The King in the Dark.

Chapter 9 - The Vanishing

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It fell in heavy, gray sheets, turning the back alleys into streams of mud and oil. The city felt quieter now, as though the fire had burned not just a warehouse, but a piece of its own heart.

At the edge of Saint Rose Cemetery, under a crooked tree that dripped water like tears, Diego Flinch stood in a soaked black coat, staring at a small wooden box half-buried in the mud. The coffin was too small for truth. It was empty - everyone there knew it.

Only four people stood with him: Luis, Cruz, an old priest whose eyes were too tired to ask questions, and Salgado’s replacement from the port, a man named Ramos who smoked through the service. The priest’s voice trembled through the downpour.

“From dust we came, and to dust we shall return…”

Diego wasn’t listening. His thoughts wandered back to the warehouse, to the blast, to Harold’s voice shouting Go! right before the light swallowed everything. He hadn’t seen any body. He hadn’t found a trace. But the flames had been absolute. The world said Harold was dead. The papers said so. The streets whispered it. Even Luis had accepted it.

But Diego couldn’t.

When the priest finished, Diego knelt and pressed his hand to the lid of the box. Rain dripped from his hair, ran down his face, mixing with the tears he refused to admit.

“You don’t deserve an empty grave,” he whispered. “But it’s the only way to keep them guessing.”

He stood up slowly, jaw clenched, voice low. “From now on, we live for both of us.”

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That night, Diego returned to their old hideout near the canal - a half-collapsed garage tucked beneath an overpass. He stared at the cracked notebook Harold had left behind; the last page was burned at the corner, but the words still read clear:

“The living learn. The dead wait.”

Diego ran his thumb across the words. “Then wait for me, brother,” he murmured.

Outside, thunder rolled. Inside, something else moved - not in the garage, but beneath it, down in the pipes that carried the city’s filth away.

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Deep below, the air was different. Heavy, metallic, thick with rot. The tunnels stretched like veins through the underbelly of the south side - forgotten maintenance shafts turned into hidden roads for rats, smugglers, and ghosts.

Harold moved through the darkness barefoot; one arm pressed against his ribs. Every breath stung. His body was a map of bruises and burns; the fire had kissed his skin with cruel precision. He’d escaped the warehouse through a side drain before the blast fully took him - crawled, half-blind and bleeding, into the sewer system.

He’d been down here for days now, feeding off stolen water and the scraps left behind by the city above.

At times he’d lose himself - memory and pain mixing until his brother’s voice echoed through the dripping tunnels like something alive.

“You’re the face, Diego… keep the name alive…”

He laughed once, a dry, cracked sound that echoed and frightened even him. “Guess you did, brother. Guess you did.”

He pressed on, deeper into the tunnels, until he found an abandoned junction room - walls lined with rusted pipes, the floor slick with old water. There, beneath the dim orange flicker of a single emergency bulb, he collapsed.

When he woke up, his fever broke. His body ached like rusted metal, but his mind was sharp.

He found a piece of charcoal from a burnt plank and began to write on the wall.

Names first. Then symbols. Then routes - escape paths, corners where bribes could work, streets where cops never patrolled.

When he ran out of space, he tore a page from a half-burned ledger he’d pulled from the wreckage and began writing again.

The handwriting was slower now, deliberate.

“La Familia de Fuego. Martinez. Salgado.”

Each name was a wound. Each line, a scar healing into purpose.

He paused, closed his eyes, and felt the anger return - cold this time, not the blinding kind that burned him before.

“They buried a box,” he whispered to the dripping ceiling. “Good. Let them bury a ghost.”

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Days bled into nights without difference. Harold scavenged what he could - water, bandages, a torn coat, an old mirror from a junked locker. He caught glimpses of his reflection sometimes: half his face still smooth, the other marked with the faint shadow of burns that refused to fade. His eyes looked older now, colder.

He practiced speaking again, his voice rasping from the smoke. “You want power?” he muttered to the mirror. “Then you stop being seen.”

He learned to move silently in the tunnels. Learned when to listen, when to wait. The city above him roared and forgot, but Harold was listening - to the whispers of men, to the noise of betrayal that echoed down through the pipes like confessions.

Some nights, he surfaced near the docks, cloaked in shadow, just to watch. He saw Diego walking with the crew, stronger now, his voice carrying authority. He saw them spray new tags across the alleys - Los Reyes del Barrio.

Pride flickered inside him, brief but bright. Then it twisted into resolve.

“You’ll lead them in daylight,” Harold whispered to the night. “I’ll rule in the dark.”

He began collecting things - blueprints from abandoned offices, ledgers from half-burned warehouses, even discarded police reports that floated down the canal. He built a new notebook from scraps and string, stitched by hand, black as the tunnels around him.

Inside, he wrote rules - not for survival this time, but of domination.

“Rule One: Shadows are loyal to no king.”

“Rule Two: Knowledge is the cleanest kill.”

“Rule Three: Never die where they can find you.”

Each line steadied him, rebuilt him.

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Above ground, Diego started visiting the cemetery every week. He brought a small bottle of cheap rum and a flower he couldn’t name. He’d sit by the empty box for hours, talking softly.

“Things are growing,” he said once. “The boys trust me. We’ve got corners, safe houses, even deals coming in. You’d be proud, Harold.”

The wind moved through the trees like a whisper. He smiled bitterly.

“Sometimes I think you’re still here,” he said. “Watching. Laughing at me when I mess up.”

If only he knew how close, he was to the truth.

Down below, Harold was writing. Listening. Building. The tunnels echoed with the scratching of his pencil and the quiet rhythm of dripping water.

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Weeks later, when he finally emerged in full for the first time, the city didn’t recognize him. He wore an old trench coat, a bandana over his mouth, and gloves that hid the scars. He moved like a shadow that had learned to walk upright.

He passed men who had once known him - none looked twice.

At a newsstand, he saw a headline:

“Warehouse Explosion Linked to Gang War - Harold Flinch Presumed Dead.”

He smiled faintly beneath the cloth. “Good,” he whispered. “Let the dead rest.”

He slipped the paper into his coat, disappeared into the rain, and walked back toward the tunnels.

By the time dawn touched the skyline, the myth had begun.

Some said the younger Flinch haunted the docks, burning anyone who crossed Los Reyes. Others said he’d joined the police, that he was hunting them from inside.

But those who’d seen the truth - just a silhouette by the river, a pair of sharp eyes in the dark began calling him something else.

El Escriba.

The Writer.

And in the dark below the city, Harold Flinch smiled for the first time since the fire.

The ghost had found his name.