Four years ago.

There was no time anymore. Not here. Just friction. Just memory, scraped raw over and over.

Max didn't know how long he'd been floating in the void. The dark had no edges. No sound. No breath. It pressed against him like velvet and stone at once—smothering, silent, patient.

He had not spoken in months. Maybe years.

But he was still here.

Still alive.

A flicker burned in the pit of him. A stubborn coal he wouldn't surrender. It wasn't Hellfire. Not yet. Just the memory of it. The will not to vanish.

Then something changed.

A tremor in the dark. A shift in pressure, so dense it crushed thought before it formed. Not sound, but presence – a weight that didn't belong to this dimension.

A voice entered his mind like rot beneath a wound.

"Still clinging?"

It wasn't human. It wasn't even language, not truly. Just meaning – raw and ancient – shaped to resemble words so Max could understand.

He tried to pull away from it. But there was nowhere to go.

The void warped around him. Folded, compressed. Space itself constricted like a throat preparing to swallow.

"You have denied me long enough."

The voice didn't grow louder. It simply became. A pressure in his lungs. A rumble in his blood. The temperature dropped – or maybe his soul did.

Then something stepped through him. Not past. Through.

And for the first time in a year, Max felt pain again.

He screamed – but no sound came.

Moloch did not reveal himself in form. He did not need to. He was gravity with hunger. Thought without shape. A god that never needed worship, only yield.

"You are valuable. But not irreplaceable."

A pause.

"You will serve. One way or another. If not through purpose…"

Something pulled.

"…then through suffering."

Max's spine twisted. Not physically – but in essence. Like something had reached inside his soul and snapped a ligament that should never bend.

And then the dark cracked.

A line of red light tore through the void like a scalpel. Heat followed – real heat, not imagined – and with it, air. Screaming. Roaring.

The silence shattered.

Max fell.

Hard.

…………………

Time here bled like everything else.

The arena had no clocks. No windows. Just fire pits and screaming. A dozen matches a night. Maybe more. They fought until the sand clotted, then they dragged the corpses out and started again.

Max hadn't slept. Not really. There was nowhere quiet enough to sleep.

His cell was a shallow indentation in the stone wall, barely wide enough for his frame. Chains ran from his wrists to the back wall – not tight, just long enough to let him move. Not long enough to run. Not that he could've even if he tried.

Every night, they came for him.

The first time, they beat him. No explanation. Just two masked guards – Contractors, probably – dragging him out by the chains, throwing him down before a ring of chanting demons. He hadn't fought back. He couldn't. His body had barely recovered from the void.

So, they broke it again.

Each blow had a message. You will fight. You will serve. You will give.

But Max didn't.

He refused.

The second night, they brought weapons. Not for him – for them. The demons were larger this time. Grinning beasts in patchwork armour. One of them bit into Max's shoulder just to see how hard he'd scream. Another carved lines down his chest with a curved, barbed blade.

Max passed out that night. They let him. Maybe that was the lesson.

You don't get to die.

By the third fight, something changed.

He was thrown into the pit again, blood barely clotted on his ribs, when he noticed the stands were full.

Not just demons. Humans.

Contractors. Black market soulsmiths. Warlords. Traders. Not spectators – recruiters.

The arena wasn't just torture.

It was business.

This was Orobas's empire. A furnace of flesh and will. You either emerged strong – or as meat for the next.

Max lay in the dirt. One eye swollen shut. His breath tasted of smoke and teeth. Above him, the crowd screamed for him to rise. The gate opposite his cell clanked open.

Another fighter stepped out.

This one human.

A girl. Young. Seventeen, maybe. Gaunt. Terrified.

She didn't belong here.

Max pushed himself to one knee. His chains dragged behind him like old regrets. His voice was raw, but he managed a whisper.

"Why?"

A demon warden standing at the edge of the cage tilted its head.

Max gestured toward the girl.

She looked like she hadn't eaten in days. Her fists were bare. Her stance didn't exist.

"She's no fighter."

The demon shrugged. "She doesn't have to win. She has to awaken."

