GISH

There is a heat rising.

Not the kind of heat that warms, the kind that suffocates. The kind of heat that clings like guilt and dread—burning, choking, relentless. It spills from the Los Angeles sunset, soaking the hillside in amber flame. It curls off the cracked earth, shimmers on the littered trash, hangs in the reeking metallic air. The palm-tree covered city below drowns in noise—sirens, static, shouting.

Scorched grass dance in the wind with avid thirst as heat boils from the blood trickling down a young man’s forehead. It sticks to the grime on his tan skin, glistening in sweat and glazed in despair.

It burns in his ears and chest.

Jaxon Salamanca is on his knees.

Exhausted. Injured. Broken.

The dirt beneath him is bone-dry, cracked like forgotten pavement. The seared, brown grass recoils from the weight he bears on his shoulders that forces them to hang slack. Above him, blurred through the haze of blood and sin, the Hollywood sign watches overhead like a god that’s already cast it’s judgement upon him.

As dirt and scum stick to the blood that trails down Jaxon’s face, his vision is obscured with a deep red mist. Through a shard of glass from a broken bottle nearby, he sees himself—barely.

His thick black hair is matted, clumped with muck and crimson. His amber eyes catch the fading kiss of daylight—burning low, like embers in buried ash.

His reflection fractures when a boot comes down on the glass shard and shadows loom over him. Jaxon looks up. He can hardly make out their faces. Not that it would matter to him anyway. To him, they’re just thugs—nothing more. They stand over Jax, blotting out the light—their darkened silhouettes surrounding their poor quarry like a pack of hungry hyenas wanting to waste time no more.

And so, they begin their assault.

A sudden flash of heat erupts from the side of Jaxon's face as a heavyset brute strikes the defenseless, young man. Another vulture sends their knee crashing into Jaxon’s sternum, driving the air from his body out of his mouth—a spray of blood as its company.

Collapsing forward, a silver chain swings limply around Jaxon’s neck. The centerpiece, a ring that belonged to his mother—her cold, dead hands being the last thing to hold it. A reminder of the past—a noose made of haunting memories.

He’s been battered for hours. He’s been tortured for years. He’s been suffering forever.

Jaxon picks his head up while his breath shudders in his chest. Every breath is a blade. Every inhale, a reminder. It clouds his mind and his thoughts spill out of his ears uncontrollably—questioning himself, his attackers and the world.

How did it come to this? Why did it have to happen to us? Should I have just let it go?

No answers. Only consequences.

The beating continues and as fists and footfalls rain down on Jaxon, in his heart, he believes he did the right thing. But belief doesn’t matter—not now. Maybe, not ever.

It’s just not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong—WE didn’t do anything wrong.

As the bright, melting hues of the sky turn cold—headlights cut through the growing dark.

The roar of a tuned muscle car breaks up Jaxon’s continuous beating. With dust kicking up from behind, it comes to a grinding halt. Headlights from the car blind Jaxon as the men surrounding him break apart as they see the passenger door slowly open like a coffin lid.

A savior? No. Jaxon knows better.

A mountain of a man steps into the glow—muscles carved from stone, tattoos crawling up every inch of exposed skin. Symbols. Numbers. Words. Jaxon never entirely knew what they meant, even after seeing them for so long. What he does know is the fear they carry—the weight of the approaching man’s creed and values.

Joselito Sandoval—the man who turned Jaxon’s life into collateral.

Reflections of light bounce off of the towering man’s bare head as he approaches Jaxon—the soft gravel crunching and twisting from his every step.

Smoke escapes Joselito’s mouth as he exhales, removing a cigarette from his lips. “You really fucked up this times, homes,” Joselito drawls, his voice slurred with venom and soot.

"I let a lot of your bullshit slide in the past because you’re still young as fuck. I saw something in you and I really thought you’d learn eventually.”

He kneels—close enough that Jax can smell the cologne failing to cover the scent of sweat, cigarettes, and old blood. “But you really broke my heart this time, Jax. You really did.”

Joselito scans Jaxon up and down for a moment, takes a hit from the burning stick of poison—then exhales a bitter, stinging cloud into Jaxon’s face.

