The seventh scratch came out crooked.
Kira stared at it in the darkness.
If he miscounted again, he would lose track of time. And in this cell, losing time meant losing himself.
His nail slipped, leaving a brown smear of blood and torn skin on the wall. Kira didn't cry out. In this cell, pain was the only way to prove to himself he hadn't yet become part of the stone.
Kira yanked his hands away from the wall as if they were scorching hot. His fingers kept twitching, completing an invisible pattern against his will.
"Stop it..." he whispered, pressing his palms hard against his thighs.
What frightened him wasn't that he couldn't remember making those movements. What frightened him was that his body *enjoyed* them.
He didn't know how many days had passed. But he knew the rhythm.
His heart beat faster when the rats began to stir in the corner, slower when he forced himself to go still. Kira didn't count every beat. He caught intervals. A hundred beats one inhale. Another hundred one exhale.
Ten such cycles roughly the time it took for a drop to fall from the ceiling three times.
He built a semblance of a clock out of rhythm. In this emptiness, order was the only way not to disappear entirely.
Numbers were the only thing that made sense. As long as he could calculate the frequency of the drips from above, he remained *himself*. Though he understood less and less what that meant.
He pressed the back of his head against the cold stone. His body lived a life of its own — a frightening one. His fingers, caked with prison filth, moved with an unnatural grace, tracing invisible patterns across the wall.
Whose memories are these? Kira froze, staring at his hands in the dark.
At times, when the darkness became absolute, flashes flickered through his mind. White light. A perfectly flat ceiling. The smell of clean cotton and something sweet... lavender? But the moment he tried to grasp the image, it crumbled, leaving the taste of iron and rotten straw in his mouth.
Am I going mad? he pressed his palms against his temples.
Or is it just hunger? he added more quietly, as if making a diagnosis.
But if it was only exhaustion, why did the white ceiling feel more real than the stone beneath his back?
Kira closed his eyes.
I remember the taste of muddy puddle water, the smell of open sewers. He ran his thumb across his scraped knuckles. The skin had split; dried blood cracked.
But the skin beneath the crust was thin.
The kind you don't see on someone who has spent years fighting for bread.
He frowned.
Why are my knuckles bloody yet the skin itself... so thin?
Like someone who held a quill far more often than a stone.
The thought lingered longer than he wanted.
I grew up here... didn't I?
He tried to hold onto the familiar images. A chunk of moldy bread hidden beneath his shirt.
Strange fingers reaching toward him in the dark.
But the memory of the filth blurred, like a dream after a fever.
The foreign images frightened him more than the rats in the corner. They felt like a foreign body sewn beneath the skin.
Because a lie shouldn't feel this vivid.
A creak.
Kira didn't merely *hear* the sound — he felt the vibration of metal in his bones. His body dropped into a fighting stance before his mind registered the threat. Knees bent slightly, center of gravity shifted low.
Torchlight burst into the cell, slashing through the darkness. Kira squeezed his eyes shut. The brightness was aggressive. It put his filthy rags and gaunt frame on full display.
"Still alive, would you look at that" the guard's voice was thick with oily indifference.
"What a miracle. Didn't bet on you, boy. Figured you'd keel over on day five, like that runt from the next cell over."
Five... the word echoed slowly through his mind. He turned his gaze toward the visitor.
Kira said nothing. His body was still coiled in that strange, spring-loaded readiness, even though he could barely stand from hunger.
"Get up." The guard jangled his keys. The door swung open, letting in the stench of sweat and roasting meat.
"Tonight's your show. The Master wants to see what this special garbage is made of."
"Where are we going?" Kira's voice came out like the scrape of a rusty hinge.
"Fresh air," the man grinned.
"The arena, where else. Your opponent is Halden. They call him Bloody Hoof. He usually smears little wretches like you across the sand in seconds. Try at least not to die too boringly."
Kira rose slowly. His mind whispered that he was weak, that his bones were like dry twigs. But the moment he took a step, his feet found their footing on their own. He walked down the corridor, and his movements were far too fluid for an emaciated prisoner.
The corridor seemed endless. The torches on the walls smoked and sputtered. From above, through the thick press of stone, a rumble began to filter down.
At first it felt like a vibration in the bones but with every step it grew into the savage rhythm of the stands.
"Hear that?" The guard didn't turn around.
"They're here for you."
Ahead, a heavy wrought-iron gate came into view. Beyond it blinding, ferocious light. Kira squinted. The sand beneath his feet, which he hadn't yet seen, already felt like it was burning.
"Remember," the guard placed his hand on the lever."
"If you want to be buried instead of fed to the dogs, at least try to give the Master a show."
The gate ground upward with
a shriek of metal. Kira stepped into the light. The world around him exploded with noise.