CHAPTER 128: Hell in Berlin-21

CHAPTER 128: Hell in Berlin-21

The night bled out in blows and gasps. Phoenix was covered in blood—his own and that of those he had defeated—the leather of his jacket in tatters, his face marked by cuts that burned with every breath. Every blow he struck was an oath; every blow he received brought him closer to the edge. Around him piled pale bodies, broken shadows that had once been organized monsters. He had finished them by the tens, by the hundreds; he had lost count long ago. The number no longer mattered: what mattered was staying alive.

He had been fighting all night. The hours had compressed into a single, continuous present of violence. His fists burned, his hands trembled, the groans of the vampires mixed with the crunching of bones and the snapping of jaws that never seemed to tire. Every time one creature fell, another came; as if the city were vomiting beasts without respite. Phoenix entered a kind of strange euphoria: exhaustion and fury merged into a brutal clarity that allowed him to keep moving beyond the pain. It was the fury of one who has nothing left to lose.

But the body always collects its debt. Exhaustion clawed at his legs: his movements, once precise and ferocious, began to grow clumsy. Lifting his arm was a monumental effort; taking a step was a battle of will. There was a constant buzzing in his ears, a fatigue so ancient he thought he recognized in it the voice of all the fallen. He knew he couldn't stop. If he stopped, the demons would devour him alive; it had always been that way, and that cruel law didn't change just because he wanted to rest.

The horizon, which had waited in silence until then, began to brighten with the first fingers of dawn. A pale gray expanded, then a whisper of pink, until the sun emerged like a brutal promise. The morning light first touched the tops of the rubble-filled buildings, then licked the puddles of blood, and finally, returned judgment to the creatures still moving: their skin, accustomed to the night, ignited with a bitter crackle. The lab-made vampires groaned under the fire of the day; many writhed, others burned into black and white embers, and others dissolved into smoke before they could react. The sun, with its implacable truth, cleansed the darkness in a rain of slow fire.

Phoenix watched, between choked sobs and short breaths, as the tide of horrors extinguished itself. The euphoria that had sustained him turned into an icy calm; his legs finally gave way. Among rubble and corpses, he walked with faltering steps to where the world seemed less hostile—a split avenue, a blackened square, the skeleton of what was once a city. There, surrounded by ruins and silence, he let himself fall.

His body had had enough. His knees buckled, and for the first time in hours, the world stopped revolving solely around the fight. He sank into the dust and broken glass, his breath in splinters. When the tears finally came, it wasn't a single cry: it was everything he hadn't been able to cry for in months, in years. He cried for Anna, for Alucard, for the faces that were now memory. He cried for those who had left trusting him, for the plans that had burned, for the childhood torn from an entire city. He cried for Berlin: for its broken streets, for its silent houses, for the 99 percent of lives the night had taken.

The tears mixed with the grime seemed like small gusts of rain in a city that no longer had refuge. His sobs were low, everything held in his throat, but enormous for the truth they carried: the feeling of guilt, the certainty of having arrived too late, the rage that opened a void in his chest. Everything that had been purpose and loyalty came undone in his trembling hands.

Around him, nothing remained but desolation. Smoke rose in columns like burned fingers, and the dawn bathed the scene with a cruel light that offered no comfort. The world was now a landscape of absence, and Phoenix, small amidst so much emptiness, remained there, bent over, letting the cry empty his body as the sun continued to rise, indifferent, an impassive witness to what remained of the night.

The silence was so profound that only the constant drip of the IV fluid falling into the bag beside him could be heard. Phoenix woke with a start, his eyes snapping open, his chest rising and falling with difficulty. It took him a few seconds to understand where he was. The room was white, sterile, the smell of disinfectant permeating the air. The irregular beep of a monitor marked the rhythm of his ragged breathing.

He tried to move, but pain shot through him like an electric shock. Every muscle, every rib, every fiber of his body protested violently. He had bandages from his neck to his feet; some were soaked in dried blood, others freshly changed. He tasted metal in his mouth and felt an unbearable weight in his head. His throat was so dry that when he tried to speak, he only managed to emit a harsh, inhuman sound.

Slowly, with an almost heroic effort, he sat up a little in the bed. The movement wrenched a choked groan from him. His eyes wandered around the room until they stopped at the window. Outside, rain beat against the glass with a soft, almost hypnotic rhythm. Lightning illuminated the city in the distance, and in one flash he read the hospital sign: LMU Klinikum – München.
"Munich..." he murmured in a trembling voice, barely audible.
His mind took a few seconds to process it. He had been in Berlin... and now he was here. How? Who had brought him?

At that moment, the door opened with a slight creak. A familiar figure entered with slow but determined steps. Enid.
She wore a dark jacket and her hair was tied back. Her expression was serene, but her eyes betrayed fatigue and concern.
"Awake at last..." she said with a sigh mixing relief and tension. "You need to rest, Phoenix. You barely survived."

Phoenix looked at her as if he couldn't quite believe she was there. His gaze trembled, lost between disbelief and memory.
"Rest...?" he repeated, in a dull, almost empty tone. "Enid... where are the others?"