“I went through the same shit, homes. I was Broken. I was Hungry. I was Disposable,” ash flicks off of Joselito’s cigarette as he uses it to point at Jaxon. “Just like you.”

Like a catcher’s mitt, Joselito lifts his hand and rests it on Jaxon’s shoulder. “I had people that saved me from that shit. I wanted to do that for you. I really did, homes.”

He leans in and pulls Jaxons’s face close to his. With a sizzle, curling smoke rises under the tortured boy’s jaw—Joselito puts out the dying embers of his cigarette on Jaxon’s neck.

“I brought you in—let you wear our colors, let you eat at my table. I gave you a home and people to call your family,” Joselito growls as he tightens the grip on Jaxon’s shoulder. “I saved you from the streets, so you can run the streets.”

“But you still decided to snake us.”

Joselito pulls back—his face expressionless, eyes cold with no remorse. “You know what I learned early? What I value most?”

A deathly stare. A flash of bladed steel. A forceful thrust.

“Loyalty.”

Pain. White-hot. Growing.

Jaxon lets out a whimpering gasp that spills into a wheeze—his breath being taken as the knife that’s plunged into his abdomen twists from Joselito’s control. Caught between a gurgling whine and incomprehension, Jaxon’s knees buckle and his world turns sideways, along with his vision—distant city lights shimmering like tears not yet cried.

Jaxon was never loyal to Joselito. Everybody that mattered was long gone, so Jaxon’s loyalty went into the one thing he wanted—retribution.

As the defeated, Jaxon’s vision blurs into the dirt and is covered by a growing fog—the voice of a little boy breaks through.

“That’s how it ends?” a curious voice asks.

“No. Because the hero always beats the bad guys,” explains another voice—a voice so soothing that the intense heat around Jaxon fades.

A slender woman with flowing, black hair next to an inquisitive little boy with ears too big for his head—Jaxon’s mother, Alona and Noah, his younger brother.

A crash of thunder and flash of lightning sends Noah jumping. He throws himself at his older brother. “Don’t worry, dude. The monsters can’t get us if we stay close,” Jaxon tells Noah with a brave smile.

The small room they are in is dark and shabby. A small bed, a dresser and a window that showed the night sky blanketed by the heavy showers of rain. Water droplets race on the window-glass—a warm reflection of the family shudders.

Alona gets close to her sons, bringing a candle in her hands to help light up their faces. “It’s okay, anak,” she says to Noah, her voice soothing like the washing rain. Looking up at Jaxon, she gives him a smile. “Kuya will protect you from the monsters. But don’t worry, Mama will make sure to do everything to protect you. Both of you.”

She did—she gave all she could.

But in an unforgiving world, Jaxon’s mother was saddled with a harsh fate. With no one to help support her and the two young sons she loved, a debt, disguised as blessing, came to their lives. A parasitic predator disguised as a friendly face—Joselito Sandoval.

Joselito’s teeth sank into the lives of the Salamancas like rabid fangs. His sick game came in the form of cash, easy words and late-night visits. Alona never asked much. Just time and breathing room—some help. But nothing ever came without cost. She paid back her debt with what she could.

Her dignity. Her body. Her silence.

Jaxon knew, he figured it out. His mother’s lies grew and her nights stretched longer. He saw it in Alona’s eyes. In the way her hands shook when Joselito was around—the way she flinched when his hands touched her.

A line was drawn—crossed.

Confronted by her eldest son, Alona couldn’t lie any longer. It was no way to protect her boys from the monsters, when it was her that brought the monsters in.

The day came that the lies stopped.

That was the day Noah went missing. That was the day Jaxon found his mother at home as the centerpiece of their living room—hanging from a rope.

“You done dreaming, homes?” Joselito’s voice yanks Jaxon back to reality.

Jaxon’s ears are pounding from his heart racing—not with fear but a growing heat—a growing hatred. “You… took everything… from me…”

“Are you talking about your mom?” Joselito asks, perplexed. A smiling breath escapes him. “She asked me for help and she paid me back with the only thing she was good for. She was just a hole I filled—a body. You’re blaming me for her?”

