Tsar's Tormentors Ch.5: "Ashes in Autumn"

Outside Tokyo General Hospital — Blovid-13 Lockdown — Late Afternoon

The automatic doors wheezed open with a tired gasp, exhaling the clinical staleness of the hospital’s interior into the thick Tokyo dusk. It was the kind of late autumn air that cut like a scalpel—cold, clean, unforgiving. Wind scattered a swirl of browned leaves along the pavement, some catching briefly in the wheels of the hospital-issued wheelchair.

Mikhail Mordokrov stepped into the light first, the sun weak and pale behind a haze of gray clouds and city smog. He was a towering silhouette—wrapped in a floor-length, double-breasted overcoat of coarse Soviet wool, dark as dried blood. His N95 mask was strained tightly across his jagged jawline, but it did little to hide the monstrous contour of his skull-shaped scars. The soviet experiments of decades past had turned his skin into topographic war maps—burnt, tattooed, and stretched over unnatural muscle.

With a silent grip, he pushed the wheelchair forward. Svetlana Kazakova sat in the chair like a caged animal, shoulders hunched forward, one eye partially swollen, a deep gash bisecting her forehead and sealed shut with fourteen black surgical stitches that looked like something sewn in a bunker. Her pale skin was waxy, and despite the painkillers lingering in her system, there was no hiding the throbbing rage behind her stare. A crimson bandage curled beneath her hairline, stained faintly with a fresh bloom. As they reached the curb, she pulled down her mask. Her first breath of open air hit like vodka—sharp, bitter, invigorating.

Svetlana: God… finally. I was starting to forget what real air tasted like. Everything in there smells like bleach and surrender. I wish you had listened to me, Mikhail. I did not want to come here. Hospitals are where people go to die…

With shaking fingers, she pulled a flattened cardboard pack of Belye Nochi Russian cigarettes from her coat pocket. The seal was half-torn. She slipped one between her lips and lit it with a scratched silver lighter etched with a faint Spetsnaz insignia. The cigarette hissed as she drew in smoke like it was oxygen. Mikhail stopped the wheelchair. He stood behind her silently, the breeze tugging at his coat hem, his breath fogging against the inside of his mask.

Mikhail: The bleeding wouldn’t stop… I had no choice. I’m sorry…

Svetlana: Fourteen stitches. Concussion. But the Hurst girl smiles for the cameras like she did something heroic. Tell me, Mikhail… was it that bad?

Mikhail said nothing for a moment. His silence lingered, heavy as lead. Then, finally…

Mikhail: It was not your failure that offended me. It was their amusement.

Svetlana scoffed, dragging the smoke deep and letting it leak from her nostrils like a snarling wolf. Her fingers trembled—part pain, part fury.

Svetlana: They think we’re jokes now. Bygone soviet monsters who are too old to matter. Russians who can’t finish a war they started.

Mikhail stepped around to face her. His gloves were thick leather, and even through them, she could feel the subtle pressure of his fingers as he adjusted her coat collar with a gentleness that didn’t match his reputation. Not here. Not with her.

Mikhail: Do not mistake temporary spectacle for permanence. They played to a crowd. We answer to something older.

Svetlana: Putin saw, didn’t he?

Mikhail: He watched live. He was… displeased.

Svetlana flinched—not from the concussion but from the truth in that word. Displeasure from Putin never meant disappointment. It meant knives in the dark. It meant reassignments.

Svetlana: So… what do we tell him?

Mikhail paused, then slowly pulled off his mask. The sight beneath was something between a man and a skull. Bone-white scars wrapped around his jaw and temples like necrotic marble. His lips barely moved when he spoke.

Mikhail: We don’t lie. We promise revenge. We lay the foundation of fear. And we deliver heads.

She blinked slowly, the corner of her mouth twitching into a half-smile despite herself.

Svetlana: And the Americans?

Mikhail: True Chaotic. The New Breed. Their names are written in ash now. We will make sure they burn as one.

