I stay still for a few seconds, long enough for my body to understand that the chains are gone.

  The cell is there. The bed. The walls. Nothing has changed.

  An unpleasant voice calls out to me. It is time to resume training.

  Time is no longer counted. It is cut into sessions. Norman corrects. Valie observes. Training follows training without pause. The body endures. Reflexes follow. Energy circulates better, but my active ability remains imprecise, like a weapon whose trigger point I still do not know.

  One absence remains. The garden. The sealing holds. No one comes.

  “Today,” Valie announces without looking up, “real combat.”

  Norman steps back. Someone else moves forward in his place.

  He is as young as I am. Slender build, straight posture, no unnecessary tension. His midnight blue hair falls in front of his eyes without bothering him. His green gaze does not linger on my face. It lowers, rises, measures my footing, my breathing, the space between us. He takes position.

  “Aris. Nice to meet you.”

  His voice is calm. Polite. Without arrogance.

  “Heyo. Likewise.”

  He nods slightly, then attacks.

  The movement is readable, clean, unhurried. I dodge without difficulty and counter immediately, but he is already gone. Not a full dodge. Just a minimal withdrawal. My fist cuts through empty space. I press forward. He gives one step. No more. I follow up. Same result. Each strike passes close.

  I sense an opening. He lets me advance. Then he strikes.

  A short straight punch touches the tip of my nose. No force. No momentum. Just the exact point. The pain is immediate, sharp, precise. I frown, confused.

  Energy rises. Denser. Faster. My strikes come in succession. I attack without pause.

  He does not retreat anymore.

  He does not really dodge. He withdraws just enough. My fist grazes his cheek. I feel his breath on my fingers.

  He advances without changing rhythm. One step. Then two strikes without break. A straight. An uppercut. The ground disappears for a moment. My feet leave the arena. I land without falling, more out of habit than balance. Blood runs from my nose. I wipe it away with the back of my hand.

  Aris stands still.

  My breathing is still broken when his has already returned to normal. My body searches for what comes next, an opening, something to force, but there is nothing. I strike, I press, and every movement falls short. Not because he is stronger. Not because he is faster. Because nothing I do has any effect at all.

  My movements become rushed, messy. The sequence breaks. His leg hooks mine. The imbalance is clear. I fall onto my back.

  Enough.

  I get up. No more adjustment. No more restraint. Energy rises too fast, too strong, floods my body and I rush forward without thinking, straight ahead.

  Aris pauses for an instant, then steps back just enough. I see it. I know it. My fist flies at full speed and stops a few millimeters from his face. Too short. Dodged again.

  My body has already accepted failure when the impact comes. Not against my knuckles. Against something harder.

  Aris stumbles back one sharp step, then another. This time, the movement is real. A red mark appears beneath his nose. He raises a hand to his face, surprised.

  I freeze. My gaze drops to my hand. A brass knuckle, fitted perfectly around my fingers.

  I did not ask for it. I just struck.

  Good. I rush in.

  He dodges, but not like before. My arm cuts through the air and this time Aris catches it. The movement is immediate. He pivots, uses all my momentum against me and throws me. The world flips. My back hits the sand, which sinks under the impact. Blood rises in my mouth. My vision blurs.

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  No.

  Not now.

  His voice reaches me, calm, almost gentle.

  “Could you stay on the ground, please.”

  I clench my teeth. I refuse. I push myself up anyway. My legs tremble. Balance is broken. Each step threatens to give way, but I hold. I have to.

  I raise my arm.

  He launches forward.

  The strike lands in my stomach. My body folds. His knee rises under my chin. I fall again. His hand grabs my head and smashes it into the ground. The sand compacts brutally.

  The world fractures. I no longer feel my limbs. Only weight. The dull sound of blood. The heat fading away.

  Aris straightens.

  He does not smile. He does not look at me. He stares at the sky, as if the fight had been nothing more than a necessary step.

  I do not move anymore. Unconsciousness takes me.

  Something is wrong.