“Nah. She didn’t like what she saw in the mirror. A disgrace in front of her kids—she did you a favor.”

Joselito rises and pulls Jaxon’s hoodie over his head. “And your brother? That was just debt that needed collecting,” he further explains as he pulls something out from the back of his waistband.

Cold steel is drawn. A pistol—sleek, black, inevitable.

Joselito raises the gun slowly, methodically, placing the muzzle against the flat of Jaxon’s forehead. With his head bowed, vision obscured by his hood, Jaxon anticipates the kiss of death in the steel—chilling, unforgiving.

His breath is caught in his throat.

Not out of fear. But out of sorrow.

The end of Jaxon’s story, written in ash and broken promises.

Ma, Noah… I should’ve been better. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve fought harder.

The wind stills—the world holding its breath.

“Such a tragedy, Jax. You had potential,” Joselito whispers as he pulls back the hammer of the gun. “But don’t worry. It’ll be it quick.”

His finger tightens on the trigger.

Click.

See you soon Ma.

Click.

I love you, Noah.

Nothing.

The gunshot never comes.

Instead, the wet sound of flesh tearing rips into Jaxon’s ears—the crunching sound of bone breaking apart like splintering wood follow through like an echo. Joselito’s mouth releases a staggered sound of choking as red ichor spills out.

Jaxon looks up to see the growing horror before him.

Joselito has been pierced from behind.

Not by a blade or bullet.

A claw—impaled deep through his chest.

Curved like the reaper’s scythe—the claw is barbed, pitch black and is jutting from his sternum like a jagged altar spike.

Joselito’s eyes go wide. He tries to speak, to curse, to say something. But blood fills his mouth and all that comes out is a bubbling rasp. Joselito is hoisted into the air by a creature veiled in shadow as his body twitches uncontrollably. The sound of tearing muscle and tendon paints a ghastly look on Jaxon’s face as he sees a clawed hand grab hold of Joselito’s skull. Jaxon’s tormentor becomes no more—his head, ripped from his body.

Joselito is released—crumpling to the floor with a heavy thud.

Motionless. Lifeless. Headless.

Jaxon’s ears begin to ring as he stares into Joselito’s glazed over eyes. Lips parted, eyes frozen wide in confusion—a frightened gasp being the final, perpetual look on Joselito’s face.

Then comes the screams—shrill and inhuman.

They did not come from Jax. Not from Joselito’s men.

But from Them.

In the cover of night, they sit perched atop the Hollywood sign above. They spill forth—gaunt, winged monstrosities, twisting through the air with unnatural grace. Skin stretched thin over skeletal frames, sinew glistening like wet leather. Their limbs bend in ways no human’s should—elbows spiked with barbed protrusions, jagged as thorned bones.

Their sunken faces are a nightmare's dream—eyeless sockets that still see, nostrils that flare like melted slits of wax, mouths unhinged and wide like a serpent.

The monstrosities unleash a cry that pierces the air like razors—cutting into Jaxon's ears.

They descend on Joselito's men—ripping, clawing, shredding. A disjointed melody of screams, human and inhuman, pierce through the night air like a cursed choir.

One man jerks backward as a hooked limb punches clean through his chest—his spine snapping midair before his body thuds into the dirt like discarded meat.

Gunshots begin to fire wildly into the shadowy night, the wind whistling from every bullet that misses.

A second creature slithers behind another thug—jaw distending, fangs flashing. The night creature bites into the man’s shoulder, tearing muscle and bone as he is dragged screaming into the dark.

A fleeing man uses the erupting chaos but stumbles in terror—tripping, catching Joselito’s body and falling on Jaxon. It pushes the air from his lungs and drives the knife in his belly deeper from the weight.

Overhead, one of the beasts spins towards Jaxon and the thug. Its tail whips like a scorpion’s. A harpoon-tip gleams at the end, hunting down its next target.

Jaxon struggles against the man on top of him, but the larger brute throws an elbow straight into the flat of Jaxon’s brow—ripping into his skin and spattering blood onto the dirt. Breath continues to escape him. Struggling is useless—the end is inevitable. The world has found one more way to crush him.

