"VIP Seats"!
Matt's voice was soft—barely more than a whisper.
His face, usually taut with tension, was unreadable.
He sat motionless.
Like a statue abandoned in the shadowed corner of a church, letting Fisk's bloody account wash over him like floodwater.
Then he moved.
Bracing himself against the table, Matt tried to stand. His motions were slow, stiff—each movement tearing open wounds that hadn't yet begun to heal. Every muscle beneath his white shirt screamed in protest.
Foggy—immediately stepped forward, reaching out to steady him.
"Matt, what are you doing? Are you insane? Your ribs—your organs—they're barely holding together…"
"I have to go see."
Matt pushed his hand away.
His world was already a sea of fire. Now, someone within it had doused the flames with gasoline—using the lives of innocents as kindling for an even darker blaze.
He was the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
And this… this was a declaration.
Just as Matt swayed, preparing to take his first step, a calm—almost indifferent—voice cut through the silence.
"Save your breath."
Joren hadn't even risen from his chair. He merely lifted his eyelids, green eyes fixed on Matt's pallid profile.
"In your current state, you'd struggle to climb to the roof."
A beat. Then, quieter:
"What if that 'artist' is still nearby? Watching. Waiting to admire the audience's expressions… Do you think he might want to add a pair of real devil horns to his masterpiece?"
Matt froze.
Yes—he was weak.
Fisk's blow had nearly shattered his internal organs. The damage ran deeper than flesh; his senses were overloaded, his radar sense shrieking like a machine pushed past its limits. Going out there now wouldn't be justice. It would be suicide.
"I'll go check," Joren said, finally standing. The rickety chair groaned in relief beneath him. "You stay here. Consider it a deal."
"I'll handle this 'artist.' You dig Wesley out of his rat hole—and I need everything you've got on that woman."
Matt didn't answer immediately.
He could hear Joren's heartbeat: steady, unshaken, like bedrock beneath shifting earth.
Beside him, Fisk paced—breathing hard, mind racing with worry.
Let him go?
Let a teenager walk into the lair of a madman who painted with blood?
It went against every instinct, every oath he'd ever sworn.
But…
Joren was right.
"Okay," Matt rasped, the word scraping from chapped lips.
"Deal."
"Matt!" Fisk stared at him, incredulous. "How can you—? He's still a kid!"
"He's not."
Matt's voice carried a weariness—and certainty—that Fisk couldn't fathom.
The boy before them wasn't a child.
He was a human-shaped quiet zone—a black hole where power coiled in absolute stillness.
Compared to him, the so-called artist seemed like a snarling pup baring its teeth at a sleeping leviathan.
Even at his peak—with Spider-Man at his side—Matt wouldn't have dared claim he could subdue Joren in a spar.
That night, the sheer pressure radiating from Joren's golden, muscular frame had been enough to make hardened criminals break down sobbing.
Joren said nothing more.
He turned, flung open the creaking wooden door, and walked out without a backward glance.
Behind him, Fisk's voice chased after him, desperate and bewildered:
"How can we let a child do something this dangerous? This isn't his burden to carry!"
Joren's stride never faltered.
He gave a slight shake of his head—and vanished into the stairwell's shadows.
Yay, yay.
Responsibility?
Trouble never asks if you're ready when it comes knocking.
And though he hated trouble… he'd never feared it.
Besides—the deal was good.
---
The abandoned slaughterhouse hunkered in the filthiest corner of Hell's Kitchen.
Yellow police tape cordoned off the perimeter.
A handful of uniformed officers stood guard outside, faces pale, eyes hollow. None dared look inside.
Joren didn't approach.
He simply stood across the street—dozens of meters away—gazing up at the slaughterhouse's massive, crumbling wall.
Then, he saw the painting.
It was a face.
A Daredevil mask—drawn in blood.
Huge, jagged horns curved upward, consuming the entire wall.
The mask's outline was rugged, almost primal, as if someone had hurled a bucket of blood against the brick and let chaos shape the form.
The blood was half-dried—a chilling, dark crimson.
Beneath the flickering police car lights, the still-liquid portions oozed slowly downward, viscous and thick, like tears weeping from the wall itself.