Max's blood ran cold.

He looked at the girl again.

No contract. No pact.

Just thrown in front of death with the hope that some spark would catch.

The crowd began to chant something low and ugly. Two syllables, repeated. "Ignite. Ignite. Ignite."

Max turned to the demon.

"Why her?" he croaked.

The demon's smile showed too many teeth.

"Lord Orobas wants to see what you'll do."

The bell rang.

The girl screamed.

The monster from the other gate – seven feet tall, tusked, covered in spines – charged like a boulder. No hesitation. No mercy.

And Max knew.

This wasn't about watching him fight.

This was about watching him choose.

Empower her… or let her die.

Max's hands trembled.

He reached inward – where the fire used to be.

Nothing.

No Hellfire. No fragment Aamon. Not even ash.

But—

There was still something.

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A flicker.

He reached for it. Thought of Liz. Thought of April's voice. You save them first. Always.

And just before the demon struck, Max raised his hand—

—and pushed.

It wasn't a spell. It wasn't elegant.

It was will.

The girl's body jolted like lightning hit her spine. Her eyes flared. Her bones glowed – briefly – and the air cracked as something inside her opened.

She didn't dodge the strike. But she didn't die, either.

Her scream turned into a war cry.

And she fought.

The crowd erupted.

Above them, in his private box, Orobas leaned forward.

Smiling.

Max collapsed into the blood-wet sand, breath ragged.

The chains didn't feel as heavy.

But his heart did.

Because now he understood the rules.

They weren't asking him to fight.

They were forcing him to care.

And then punishing him for it.

…………………

They made him kneel.

Two demon guards shoved Max onto cold stone, their claws still dripping with someone else's blood. His knees hit with a crunch, but he didn't flinch. He was past that now. The pain was noise. The real agony lived deeper.

His chains dragged behind him, still clinking with every heartbeat.

The chamber was huge – too wide for comfort, too empty for warmth. Blood trails spidered the floor like old rivers. And at the far end, beneath a hanging ring of bone lanterns, he stood.

Orobas.

Max had seen monsters before. He'd burned them, bled beside them, watched them scream as their contracts tore them in half. But this…

This wasn't a monster.

This was a judge.

He stood at least three metres tall, carved from obsidian muscle and stillness. His skin was dark as oil-slick midnight, marbled with the faint shimmer of soul-scarred ritual etchings. His suit was white. Blindingly white. Impossibly clean. It fit him like silk stitched by fear.

And his face—

His eyes burned gold. No pupils. No humanity. Just endless depth. His jaw was square, unmoving. His brow furrowed only once—when he noticed Max looking up.

He said nothing at first.

Silence stretched long enough to become unbearable.

Then:

"Max Jaeger."

The words were low. Subsonic. Not spoken – delivered. The kind of voice that crawled down the spine and stayed there, roosting.

Max didn't answer.

He couldn't – not out of fear, but because there was nothing to say.

Orobas took a step forward. The sound of his shoe against blood-wet stone was somehow louder than the guards' entire assault.

"You have value."

Another step.

"You are strong. But you do not obey."

He came closer now. No guards. No weapons. Just presence.

Max lifted his head slightly. Met his gaze.

"That's the point," he croaked. "I don't work for monsters."

Orobas tilted his head. Not insulted – intrigued.

"Yet you empowered her. The girl."

Max's jaw clenched.

Orobas stopped one step away. Towering above him.

"You think that was mercy?"

Max said nothing.

Orobas crouched – slow, deliberate – until their faces were almost level. Max could see the faint burn-lines across his neck. Scars, maybe. Or symbols. He smelled like ash and leather and heat.

"It was cruelty," Orobas said. "You gave her hope in a world that rewards only strength."

"I gave her a chance," Max rasped.

Orobas considered that.

"A chance to die slower," he said. "You did not save her. You fed the blood pit."

He stood again.

"That is the truth of this world. Hope is pain. Power is mercy. And weakness…" He turned toward the far wall, where a massive arena diagram glowed faintly in chalky red lines.

