Chapter: The Scars of Survival
The sky bled pale light over Guretsutō Island, not so much dawn as a weak hemorrhage of color into a world that had forgotten what warmth was. The snow had ceased, but the cold hadn't. It clawed through the bones, bit into flesh, and stung like punishment for surviving the night.
Ren moved alone through the remains of the purge.
He didn't walk like a victor. He walked like a ghost, or perhaps something worse—something that refused to die when it should've. His boots crunched through snow half-red, half-mud, thick with bodies and entrails twisted into the trees. Crows cawed, already feasting. Vultures circled, sensing more death to come.
The stench was indescribable.
Rot and gunpowder. Open guts, shit, blood turned sour. Burned flesh. You couldn't escape it—it soaked into the skin, the clothes, the breath. The whole island was a mass grave, and the snow only made the corpses look like statues—frozen in agony, eyes wide, mouths open as if still screaming.
Ren stepped over a body with its spine showing, ribs splintered outward like a broken cage. Nearby, someone had been impaled on a shattered branch, their blood now frozen icicles dangling like ornaments. He didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He just kept moving.
He wasn't searching for enemies.
He was searching for understanding.
Who had made it through? What kind of monsters survived something like this? And what was that thing he saw earlier—that body with the tongue cut out, fingers removed one by one, left neatly on the chest like a sick trophy? That wasn't desperation. That was ritual. That was art.
And it didn't feel random.
It felt like a message.
He stopped when the speaker system crackled again. Mounted speakers hidden in trees, under stones, in metal pylons—it didn't matter where. The voice echoed everywhere.
A voice too cheerful to belong in this landscape.
"Good morning, you beautiful bastards!" the announcer chirped. "And congratulations to the survivors of our little welcome party. The Purge has ended. What a magnificent show! Blood, betrayal, explosive drama—I even saw a guy kill his own brother! You people never disappoint."
Ren exhaled slowly. His breath fogged the air like smoke.
"Now let's get serious. Only the worthy remain. You're not just assassins anymore. You're predators. You're anomalies. You're currency."
Silence fell across the island.
"So here's how we're gonna play it from now on. Introducing… the Live Bounty System!"
There was a sharp ping—followed by the whine of static.
Old CRT monitors—half-buried in dust and sand, bolted to rusting poles, or rigged into corners of dead infrastructure—flickered to life.
Some glowed green with monochrome text, others buzzed with faint grayscale video feeds.
An array of clunky, jury-rigged terminals crackled, their antennas twitching with analog signals.
Worn-out wires, some exposed, snaked into the sand like dead veins.
The hum of old hardware filled the air.
Ren stared, eyes wide.
He'd seen the Syndicate pull off crazy things—black market satellites, custom surveillance rigs—but this felt different.
Too coordinated. Too deliberate. Too powerful.
And this wasn't even new tech—it was old, ancient even—just repurposed with surgical precision.
On every screen, every static-filled terminal, a leaderboard began to appear.
White text on black:
Names. Rankings. Kill counts.
Each new death updated the list with a slow, methodical flicker—like someone was typing it in live from a distant control room.
Ren exhaled.
"What the hell is this place…?"
Top 10 Bounties (as of this hour):
#10 - Erika Sannomiya
Former mercenary, defector from French Intelligence. Lethal with chemicals. Known for feeding enemies to her pets.
Bounty: ¥120,000,000
#9 - Mai & Kaede (Team Entry)
Umbra Division specialists. Surgical, cold, and precise. Known to take out entire squads in silence.
Bounty: ¥135,000,000
#8 - Yusuke Hanazawa
Former monk turned killer. Carries no weapons. Doesn't need to.
Bounty: ¥155,000,000
#7 - Kenji
Umbra's loudmouth tank. Highly destructive. Tactical recklessness that somehow works.
Bounty: ¥180,000,000
#6 - Shirahoshi Ume
Yakuza representative. Quiet. Elegant. Beautiful. Utterly ruthless.
Bounty: ¥195,000,000
#5 - Akihiro Takeda (Infamously known as "the black sheep")
Child of the Takeda Clan. Possesses the Inverted Eyes. However he didn't need them to kill over fifty men, a true testament to the power of the Takeda. We are yet to see his true power.
Bounty: ¥220,000,000
#4 - Andrew Maddox
American mercenary. One of the infamous twins of the Maddox family, Master tactician. 100 confirmed kills during The Purge alone.
Bounty: ¥250,000,000
#3 - Ren (Alias: "The silent reaper")
Infamous. Emotionless. The youngest to ever execute a high-rank kill in Syndicate history.
Bounty: ¥280,000,000
#2 - Cole Maddox
Andrew's younger twin. A savant of warfare. Said to have wiped out 40 men in under 4 minutes.
Bounty: ¥300,000,000
#1 - Park Woo
"Death's Emissary." Former Korean military executioner. Blindfolded. No one ever sees him kill, only the aftermath.
Bounty: ¥380,000,000
The island was dead quiet.
"Now, here's how it works!" the voice continued, delighted.
•Kill a target and gain half their bounty.
•Kill someone stronger than you—based on rank or kill count—and you earn a multiplier.
•Your bounty rises based on skill, brutality, tactics, or sheer insanity.
•Top ten at the end of the competition enter the final round.
•If any of the Top Ten die, the next highest fills the slot.
•You want immunity next round? Be in the top five. Want fame? Kill someone higher than you.
"Alliances? Sure. But betrayal gets you a higher bounty. We love betrayal."
The voice paused, then whispered—like someone leaning over your shoulder.
"Kill beautifully. The world's watching."
The monitors blinked off.
Ren stared for a moment, then looked away. Not at the trees. Not at the sky.
At a body impaled through the gut, slumped over a stone altar.
Fingers missing. Tongue severed. Not random. Not tribal. Intentional.
He crouched beside the corpse.
Steam rose from the blood. Not fresh. But not old, either.
"What the fuck…" he muttered under his breath.
Something about this wasn't right. None of the killers he'd seen during the purge worked like this. Not even the psychos. This wasn't just for kills. This was performance. A message. And it was personal.
He stood slowly, hand brushing the hilt of his katana. Eyes scanning.
Had Y followed him to this island?
Or worse—was this part of Y's game all along?
Ren took one step back.
A breath fogged the air behind him that wasn't his.
He spun—but no one was there.
Only the forest. The blood. And the rising sun, which offered no warmth, only light to show how much uglier the world could become.