He turned and opened the black limousine door. It hissed like a dragon exhaling steam. Inside, plush leather seating and tinted windows offered the kind of privacy only oligarchs could afford—even in Japan under a pandemic lockdown.

Svetlana stood slowly. Her body groaned with resistance, but she didn't cry out. She was taller than most men even injured—warped into something mythic by steroids, training, and hate. Mikhail steadied her with both hands under her arms, helping her into the vehicle like a soldier lowering a flag-draped casket. She looked up at him from inside the car, cigarette burning to the filter.

Svetlana: What if Barsa and Zlovred aren’t ready? They’re fractured. Weak. One’s lost in guilt. The other’s drunk on false hope.

Mikhail climbed in after her, settling into the seat beside her like a marble statue given breath.

Mikhail: Then we make them ready. They are the fire we shape. We will forge them in discipline, suffering, and war. Or we will replace them.

Outside, the driver, silent, gloved, and hazmat—suited, climbed into the front seat. The engine purred.

Svetlana: They’re not scared of us anymore, Mikhail. Not the Americans. Not even the Japanese.

Mikhail: Then let’s remind them. Through steel. Through silence. Through suffering.

The limo rolled forward through the Tokyo dusk, leaving the hospital—and the shadow of failure—behind.

Mikhail: Call Zlovred. Bring Barsa. Tonight, the real work begins.

Svetlana crushed the smoldering cigarette in a crystal ashtray, eyes narrowed, stitched brow furrowed beneath her war paint.

Svetlana: Da. Time to teach them what fear used to taste like.

The limousine door slammed shut with a heavy thunk, sealing them inside a black void of velvet and cold chrome. The Tokyo night bled red through tinted windows, neon signs streaking like war paint across Svetlana’s pale cheek. Thunder murmured somewhere beyond the smog-choked skyline, a slow, guttural growl that promised rain—and retribution. A low Orthodox chant played on cassette in the background, barely audible over the engine's hum. Not even the driver spoke. This vehicle was not transportation. It was a confession. It was an execution.

Svetlana reclined stiffly, her back pressed into the soft leather, one leg elevated, her head wound fresh beneath a gauze veil. A thread of dried blood had crusted near her brow, despite the stitches. Her mask dangled from her neck like a broken muzzle. Smoke trailed from her cigarette in loose coils, curling toward the ceiling like a serpent with no master.

Svetlana: Fourteen stitches… for a kiss from Cassie Hurst. (She exhales slowly, lips curving into a bitter smirk.) I should send her flowers. Maybe arsenic.

Mikhail: (calmly, as if remarking on the weather) She fought like an American. Emotion first, consequence later. (He turns to her, voice a rich baritone, as cold as Siberian snow.) But the next time she comes for the witch… we burn her church.

The air inside the limo thickened with menace, not from their voices, but from what wasn’t said. Outside, raindrops began tapping the windows like skeletal fingers—first gently, then violently. Mikhail reached into his coat and pulled out a folder, bound in red twine. It bore no label. Only the Kremlin seal.

Mikhail: Putin will not be forgiving. We were meant to win the Rumble. Instead, the Americans climbed the hill and planted their flag in our graveyard. (He tosses the file onto the seat beside her.) He’s already requested a full internal review. Failure... breeds suspicion.

Svetlana: (flicks ash from her cigarette with a practiced sneer) Let him review it. Let him parade us naked through Red Square and hang medals on our backs while he drives the knife between our ribs. (She leans forward slightly, her voice silk over a razor blade.) It won’t matter. Not once Dash Ivanova is dead and we send the Dreamers screaming back into the void. Once we have the Ultimate Wrestling Tag Team belts around our waist, we can finally leave this oriental hellhole of an island and go home to Mother Russia.

Mikhail turned his scarred face to her. His expression didn't shift, but his eyes—those cold, iron-grey pits—glinted with something primal.

Mikhail: Yume Kui Mei. (He let the name linger like poison on the tongue.) She is not a wrestler. She is an infection. Her mist turned Viktor into something... obscene. A puppet without strings. And Kazuo Oni—he held the door to let her in.