"Weakness is contagious."

Max forced himself up onto one knee.

"Then kill me. Or fight me. But don't pretend your pit makes you wise."

Orobas turned back. A flicker of heat in those golden eyes.

Then— he laughed.

A low, thunderous sound that filled the chamber like war drums.

"Fight you?" he echoed, amused. "Not yet."

He pointed at the arena diagram.

"First you learn. Then you earn."

Max spat blood into the dirt. "I'm not one of your gladiators."

Orobas came closer again. His hand rested gently on Max's shoulder. Too gentle. The pressure behind it made Max's ribs creak.

"You're not. You are my investment."

A pause.

"Moloch wants your fire. I do not care. What I want… is your will. Not broken. Not chained. Forged."

Max stared up at him. Breathing ragged.

"And if I refuse?"

Orobas straightened. Cold again.

"You won't."

"Why?"

"Because you care."

He turned away.

"And I will make you care about the right things."

He began to walk toward the exit. As he did, he called over his shoulder:

"You don't fight for yourself. You fight for the ones you refuse to lose."

A door opened in the far wall.

Max's chains tugged.

The next fight was waiting.

…………………

It wasn't the worst beating he'd taken. But it was close.

His ribs were cracked – he could feel the flutter when he breathed – but the pain barely registered. It didn't anymore.

Max hadn't always healed like this.

The strength, the reflexes, the regeneration – those came after he stole Aamon's soul. After the fire that wasn't meant for mortals sank into his veins and started remaking him from the inside out.

But the pain-dampening… that had come earlier.

It wasn't a choice. It just happened. A survival reflex the moment he forged the contract. When Aamon's Hellfire first touched his soul, it didn't bless him – it tried to devour him. Every second burned. Every breath felt like it scraped his lungs raw.

So, his body did the only thing it could.

It turned the volume down.

Not just on the fire. On everything. Nerves dulled. Signals rewired. Pain didn't vanish, but it drifted – muted, distant, as if happening to someone else. That numbness wasn't a mercy.

It was how he stayed alive.

And now, two years later, that reflex had never truly left him.

He could be torn apart in the pit, and still think clearly. Still breathe. Still remember the name that mattered most.

Liz.

The beatings were routine now. Part of the background noise. Bruised ribs, dislocated shoulder, fractured orbital bone. Check, check, check.

What gnawed at him wasn't his body.

It was what they were doing to others.

Max hit the sand again. Face first. Blood smeared the dirt. He blinked it away with a grunt, but didn't rise.

Let them think he was broken. Let them chant, let them jeer.

He stared sideways across the arena, through one good eye.

The girl was screaming.

And that – not the fight, not the blood – that was the beginning of something he couldn't suppress anymore.

The crowd jeered. The pit stank of sweat, blood, sulphur. The chants rose and fell in languages that weren't meant for human throats.

"MAX JAEGER. STAYING DOWN AGAIN."

That was the announcer. Contractor-turned-mascot. His voice, amplified through arcane circuitry, cracked with static and spite.

"THE MAN WHO BURNS FOR NOTHING!"

More laughter.

Max spat blood. One eye was already swelling shut. The chain still wrapped around his wrists dragged behind him like a leash.

He heard the girl scream.

He turned his head.

She was young. Twentysomething? She looked younger. One of the "volunteers." Just another human shoved into the pit with no training, no contract. No chance.

Her leg was broken. The other demon – the one she was supposed to fight – was playing with her. Slashing her lightly. Letting her crawl.

Max saw the blood trailing behind her. Heard her voice crack as she begged the crowd for help. For mercy.

No one answered.

Max looked back at the demon towering over him. The hook-fingered thing drooled onto the sand.

Then he looked beyond it.

High above, in the balcony above the blood-soaked arena—

Orobas stood.

Motionless.

Watching.

Evaluating.

The rage in Max's chest coiled. Not fiery. Not wild.

Cold.

Sharp.

He reached inward.

The way Orobas said he would eventually.

And found it.

