Busan — East Dockyards, 2:00 a.m.
The fog rolled in from the harbor, thick and cold, swallowing the alleys and streets in suffocating silence. The East Dockyards, once alive with the sound of machinery and smuggled goods moving under cover of night, stood eerily still.
Tonight, it was a trap.
And a graveyard waiting to be filled.
The Trap Is Set
Han Min-Soo, boss of the Iron Wolves, prowled the floor of Warehouse 19 like a caged beast. Over twenty of his men huddled behind crates and steel beams, rifles cocked, shotguns loaded, blades within easy reach.
"No one leaves their post," Min-Soo barked, wiping sweat from his brow. "That bastard's coming, and when he does — we gut him."
His men exchanged anxious glances.
Not one of them believed this would go as planned.
Fear hung thick in the air, mingling with the stink of gun oil and sweat. Some clutched charms, others muttered prayers to gods they hadn't spoken to in years.
They had heard the stories.
The other gangs.
The silent massacres.
Men butchered without mercy, without warning.
And tonight, each of them felt death breathing down their neck.
The Darkness Falls
At 2:17 a.m., the power died.
The backup generator choked and sputtered, leaving the warehouse in perfect, oppressive darkness.
For a long moment, only the sound of tense, ragged breathing filled the air.
Then came a gunshot.
From the north rooftop.
A scream followed. A body crashed onto the floor below with a wet, broken sound.
"Contact! Contact!" a voice howled.
Gunfire erupted — wild, panicked, blind.
Muzzle flashes split the dark. Bullets pinged off walls and beams. The air thickened with gun smoke.
A figure darted overhead, fast, silent, a ghost against the rafters.
"Above us! He's on the catwalk!" someone screamed.
More gunfire.
Another body fell.
A man near the west entrance stumbled, blood spraying from his throat as a gloved hand drew a knife across it. His partner wheeled around — too slow. A silenced shot dropped him instantly.
Agony in the Fog
The mist outside crept inside, swirling low to the ground, mixing with the smoke. Men fired into it, terrified of shadows, of silence.
One ran for the side exit.
A thin wire snapped against his legs.
An explosion ripped through the doorway, flinging him against a metal pillar.
Others shouted his name, but no one dared move.
The survivors were hunted one by one.
A man's final moments, his breath rattling as he bled out under a stack of old tires.
Another dragged behind a forklift, his scream strangled before it left his throat.
The darkness swallowed them all.
The Horror Unfolds
By 3:00 a.m., the ambush was no longer an ambush.
It was a massacre.
Han Min-Soo, sweat-soaked and trembling, fired his last round into a shadow that wasn't there. His pistol clattered to the floor.
The mist thickened, cold against his skin.
Something moved behind him.
A sharp pain in his chest.
A single shot.
Darkness.
A Message in Blood
At dawn, when the fog lifted and the police finally arrived, Warehouse 19 was a tomb.
Twenty-four men dead.
Weapons scattered.
Blood drying on walls and concrete.
And a message scrawled into a blood-soaked wooden beam, carved with a blade:
"THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING."
No name.
No sign.
No mercy.
Detective Kang stood amid the carnage, reading those words, a cold knot settling in his gut.
The streets of Busan would bleed before this was over.