Svetlana: (smirking with cruel satisfaction) And now we’re one match from the finals. One step from burying the bastards who broke our hammer. (She crushes her cigarette in the ashtray with a hiss.) They thought they could drive our soldier mad and walk away. But we don’t forget. We don’t forgive. We flay.

The limousine hit a bump in the road, and for a brief moment, Mikhail’s arm extended instinctively across Svetlana’s torso to brace her. It was subtle. It was nothing. But it meant everything.

Mikhail: (softly) We exorcised the darkness from Viktor… now we repay it.

Svetlana: (nodding slowly) In screams, in broken bones… and the silence of Yume’s last breath.

Thunder cracked directly overhead, as if Tokyo itself had heard the promise.

Mikhail: (more to himself than her) Let the Dreamers enter their nightmare. We are the Siberian Spirits… and we don’t dream.

The limo sped off into the shadows of the city, leaving behind the hospital, the reporters, the silence of failure. Ahead lay retribution—drenched in blood, and echoing with the cold laughter of the Motherland.

Two Hours Later

The bunker hummed with cold fluorescent lights. Thick walls of reinforced concrete surrounded them, lined with Soviet war maps, rusted propaganda signage, and the heavy scent of incense and mildew. Beneath the streets of Tokyo—beneath the casual joggers, the closed noodle shops, and the Blovid-13 pandemic curfews—Mother Russia’s exiles waited in a repurposed gym-turned-war room.

Steel beams trembled faintly as a train rumbled overhead, its roar muffled to a dull groan. Below, silence.

At the center of it all, Mikhail Mordokrov sat like a general before a battlefield—hunched, colossal, motionless. Before him, a monolithic steel console blinked and pulsed, wrapped in black wiring and state-issued insulation foam. The cracked monitor flickered with encrypted command code and an ancient Kremlin cipher countdown.

Behind him loomed his jury of monsters.

Svetlana Kazakova, legs crossed, leaned on a polished cane carved from Siberian ash. The brace on her knee creaked with each subtle shift. Her posture was regal despite the visible wounds: fourteen stitches weeping along her brow, a faint tremor in her right hand, and the pallor of someone who had bled too much, too recently. But her eyes—black and shining like obsidian—were lit with cold intent. Dressed in combat fatigues, her body was lean war-machine wrapped in silk scars.

Olga Pavlova, the Siberian Behemoth, wheezed like a steam engine on standby. Her massive frame sank into a reinforced steel bench, knees wide, sweat beading beneath the rolls of her tactical vest. One fist gripped a mostly devoured smoked turkey leg, the other clutched a gallon jug of something brine-pink and frothy. The stench of cabbage, garlic, and carnage clung to her like a second skin.

Snezhnaya Barsa crouched like a predator atop a stack of munitions crates in the corner. One gloved hand coiled around the hilt of his mask, the other twitching with muscle spasms trained for aerial violence. He had said nothing since entering the room—only watched, listened, catalogued. His every breath was silent fury.

And then there was Viktor Zlovred, by the icon corner. He muttered beneath his breath to a soot-blackened statue of St. George, his fingers tracing symbols in ash and blood across the floor. Ever since the black mist incident with Yume Kui Mei, Viktor had become an echo of himself—haunted, half-awake, and desperate to believe the exorcism had worked. The others let him be. For now.

A sudden click, then static. The screen jumped to life. Digital shrieks, scrambled pixels, a faint Orthodox hymn reversed and distorted as a firewall checked their identities and then, from the dust: The Kremlin. Gold-trimmed walls. Velvet curtains. The double-headed eagle of Russia looming over the desk like a god of conquest. At the epicenter of it all sat Vladimir Putin. Sharp. Still. Unblinking.

Putin (smiling): Dobryy vecher, my wolves.

Every Reaper stood. They were not told to. They simply knew.

Putin: You have made us proud. Dasha Ivanova’s humiliation in the Ronin Rumble has gone viral. Her blood-soaked retreat is being looped on state-run news between St. Petersburg and Sevastopol. Eighteen percent drop in her approval. Eighteen. That’s collapse, comrades.