Jaxon stops struggling. He closes his eyes.

Not with peace. But surrender.

Let it end.

But once again, it doesn’t.

The weight lifts, air returns—an impaled man slumps beside Jaxon, tail driven through his chest.

Slowly, Jaxon peels himself up, blood painting his hands. His breaths come ragged—air pushing through his lungs like shards of glass on thin paper. He looks upon a horrific sight—mutilated bodies being carried up and out by the winged monsters. Blood flowing down like thick rainfall that puddles into the ground.

Jaxon trembles and takes an instinctive step back. One by one, the creatures turn their heads toward him—blackened eyes like obsidian fixed on him alone.

No one is coming to save Jaxon. No one ever does.

But there it is again—that growing, burning feeling.

Jaxon's vision swims. The pain from his wound morphs into something deeper, older—like fire clawing up from the depths of his soul. That burning feeling, no longer just a rising heat.

It is rage. It is hatred. It is bloodlust.

The knife pulses, demanding to be released. Jaxon is compelled to obey. He grips the handle with bloodied hands and pulls it free—not with fear, but with unbound fury begging to be set free.

Pouring out like molten hate, fire explodes from the wound, igniting the blade in Jax's hands. The knife twists and warps mid-air—stretching, snarling, becoming something terrible and chaotic.

A blazing sword—an infernal blade forged of flame and malice. The heat from it sears the air. Arcs of lightning snap and shoot across Jaxon's arm and runic symbols flash, lighting up across his skin. His once amber eyes now gleam a sanguine red.

Jaxon does not cry out. He does not flinch.

The raging sword does not feel hot from Jaxon holding it but something tells him that it will burn—it will burn them all. He looks out towards the direction of the monsters in flight, not at them, but through them.

No longer focused on the pain in his stomach, his mind wanders.

Jaxon sees his mother. Face pale, lips blue—dangling, lifeless in the middle of a room. Her empty eyes flash into focus for a moment before visions of her fade—fading to his brother, Noah.

A gentle smile. Remorseful. Anguished.

People Jaxon cared about, taken away all because of the influence of one man—a man that now lays dead, soaking the arid dirt with his filthy blood.

Everything was his fault. All of it.

The monsters shriek as one, but they hesitate to act. They feel it too—the fever-pitch coming to a boil.

The wound in his stomach seals shut with the hiss of burning flesh. There is pain, but Jaxon does not care. There is only one thing left on his mind. Everything around him becomes muted and warped, like reality itself is distorting.

Like a creature of instinct, Jaxon moves in like a blur. The ghastly creatures of the night curl back and witness his speed and afterimages of whatever they could see of him—an unleashed monster coming to destroy.

His first strike bisects a creature in mid-air. Jaxon quickly turns to his next target, maneuvering towards it and grabs hold of the back of the creature's head and slams it into the ground with colossal strength, caving in its skull. Jaxon pushes his hand further into the monster's head and a coiling storm of fire bursts from his hand, leaving the monster a swirling pile of ash.

As reality shifts and ebbs in place, Jaxon looks into the inferno—the raging flames becoming a cozy fire dancing in a pit of logs and stone.

Jaxon and Noah, sitting at a beach by the Boardwalk on a rare family outing and their mother singing and playing the guitar. The sky is beautiful, stars lighting up the world around them. A family—though imperfect, feels perfect. Because through it all, at least they have each other.

Jaxon's shoulders lower and a struggling smile finds itself on his face. "Maybe we can stay like this forever?" he says—not asking, but pleading. "I don't wanna keep fighting."

The smiles fade from Alona and Noah’s faces as they both look at Jaxon.

"No," a gruff voice echoes.

The fire pit rages—it explodes.

Jaxon recoils, throwing his arms out to the fire, fanning the growing heat away. But it only grows. It grows until it becomes scorching.

Through the fire, his eyes lock onto a singular person before him.

Joselito Sandoval—he stands over the lifeless bodies of Jaxon's loved ones. An unforgiving grin plastered on the tattooed man's face, he meets Jaxon’s look of utter disdain.

He opens his arms and dares Jaxon to do something.

