seem to think you have options."
The wood receded just enough to free Tombstone's throat.
Seraph grabbed it.
And lifted.
Three hundred fifty pounds. One-handed.
Tombstone's eyes went wide—not from the choking, but from the casual display of strength that matched or exceeded his own.
"How—" he gasped.
"Good genetics," Seraph said.
"What—"
"Does it matter?"
He walked to the broken window, Tombstone dangling from his grip.
"Let me clarify your situation," Seraph continued, tone conversational. "You are not my equal. You are not my partner. You are an asset I'm deciding whether to exploit or discard."
"Wait—"
Seraph threw him.
Through the window. Through the bars. Through the night air.
Tombstone's scream dopplered as he fell three stories.
He hit the street with a sound like a car crash—concrete spiderwebbing under the impact.
His enhanced durability prevented most breaks. But most wasn't all.
Tombstone lay in the crater, vision swimming. Breathing hurt—three ribs cracked, maybe four. His left shoulder wasn't responding. The sword wound in his thigh pumped blood with each heartbeat. Shock setting in, gray creeping at the edges of his vision.
Movement above.
Seraph descended—not falling, but walking down the building's face. Chakra-adhesion, feet finding purchase on vertical brick like it was horizontal ground.
He stepped off the wall onto the street.
Stood over Tombstone's broken form.
"Your operation continues," Seraph said. "Same territory. Same business. Fifteen percent oversight fee. You provide resources when I require them. You take orders. You never forget this moment."
Tombstone coughed blood. "And if I refuse?"
"I find someone else. Your body becomes a warning. Choose."
Tombstone stared up at him—at the bone-white armor splattered with nine men's blood, at the reflective lenses showing his own broken reflection.
"You have ten seconds," Seraph said.
"One."
Tombstone's mind raced. Refuse. Die proud.
"Two."
Or bend. Live. Wait for an opening.
"Three."
But those lenses—emotionless, infinite—said there wouldn't be an opening.
"Four."
Everything he'd built. His reputation. His power.
"Five."
Serve this thing and keep it.
"Six."
Or die with nothing.
"Seven."
"What do you even want?" Tombstone gasped. "Money? Territory? What's the fucking point?"
Seraph tilted his head.
"A challenge," he said simply. "A mountain to climb."
"Eight."
The answer was somehow worse than greed or revenge.
This thing didn't want power for power's sake.
It wanted to test itself.
And Tombstone was just a stepping stone.
"Nine."
Tombstone's mouth opened—
END CHAPTER 12