The world bled that night.
Not metaphorically — not in whispers of politics or silent betrayals behind gilded doors — but in rivers of hot, metallic blood, overflowing from gutters, staining marble, seeping into soil like the return of an ancient plague.
Arthur's shadow stretched across continents.
London drowned in rain and screams.
Fog rolled over the Thames, thick as concrete, swallowing streetlamps whole. The aristocracy's safe little rituals shattered as the mansion atop Kensington Hill burned from the inside out — its ivy-draped walls scorched black, its silk-draped halls littered with corpses of men who believed their ancient bloodlines untouchable.
Arthur stood among the flames, his coat heavy with rain and soot, watching as the eldest of House Langston writhed on the marble floor — throat torn, eyes bulging, the last arrogant breath gurgling in his lungs.
Centuries ago, they whispered his name in fear.
They would again.
The storm moved with him.
Across oceans, through tangled cityscapes, across mountains veined with snow and blood.
In Moscow, beneath the iron teeth of winter, the Zaitsev Syndicate fell — their bulletproof towers cracked like brittle bones, their underground vaults breached not by mercenaries, but by something colder, older.
The guards never saw him coming.
Crimson painted the snow in spirals, the silence broken only by the whimpering pleas of the surviving oligarchs, their designer suits drenched in the blood of their guards, their limbs trembling like children beneath his unflinching gaze.
Arthur didn't need to roar.
The silence was enough. His eyes — those ancient, predatory shards of ice — told them the truth:
You were never the hunters.
The Alps wept next.
Hidden in mountain fortresses carved into stone, where the Ancients retreated like cowards behind centuries of wealth and technology, they thought distance insulated them.
It didn't.
Arthur scaled the cliffs alone, the storm chasing him like a feral beast, thunder splitting the sky, lightning tracing his silhouette across jagged peaks.
Inside, the council of Elders — skin pale as porcelain, veins glowing faint with borrowed lifespans — laughed over chalices of genetically enhanced blood.
Until the power died.
Until the walls cracked.
Until the screams started.
Arthur tore through the compound like a god of retribution draped in rain and wrath, ancient blades singing through the air, throats opening like ripe fruit, walls streaked with arterial spray.
No words exchanged.
No mercy offered.
Only inevitability — heavy as stone, sharp as the monster they'd forgotten slumbered beneath civilization.
In Tokyo, neon drowned in blood.
The Yurei-Kai, ghost syndicate of the East, worshipped shadows — manipulating politicians, harvesting lives like data, hidden behind digital smoke and mirrored skyscrapers.
Arthur walked through their holograms as if they were fog.
Their augmented assassins, enhanced reflexes and ceramic blades humming with nanotech, never stood a chance.
In an alley behind the Shibuya Exchange, beneath flickering kanji signs and the hum of vending machines, they found their best warriors folded like broken dolls — spines twisted, eyes wide with primordial terror.
Arthur left a message carved into the concrete with a blade older than their empire.
The Hunt has begun.
New York simmered last.
Midnight blanketed the skyline — glass spires stabbing at the clouds, Wall Street humming with corrupt ambition, penthouses filled with champagne and whispered conspiracies.
They gathered at the top — CEOs, crime lords, the architects of suffering wrapped in designer linen and digital firewalls.
Arthur arrived drenched in rain, coat trailing shadows, eyes colder than skyscraper glass.
The building's security melted before him — cameras scrambled, biometric locks short-circuited, elite bodyguards crumpled beneath his fists like paper.
On the 77th floor, he stood before them.
The puppeteers. The cowards. The scavengers feeding on the rot of a world they thought they owned.
They recognized him too late.
Arthur.
A name that shouldn't exist — an erasure from every system, every databank, every myth rewritten by trembling hands.
Yet here he stood.
Real. Brutal. Unforgiving.
"You've built this tower on corpses," Arthur whispered, voice dragging like chains across marble. "But you've forgotten whose bones came first."
Panic replaced arrogance.
Weapons drawn, security flooding in — futile.
Arthur moved with predatory grace, precise as inevitability itself.
Glass shattered. Bones broke. The floor slicked with crimson.
