All Chapters of Concrete Thrones: The Making of a Mafia Boss”: Chapter 81
- Chapter 90
144 chapters
“Ashes That Speak”
1. Silence Before the EchoFor weeks the world stayed still.Screens glowed with Phoenix insignias, city feeds ran clean, and Mara’s network hummed like a flawless machine.Then, one dawn in São Paulo, an operator whispered, “Director… someone breached the west relay.”Mara looked up from the holo-table. “Which cell?”“None of ours. It’s analog. No digital code, no encryption, just a signal burst on shortwave. Old military frequency.”Mara frowned. “Analog? That’s impossible. We decommissioned all analog relays months ago.”Jonah ran diagnostics, eyes wide. “It’s not a hack. It’s a transmission.”They played it back.A voice—crackling, distorted, male—spoke through static:“You cleaned the cities, but ghosts don’t live in cities. You can’t control what doesn’t exist.”Then silence.2. Ash in the AirMara leaned against the console. The message felt colder than any bullet.Jonah murmured, “Someone’s broadcasting from the outskirts—old industrial zones. Maybe an abandoned steel district
The Whispers Beneath the City
The air beneath the ruined city was thick with the smell of damp stone and rusted iron. Jonah’s boots echoed softly against the cracked tunnel floor as his lantern flickered against the walls. Behind him, Nia moved in silence, her eyes darting from shadow to shadow. The world above was chaos—sirens, screams, and the howl of something ancient—but down here, beneath the earth, the true heart of the city pulsed in darkness.They had followed the symbols—the same ones that appeared on the bodies, on the church walls, and in Jonah’s dreams. Each mark led them deeper, spiraling through forgotten rail lines and collapsed catacombs until they reached a heavy iron door marked with a handprint burned into the metal.“This is it,” Jonah said quietly, his voice hoarse.Nia tilted her head. “You’re sure?”He nodded. “I’ve seen it before. In the night I changed.”He pressed his hand against the burned print. The door trembled, groaned, and slowly opened with a grinding roar. Cold air swept through,
The City Beyond the Veil
When Jonah opened his eyes, he thought he’d gone blind.Everything around him was drenched in shadows—thick, living shadows that pulsed with slow breaths, like the lungs of a beast too ancient to name. The air wasn’t cold, but it clung to his skin like damp silk, whispering in languages he could almost understand.He stood, though his body felt wrong—lighter, stretched, not entirely human. His reflection in a shattered pane of obsidian showed a pale figure whose eyes burned faintly gold, the last echo of a man who had once carried faith in his veins and blood on his hands.The city beyond the Veil stretched before him. It was both familiar and broken — Los Angeles reimagined in decay.The skyline twisted into impossible shapes.Buildings leaned like drunken giants, their windows leaking crimson mist.Billboards blinked with faces that mouthed words without sound.And above it all, a cracked moon hung low, its reflection shattered into thousands of hovering shards across the sky.Jonah
The Girl Who Refused to Die
Nia hadn’t slept in three days.Not real sleep, anyway — just shallow breaths and flickering dreams that dissolved the moment she opened her eyes. The city had gone quiet after the inferno. Too quiet. The kind of silence that felt like someone was listening.She crouched on the edge of a collapsed freeway, her hands blackened with soot and blood, watching the smoke drift across what used to be downtown. The wind carried the smell of burned metal and something else — something older, like rain on tombstones.Her radio crackled again. Static. Then a faint voice.“Sector Seven… gone. East rail collapsed. We need med—”Then silence.She turned the knob, jaw tight. It didn’t matter. Nobody was coming. Most of her crew had vanished in the blast that swallowed Enzo’s compound. The rest had gone to ground or turned on each other. Everyone was surviving, but no one was living.Nia’s ribs ached from the last fight. A gash ran along her collarbone, stitched shut with trembling hands and thread f
The River That Dreamed of Blood
The river had stopped flowing weeks ago.It used to carry trade ships, garbage, secrets — the usual veins of a living city. But after the blast that swallowed the central grid, it had turned still, dark, heavy as glass. People said it was poisoned. Some said it was cursed.They were both right.Deep beneath the black surface, far below the bones of the city, something moved. Slow. Silent. Ancient.It didn’t have a shape, not really. Just a memory of one — a shifting mass of thought and hunger that had once been trapped between worlds. For centuries, it had waited in the cold mud, whispering through water and stone, pressing against the edges of its invisible cage.Now, the cage was cracking.When Jonah broke the circle in the undercity, he hadn’t just sealed the Veil — he had weakened it. The explosion of energy that followed didn’t close the gate. It fractured it. The light that swallowed him also bled downward, into the river, into the deep, waking what slept there.The first to fee