He leaned forward, tapping his desk with a silver pen shaped like a dagger.

Putin: The people no longer chant her name in alleyways. They chant yours. They whisper: Who are these Red Reapers? Why do they not smile? Why do they not speak? And of course, the answer is…

He paused theatrically.

Putin: Wolves do not bark. They bite.

A low murmur of approval rippled through the room. Even Viktor cracked a crooked grin.

Putin (coldly now): But I did not summon this council to hand out medals.

The monitor dimmed. His face tightened like a noose.

Putin: You failed to win the Rumble. Not one of you stood at the top. Not one of you held the Ultimate Wrestling flag above the broken bodies of the East abd the West. Instead… we watched Americans laugh. Joke. Vomit on our culture. And they walked away without consequence.

He practically spat the names.

Putin: True Chaotic. The New Breed. Four American children—crying, laughing, mocking. And you let it spiral. You let it go unpunished.

Silence.

Then a Click. The monitor played a grainy, intercepted audio clip—Colton Hurst’s voice, heavy with guilt and confusion.

Colton (recorded): Dad… I don’t know what I’m doing here. I think I’m just pretending. Just playing badass.

Static.

Colton (recorded): They’re monsters, Dad. Russians. Real ones.

Then: Click. Cassie Hurst’s voice now, tearful, breathless.

Cassie (recorded): Mom, I’m not okay. I got blood in my hair and my gear smells like Olga’s puke. I’m not a joke, right? I matter?

Back to Putin. His smile had turned glacial.

Putin: Children. Crying to their American baby-boomer parents. Asking permission to matter.

He stood, slowly.

Putin (mocking): “Do I matter, Mommy?’ Yes, Cassie. You matter. You matter enough to become a statue of bones in the snow.

Even Olga chuckled—a thick, wet sound reverberating off the concrete.

Putin (snapping cold): But I did not play this to amuse you. I played it to awaken you.

His gaze moved now—hunting, devouring.

Putin: Zlovred. Barsa. You are on notice. You want your names returned to our soil? You want your mothers to remember your faces? Then crush the New Breed. Leave them toothless. Hopeless. Worthless.

Putin: There will be no explanations for failure. Only deletions.

Click. A folder icon blinked at the bottom of the screen. “OPERATION: BIRCH AXE — FINAL PHASE.” Password protected.

Then Putin turned again—his eyes locking with Mordokrov’s and Kazakova’s like twin rifle barrels.

Putin: Now… the semi-final.

The light on the monitor dimmed further. The atmosphere grew thick as radiation.

Putin: Kazuo Oni. Yume Kui Mei. The Devil’s Dreamers.

He spat the name like it was a disease.

Putin: I do not care for their masks. I do not care for their spirits. They are in the theater. Tricks. Flash. But you… You are doctrine. You are at war. You are history written in broken spines.

He paused.

Putin: You will beat them. You must. There is no silver for Russia. Only gold. Bring it home—or stay buried in the East.

Mikhail bowed his head, but Svetlana took a breath. She stepped forward, leaning heavier on her cane than she wanted.

Svetlana: I will fight.

Putin raised a brow.

Putin: The report from the Japanese hospital—

Svetlana (interrupting): Fabricated for insurance. I’ve fought with worse. The Kremlin doctor here in Tokyo signed my waiver this morning. He knows what happens if he doesn’t.

She pulled a cigarette from her sleeve, lit it slowly, and exhaled through the side of her mouth.

Svetlana: Yume Kui Mei took something from us. Kazuo opened the door for her. We’re going to seal it. With their bones.

Putin didn’t blink.

Putin: Good.

His voice turned almost paternal. Almost.

Putin: Because if you fail... you will not die. You will simply never come home. You will be forgotten.

The war room went still.

The screen began to flicker again—an incoming encryption line dancing beneath Putin’s feed. And then—

Putin: Mikhail… prepare them. Your next war is not in the ring. It is in the realm of nightmares.

Putin: Your are Red Reapers and nightmares fear you.