—
Late October. The air had turned crisp, the kind that stung your lungs a little when you breathed too deep. Trees stood half-naked along the sidewalks, shedding red and gold like peeling paint. The sky stretched pale and cloudless over rooftops that didn't seem to move.
It wasn't quiet, not exactly. The city never was. But the usual rhythm—cars, shouting, horns—had faded into the background, like someone turned the volume down on the world.
Inside the apartment, the bathroom was quiet. The tile was clean, the lighting soft. The mirror was fogged at the edges, not from steam, but from time. The towel was folded neatly. The sink hadn't dripped in weeks.
The only thing out of place was the blood.
It ran along the grout in thin red lines, pooling quietly in the corners where the tile met the base of the tub. His hand dangled over the edge, wrist slack, fingers pale. The razor blade lay where it had dropped—clean, efficient.
The water had gone cold. The surface was pink.
His eyes were open. Unblinking. His mouth slightly parted, as if caught mid-sigh.
No breath. No twitch. No pulse.
He was dead.
Then—he gasped.
His body convulsed upward, violently, like something yanked him from beneath the surface. Water splashed over the edge of the tub, mixing with the blood already drying on the floor. He choked, inhaling like he'd never breathed before, hands scrabbling for the rim, for the wall, for anything.
—---
Chapter 1: Don't Fear The Reaper
The fall passed. The streets felt colder now grief still laid on the city like the blanket of wet snow covering it now. Winter had settled in—quiet, biting, and gray. A man walked moonlit streets without knowing where he was going. His hoodie clung to him, damp from the wet snow falling, the wind cutting sharper than it had a few short weeks ago.
Then a scream tore through the stillness.
The man, in an outfit of all black, heard it just as clearly as all the others around, in their apartment, on the street. Except he didn't think. He moved.
The alley was narrow and dark, a sliver between buildings. Two men. One woman.
She was pinned to the wall, arms raised, eyes wide with panic. One man had a knife. The other turned toward the man—Cal, face shifting from surprise to amusement.
"This doesn't concern you," the bigger one said, stepping forward.
"It does now," Cal replied, steady but low.
The man charged.
Cal swung too early, his fist missing and smashing into the brick wall behind him. Bone cracked. His hand went numb with pain. He barely had time to curse before the man's fist collided with his side, knocking the breath from his lungs.
Cal stumbled, then drove his shoulder into the man's ribs. It was enough to stagger him. A second man lunged with the knife. The blade caught Cal across the side. He shouted, twisted, and kicked low—snapping the man's knee sideways. He dropped with a scream.
Cal grabbed him and slammed his head into the ground. Twice. The knife skittered across the concrete.
The first thug recovered and roared, charging again.
Cal met him with a wild uppercut—his already broken hand. Pain lit up his arm like fire. Two fingers snapped on impact. But the man dropped instantly, spine slamming into the alley wall before crumpling to the ground.
Silence.
Cal stood there, breathing hard. Blood dripped down his side. His hand shook, fingers mangled and bent the wrong way. They were already trying to knit back together—slowly, bone clicking beneath skin.
He turned to the woman. "Are you—" he started, but she was already gone, sprinting down the alley and disappearing into the dark.
He leaned against the wall, cold brick steadying his weight. His chest rose and fell in shallow gasps.
He looked down at his hands.
The healing was happening. He could feel it—muscles drawing taut, skin closing, bones scraping into place. The pain was still sharp, but duller than it should have been. Like his body had decided it wasn't worth bothering him with it for long.
And yet… he felt nothing.
Why did his body keep going when it should've stopped a long time ago?
He thought this would feel right. Noble, maybe. Like doing the right thing would mean something. But all he felt was a dull ache in his ribs, blood on his clothes, and the cold sinking in deeper than it should.
The city disgusted him. The filth. The apathy. The way people vanished when they weren't useful anymore. He thought helping someone would change that—fix that.
It didn't.
The woman ran without looking back. No thank you. No questions. Just escape.
He didn't blame her.
Cal closed his eyes and exhaled slowly through his nose. His hand was still broken. His side still bled. But he was already recovering. Already standing.