Beneath the Rising Tide
The docks smelled of iron and rot. Nia pulled her coat tighter, the wind tugging at her hood, and squinted against the mist rolling off the water. The river wasn’t just a river anymore. It had a presence, like a living thing watching them, breathing beneath the cracked concrete and steel.Jonah moved ahead, lantern in hand, boots splashing silently in puddles that reflected a fractured sky. He glanced back at Nia. “Stay sharp. This isn’t just water anymore. Something’s feeding down there.”Nia nodded, gripping her pistol. She didn’t need to ask what he meant. They had both felt it — the hum in the ground, the ripple underfoot, the whispering in the mist that sounded almost human but wasn’t.Their plan was simple: survey the riverbanks, follow the signs of the Echo’s growth, and figure out how it was spreading before anyone else disappeared. But the city had a way of complicating simple plans.The first sign came as a shimmer on the water — faint, almost like oil catching the light. Jo
Confronting the Rising Tide
The city groaned under the weight of its own ruin.Jonah and Nia stood on the edge of the flooded district, the river now a roiling, black serpent of water and shadow. The mist curled around them, thick enough to cling to skin and clothing, carrying the faint scent of ozone and rot. Every ripple in the water hinted at movement beneath — unseen, but palpably alive.Jonah adjusted the metal disc in his hand, the faint glow casting wavering shadows across the cracked pavement. He could feel it — the Echo — growing stronger. It wasn’t just in the river anymore. It had begun to seep into the city itself. Every broken streetlamp, every shattered window, every stagnant puddle pulsed with its presence.Nia checked the map again, tracing spirals with her finger. “It’s… spreading faster than we thought. Every street along the river’s edge has markings now.”Jonah’s jaw tightened. “It knows we’re coming. It’s preparing.”Their plan was desperate, but it was all they had: force the Echo to concen
The First Vessel
The city was quiet — too quiet.Nia and Jonah had returned to their safehouse, soaked and bruised, muscles screaming from the river confrontation. They’d held the Echo at bay, but the victory felt fragile. Every flicker of shadow, every whisper in the cracked walls reminded them that the river wasn’t just water anymore.Jonah leaned against the table, running a hand through his damp hair. “It learned tonight. It’s patient. It’ll wait for the right moment.”Nia nodded, checking her pistol. “Or it’ll take one of us.”Neither had to wait long.The first signs appeared as subtle changes — small, almost unnoticeable at first. A street vendor who hadn’t been seen for days appeared at a corner, smiling too wide, eyes glinting strangely. Children laughed in empty alleys, voices not their own. And then came the screaming.It started on the west side of the city. A man stumbled out of a collapsed building, eyes wide and frantic. His skin glistened in the dim streetlights, wet and unnatural. Jon
Hunting Shadows
The city had changed. Not just from the flood and the mist, but from the presence that now pulsed beneath its streets, in its puddles, in the reflections of broken windows. Jonah and Nia moved through it cautiously, their boots splashing on wet asphalt, eyes scanning every corner, every shadow. The Echo was no longer confined to the river — it had learned how to spread, and every person was a potential host.Their safehouse smelled of damp concrete and stale coffee. Maps were spread across the table, covered in marks, spirals, and annotations. Candles flickered, casting elongated shadows that danced like predators on the walls. Nia tapped her finger along the map.“West district,” she said. “Another disappearance last night. And reports of strange shadows near the old industrial complex.”Jonah leaned over the map, tracing the streets with a gloved finger. “It’s moving fast. We have to anticipate it, predict where it’ll strike next. But the city itself is against us. Every alley, ever
The Siege of Shadows
The city woke to a new kind of terror.Jonah and Nia had thought the Echo would be cautious after the previous night’s losses, but they had underestimated its cunning. By dawn, the streets were alive — not with people, but with the vessels it had claimed. Shadows moved with a purpose, figures that were once human now hollow, glinting faint gold in their eyes, carrying the river’s will into the city.Nia crouched on a rooftop, scanning the streets below. Her pistol was ready, but she knew bullets were only distractions. The Echo didn’t need them to fight. It needed fear. And the city was full of it.Jonah joined her, disc in hand, glowing faintly as it resonated with the Echo’s presence. “It’s not just taking people anymore,” he said quietly. “It’s coordinating them. It’s using them to control the city.”Nia’s eyes narrowed. “A siege. That’s what this is. Streets, buildings… it’s turning the city into a cage.”Exactly. And now the cage was closing.They picked a route, moving quickly f