The image wasn't artful. It was crude. Unrefined.
And yet, its raw savagery struck deep—an overwhelming contempt for life, a grotesque parody of beauty so morbid it sent shivers down every spine that beheld it.
"Yare… what a perverse taste," Joren muttered under his breath.
In the next instant, a blur of violet surged behind him.
Star Platinum.
Through the Stand's eyes, the world snapped into impossible focus. Distances collapsed. Details exploded into clarity.
The wall—dozens of meters away—suddenly felt within arm's reach.
He could see every "brushstroke."
Because there were no brushstrokes.
Some areas were violent splatters—thrown, not painted. Others bore the smeared imprint of fingers dragging through wet blood. And along the sharp curves of the horns, fine, deliberate lines traced a path too controlled for chaos.
Fabric.
The killer had used a blood-soaked cloth like a brush—pressing, dragging, shaping the mask's final contours with chilling precision.
Star Platinum's gaze swept lower, dissecting the scene with inhuman acuity.
Multiple blood sources. Different donors. Different stages of coagulation. Different hues—some bright and fresh, others dull with oxidation.
To Star Platinum, it wasn't just a mural.
It was a palette.
A palette of evil, mixed with stolen lives.
His vision locked onto the apex of the devil's horns—the final stroke, the killer's signature.
Magnified to its limit, Joren saw it: embedded in the drying scab of blood, nearly invisible, was a particle no larger than 0.01 millimeters.
Not organic. Not from the wall. Not from this neighborhood.
An unnatural polymer.
Perhaps from a custom raincoat. Perhaps from a specialized tool.
In that moment of artistic climax—when the killer leaned in to complete his masterpiece—he'd moved too eagerly. A single fiber shed. A microscopic flaw.
The only trace.
Joren lifted his head. His eyes cut through the night, locking onto the rooftop of the abandoned apartment building across the street.
The perfect vantage point.
The place where the artist stood to admire his work.
…
Joren moved like a phantom.
In three breaths, he stood atop that very roof.
Deserted. Wind stirred dust. Pigeons scattered in alarm.
No footprints. No fingerprints on the rusted railing.
The killer had been meticulous—erased all conventional evidence.
But some traces couldn't be scrubbed away.
Joren closed his eyes.
Dust. Rust. Pigeon droppings.
And beneath it all—faint, almost gone—a lingering scent.
Burning willow charcoal.
Not ordinary charcoal. The expensive kind, specially processed for professional sketching.
The killer hadn't just watched.
He'd recorded.
Standing right here, sketchbook in hand, charcoal pencil gliding over paper as he captured his bloody symphony.
Or perhaps he simply stood in silence, savoring the horror unfolding below—like a conductor listening to the final note of his opus, or a playwright relishing the audience's screams.
A narcissist. An artist who craved more than creation.
He needed an audience.
A stage.
Yare, yare…
Psychological profile complete.
This kind of killer didn't just strike—he performed. And performers always return to their best seat.
Just then—his phone vibrated.
Joren pulled it out. The screen read: Matt Murdock.
He answered.
"Joren! St. Agatha Hospital—Hell's Kitchen West—massive power outage five minutes ago!" Matt's voice was low but urgent. "It's not a grid failure. The whole block went dark. Only the ICU's running on backup, and barely. It's chaos!"
A hospital.
A symbol of life. Of hope.
The perfect counterpoint to a slaughterhouse of death.
No stage could be more poetic.
The artist was preparing his second act.
"I understand," Joren said, voice eerily calm.
"What? What do you know?" Matt pressed. "Where are you? Don't go in alone—that madman could be inside!"
"No," Joren replied.
He hung up.
His eyes turned west—toward St. Agatha.
The killer wasn't in the hospital.
He'd never bury himself in the mess he created. That wasn't the mark of an appreciator.
He'd be where he always was:
High. Silent. Wa
tching.
Joren melted into the twilight—not toward the chaos, but toward the tallest commercial building directly opposite the hospital.
Its rooftop was empty.
But it wouldn't stay that way for long.
It was already reserved.
The killer's next VIP seat.
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