  We are running side by side in the Colosseum. Behind us, a cascade of debris collapses, massive enough to crush us. Objects smash into the sand, shatter, roll, bounce. Each impact brings burial closer.

  She is at my height. She runs without panic. Her golden gaze lingers more on me than on the danger, animated by a strange glimmer, almost amused despite the urgency.

  Her voice snaps, sharp.

  “You trying to get us both killed or what is your problem?”

  As if I had chosen this.

  A tire slams down in front of me. I dodge just in time. My foot slips. Balance gives way and I crash into her shoulder. We fall together. The impact drags us to the ground.

  Debris rains down immediately. It strikes my sides, my arms, my chest. My breath cuts off. If this continues, I will end up buried alive.

  Then, without transition, the energy of my Word disperses. A brief vertigo runs through me and air rushes back into my lungs. The objects vanish. As if they had never existed.

  Silence falls abruptly.

  She is there, a few centimeters away. A thin cut bleeds on her forehead, blood tracing a line across her lightly tanned skin. A beauty mark on her cheek catches my eye despite myself. She stares at me.

  “You want to play a game with me?”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Accept. I do not feel like fighting. We play.”

  I do not understand. From the start, she talks about a game as if this fight were a whim. Yet she stands up, moves toward me with clear determination, ready to strike. A strange contradiction for someone who claims not to want to fight.

  She plants her foot. Her fist comes out. It is slow. I see it coming. I will dodge easily.

  But her movement twists mid swing. Her body slips, pivots almost clumsily, as if she were losing balance, and her foot snaps up brutally between my legs.

  Pain explodes. The ground slams into my back as the burning spreads, violent, humiliating.

  She leans slightly over me. Still that unbearably calm smile.

  “Give up. You lost. If you agree to play a game, I can be lenient.”

  I laugh. Me, lost.

  “The fight is only beginning.”

  I extend my arm. A long staff appears in my hand. I strike without hesitation, aiming for her face. But she does not even react. She keeps walking forward, as if I did not exist. The staff passes a few centimeters from her face, slides through her red hair, long, wavy, carefully arranged. She does not even notice.

  She starts circling me, calmly, already deep in her monologue.

  “You have no chance of winning against me.”

  I do not answer. I lean on the staff to get back up.

  “Because I am Fortuna. And my Word is luck.”

  The staff vanishes. I am no longer really listening to what she says.

  “You are terrified, right. Ahahaha. By my power. Funny thing is, I am an anomaly.”

  The words leave her mouth, but they slide past me without leaving a trace. My mind tightens. I will put everything into the next attack.

  Everything into my legs. Go as fast as possible. Thinking wastes time.

  Energy implodes in my body. What remains of it concentrates in my footing. My muscles burn, my tendons scream, but I do not care.

  Fortuna takes guard. She steps back several times. Sweat beads on her forehead.

  “Are you sure you do not want to play?”

  My body lifts off the ground. I seek impact. I am going to plant again and push even harder.

  Something slips under my foot.

  A moment of suspension.

  A skateboard.

  My center of gravity tips. Speed does not vanish, it turns against me. My body is thrown backward, uncontrollable. My skull strikes the sand with dry violence.

  No. Not like this.

  The impact digs into the ground and extinguishes thought. But momentum continues.

  The skateboard is released like a projectile. It shoots straight ahead, driven by the trajectory I had chosen. It slams into Fortuna under the chin, full force. Her head snaps back. Her body lifts in turn and crashes into the sand.

  Silence. Both fighters are on the ground.

  A draw.

  …

  The first thing to return is pain. Then, slowly, the space around me takes shape. A bed. I sit up slightly and immediately notice there is another one, facing mine. The cell has changed.

  I get up and open the gray door. The bathroom is the same, unchanged, identical to every other time. Nothing has moved here. When I return to the room, something catches my attention. A second door, also gray. I had never seen it. I open it.

  I blink.

  A red couch is there. Aris and Fortuna are sitting side by side, facing a television that is turned on. I freeze. I turn my head slightly. The sound from the TV is real. Neither of them looks at me.

  They are watching the screen.