No negotiations.
No survivors undeserving.
His fists rewrote their power.
His boots echoed through the atrium, over shattered illusions, across floors where even the rain outside sounded like applause for the carnage within.
And as dawn crawled across the bloodstained horizon, the world awoke to whispers resurrected.
The Monster had returned.
Arthur — the Huntmaster of forgotten epochs, the ghost beneath their fragile empires, the nightmare buried too long beneath silicon dreams — was awake.
And this time, no one was beyond his reach.
The room where Arthur's children gathered was an oasis of shadow in the heart of a city waking up to the harsh sun. Thick velvet drapes shut out the daylight, leaving the air cool and heavy with the scent of aged wood and burning candles. Outside, the streets of New York were alive with the mundane noise of morning — honking cars, distant sirens, and the persistent hum of life. But here, in this darkened sanctum, time bent around the ancient figures seated at the long table.
Arthur's face appeared on the wide screen before them, sharp and tired, framed by the pale glow of a dozen flickering candles behind him. His eyes, those deep wells of blood and power, scanned the faces of the Anciões and old servants connected to the call. Some faces were obscured by digital noise, others clear and hard as granite.
His voice came slow, deliberate, filled with the weight of the night's violence. "Today, I cried blood for those I call mine," he said, each word like a blade slicing through the silence. "I cleaned the house. I do not want to see this blood spilled again. Not like this."
Selena's image flickered on the left of the screen. Her sharp features betrayed impatience, but beneath that, a flicker of respect lingered. "You speak of cleaning, Arthur, but you do not see the webs woven beneath your feet. I hate the Anciões—yes. But some of them, older than even I, have held the line."
Arthur's eyes darkened, his tone hardening. "Selena, cease your scheming behind my back. You may dislike the Anciões, but you will respect the ones who remain. They are the most loyal—never once have they betrayed me, nor the legacy I bear."
Daniel, Arthur's son, younger and restless, leaned closer to the screen, his voice defiant yet tinged with the harsh lessons of centuries. "Father, I'm not the shadow you want me to be. I am what I am—neither angel nor demon, but something else. I know I'm bad, but I won't spill innocent blood. That's our law. Your law."
Arthur's rare laugh was low and rough, like gravel rolling down a stone slope. "Daniel, you are what you are. But remember this—innocent blood is forbidden. It always has been. That is my law. And it will remain so."
Then, Marcus—newly bound to Arthur's blood, yet blessed with the rare gift to walk beneath the sun without burning—appeared. His youthful face held a fierce pride. "Father, as one who walks in the light now, I accept this blessing and the burden. I will uphold the new progress."
Arthur nodded solemnly, his gaze returning to the many faces on the screen—Anciões and ancient friends who were more than servants; they were his bloodline's shield and sword. "You are not mere servants. Your ancestors swore loyalty to me. Some sacrificed their very lives to keep my secrets safe. You are the ones I cherish most."
The room seemed to breathe with the gravity of his words. "Take what the dead have left behind," Arthur commanded, voice cold as the marble beneath their feet. "Their riches, their holdings—divide them among yourselves. I seek not more wealth. I demand loyalty."
His eyes lingered on each shadowed face, each flickering visage on the screen. "Tonight, I ran across the world. They remember me now—the true monster they thought dead or gone. They see my strength, the fury many Anciões had forgotten."
Outside, the sun climbed higher, but the sanctum remained shrouded in shadow, a fortress of old power amid a new dawn.
When the call ended, the children and loyal families gathered closer. Arthur's voice softened as he summoned them—his closest confidants, the blood-bound families who had sworn eternal loyalty.
Fewer than ten remained from hundreds. The rest were corpses strewn across continents, victims of the purge that only he could orchestrate.
They looked at one another in the dim candlelight, their expressions a mixture of relief, exhaustion, and steel. The world had shifted. A new era had begun.
Arthur's whispered vow was a thunderclap in the quiet room: "We are the last. We are the future. And those who survive must prove their loyalty, or be swept away like dust."
The silence that followed was as thick and suffocating as the night itself—a night where monsters roamed free and kings were forged in blood.