Jaxon's heart jumps and he moves towards Joselito—but as quickly as Jaxon's tormentor appeared, he is swallowed by darkness. Leaving Jaxon alone with an empty, cold feeling in his chest.

“It should've been me..." Jaxon growls, trembling with white knuckle rage.

The cold feeling is quickly engulfed by hellfire—the climbing heat taking over his being. This is the last time something important gets taken away from him.

Jaxon will never let it happen again.

"It should've been me that killed him—killed him for them!"

A nightmare manifests—Jaxon snaps. "YOU! You took that away from me!"

The flames fan out. Jaxon is once again surrounded by monsters. His hearing becomes a constant ring, with the sound of his own voice screaming from inside as the only thing left audible.

It shouts a declaration that must be fulfilled.

BURN THEM DOWN! BURN THEM ALL DOWN!

With baleful wails, the creatures dive toward Jaxon. Their wings slap the wind like cracking whips—claws and barbed tails poised to strike.

He does not dodge, nor does he flee. He meets every claw and fang with the full force of his anger.

This is not a battle between prey and predator. It is a massacre—bloodshed being spilled by a monster for monsters.

Jaxon tears through them—sets them ablaze.

They burn. And burn. And burn.

Fear has set in—the winged monsters attempt to flee. Jaxon does not allow it. He pounces on one of his targets and uses his full weight to drag the beast from the sky into a controlled dive.

They crash into the ground, and Jaxon strikes without pause—dragging his flaming blade across the creature’s chest, not with surgical precision, but with the savagery of a butcher gone mad.

Jaxon wants them to suffer. He wants them all to vanish—the monsters, the city that abandoned him, the everlasting pain.

Joselito and his crew burn, the monsters burn, Los Angeles burns—everything burns.

Jaxon spots an escaping creature and hurls his sword—flames trailing—and it sinks into the monster’s flank. Arm outstretched, Jaxon then clenches his fist and a nova of infernal light blooms as the sword detonates from within the monster.

A torrent of fire and ash takes the City of Angels. And Jaxon is the eye of the storm.

But the fire burns too hot—too bright.

Jaxon’s knees tremble and his vision fractures. He grips the flaming blade for one final swing—but nothing. Instead, he collapses amid soot and scorched corpses, his sword flickering beside him as its flame slowly dies.

Ash falls like winter snow. Embers float through the wind, drifting out across the city. The sky pulses crimson and the clouds churn, orbiting the cratered hillside like vultures.

Somewhere echoing from the city, sirens cry then vanish, swallowed by the screaming masses.

Los Angeles is a hellscape—the Hollywood sign now stands like a funeral pyre for the people Jaxon could not save.

Soft crackling of energy apparate around Jaxon and reality turns into itself like a coming void. The air shifts and from smoke and heat. A rift tears through the fabric of reality and robed figures step forward—silent, watchful, drawn by the chaos like moths to a flame too hot to touch.

Their cloaks ripple like torn parchment in the wind, each bearing the same circular sigil stitched across the chest. They wear silver masks shaped like half-melted faces—expressionless, unknowable.

Ash clings to their garments as they walk through the aftermath of Jaxon’s malice. Their boots crush bone and split open blisters of molten dirt.

One, with a flowing silhouette, approaches a bisected monster and lifts its severed head without a touch but a simple flick of the wrist. A ring on their finger—set with a burning gem—glows softly with the motion. They study the warped flesh and charred bone reverently, as if the death of this beast holds answers only they can read.

Another kneels beside a fractured trench and runs a hand across the scorched ground. Faint runes shimmer between the cracks, humming with the last breath of heat.

Then, a larger figure steps forward—taller, broader, draped in robes that shimmer with residual flame. They walk to the cliff’s edge, overlooking the city.

The fires of Los Angeles blaze throughout the horizon.

“Your fire took shape after all,” the figure mutters with a low and sharp tone.

They turn and walk away.

Another figure passes them—a slighter build compared to the rest, gangly and careful. They kneel beside Jaxon and place a hand upon his head.

With words whispered into the ash—the world folds.

Jaxon Salamanca vanishes.

Only fire remains.

Heat has risen.