And he didn't know what to do with that.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed. It grew louder. Closer.
Cal pushed off the wall, stepped over the bodies, and vanished back into the cold.
---
The days blurred into nights, and the snow eventually gave way to the biting cold of a New York winter. Cal moved through the streets like a shadow, slipping from one alley to the next, always searching, always listening. The city was alive with the sound of it—the desperate cries, the clatter of footsteps as people fled into the dark, the muffled struggles behind closed doors. New York was a city that never slept, but beneath its endless hum was something else: fear.
He had made his choice that night in the alley, and there was no going back.
The station was nearly deserted, the flickering lights casting long shadows over the stairwell. Cal had been following the man for blocks, watching him move closer and closer to the lone woman ahead of him. The attack came quickly, the man lunging forward with a knife in hand, but Cal was quicker.
He didn't hold back this time. The man hit the concrete wall hard, his knife clattering down the steps. The few onlookers scattered before Cal could even turn to them. Word had begun to spread—rumors of a man who couldn't be killed, who bled but never stayed down.
The water's edge was always quiet at night, the waves lapping against the docks while the city lights flickered in the distance. Cal heard the sound of glass shattering before he saw the figures—a group of men surrounding a car, one of them pointing a gun at the driver as the others pried open the doors. Cal's breath fogged the air as he crouched behind a shipping container, watching.
This time, it wasn't just fists or blades. The gunman saw Cal coming, and the gun went off, the crack echoing over the water. The bullet ripped through Cal's shoulder, the force of it spinning him sideways into the side of the container. Pain flared, but it was muted, distant. He stood back up, watched the shocked expressions on their faces, and charged forward.
The men scattered, leaving the driver slumped in his seat, wide-eyed and speechless. The wound was already closing, the pain fading to a dull throb.
Whispers continued on the streets, in the shadowed alleys where the city's pulse ran darkest. From Harlem to Hell's Kitchen, the rumors traveled faster than the wind. Stories of an "unkillable man" began to surface—someone who appeared from nowhere, took beatings and bullets, but always got back up.
"He's like… a ghost or something," a street vendor would say, shaking his head as he packed up his cart for the night. "Saw him myself. Dude took a knife in the gut, didn't even flinch."
In the Bronx, kids gathered on the stoops, swapping stories they'd heard from older brothers or cousins. "They say he can't die," one would whisper, eyes wide. "Like some kinda superhero. I heard he broke some guy's arm, and the guy's in a coma now."
In the dark underworld of the city, the rumors carried a different weight. Criminals started looking over their shoulders, wary of alleys they once owned. A name started floating among them—"The Undead Man." It was spoken with unease, as if even saying it too loud might summon him.
To the media, he was a mystery. A handful of grainy security footage clips showed a figure in a hooded jacket, moving in and out of shadows, never staying long enough for a clear shot. But there were enough incidents that people started connecting the dots—this wasn't just coincidence. Someone was out there, someone who could take a bullet and walk away.
Cal could feel it, too. Each time he went out, the fear of failure lessened. His body was changing, adapting, growing stronger. The wounds healed quicker now, sometimes before he could even feel the full extent of the pain. He wasn't invincible—not yet—but he was getting closer.
The nights stretched on, each one bringing a new challenge, a new reason to push himself further. There was no sense of purpose yet, not really. It was more instinct than anything else, the need to fix what he saw was broken, to stop the suffering where he could.
But with each fight, each encounter, the weight of it all pressed down harder. He wasn't sleeping well, if at all. And the city, vast and full of life, still felt empty. The rumors swirled around him like the snow that had since melted away, but Cal still wondered… Was this enough? Could it ever be enough?
Two months had passed since that first night in the alley. The city had changed, but so had he. There were no costumes, no headlines declaring him a hero. Just the quiet, persistent rumors that flowed through the streets like blood through veins. And as he stood once more on a rooftop overlooking the city, Cal felt the weight of it all settling on his shoulders.
He was stronger now. Faster. The city was beginning to know his name, even if he didn't know it himself yet.