Not Hellfire.

Not yet.

But something older. Heavier.

Will.

His fingers clenched around the chain.

The demon raised its foot.

Max moved.

Not fast. Not elegant. But surgical.

He rolled sideways, yanked the chain tight – looped it behind the demon's ankle – and pulled.

The thing toppled with a roar.

Max was on it in a second. Not out of rage. Not instinct.

Deliberate.

He looped the chain around its neck once, twice, and twisted hard.

The demon thrashed. Clawed at him.

Max didn't care.

He didn't stop until it stopped moving.

Silence rippled through the pit.

Then cheers.

But he didn't hear them.

He staggered up and crossed the sand – limping, bleeding, eyes locked on the girl.

She flinched as he approached.

He raised one hand.

She shrank.

Max crouched beside her.

"You don't have to die here."

His voice was raw.

She stared at him. Eyes wide. Mouth trembling.

"What— what do I do?"

Max touched her forehead.

"Say your name."

She hesitated.

"T-Tamara."

"Say it again."

"Tamara."

"Then hold onto it."

His hand pulsed with heat.

A spark leapt from his palm to her skin. Not fire. Not a gift.

An unlocking.

Her eyes widened. Her spine straightened.

Her body trembled – but she didn't collapse.

Power hummed inside her. The beginnings of it.

A soul, awakened.

She looked up at him – frightened, but whole.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why help me?"

Max stood slowly, pain flaring in his ribs.

He looked up.

Met Orobas's golden gaze.

And for the first time – glared back.

"Because someone needs to fight."

The crowd exploded.

Orobas didn't move.

But Max saw it.

A nod.

Barely there.

But real.

Max limped back to the centre of the pit.

And didn't fall.

…………………

The blood on Max's knuckles wasn't his.

He sat slumped in the corner of the cell, back against the cold concrete, one leg curled under him, the other stretched limp and shaking. The stink of sweat, iron, and something worse clung to the air – like the arena had followed him in. His mouth still tasted like ash.

Two had survived.

Just two.

The other two – gutted. One torn open in the first ten seconds, too slow to dodge a Contractor's claws. The other... he hadn't even seen it happen. Just the snap, the scream, and then silence.

Max wondered if Tamara had survived. If the spark had held. If she was awake somewhere now – trembling, terrified, but alive. He hoped she was. Even if he never saw her again.

The survivors weren't warriors. They'd won by accident. Reflex. Desperation. One of them was still crying when the guards dragged him away.

Max stared at the floor, chest rising shallowly. His ribs ached. His limbs shook.

But he didn't feel broken.

He felt used.

He'd given them power – just enough to stand, just enough to kill – and now they were tools in someone else's game. The arena didn't need heroes. It needed spectacle. Meat with a pulse.

But still...

He closed his eyes.

Tamara had lived. Maybe.

And that was something.

Maybe the last good thing he could give.

A low, grinding sound echoed down the corridor – metal dragging against stone. Then the cell door creaked open.

Max didn't lift his head.

He didn't need to.

The weight in the doorway was impossible to mistake.

Three metres of muscle and shadow stepped in, ducking slightly beneath the lintel. Orobas's obsidian skin gleamed wetly in the low light, his bare torso marred by scars so deep they looked sculpted. He didn't wear armour. He didn't need it. Around his waist, the chain of a dozen crushed helms jangled softly like a trophy bell.

He said nothing.

Just stood there.

Watching.

Max didn't look up. He spat blood to the side.

"What?" he muttered.

A long pause.

Then Orobas spoke – his voice like tectonic plates grinding underwater, impossibly deep and slow.

"You did it," he said. "The first brick of your cage."

Max's eyes flicked up.

His lip curled. "That wasn't for you."

"No," Orobas rumbled. "It was for them. Which means you'll do it again."

Max pushed himself up slightly, teeth gritted. "You think this makes me yours?"

Orobas took a slow step forward. The ground itself seemed to flinch.

"I think nothing," he said. "I see. And what I see is a creature built for survival. You refuse Moloch. Refuse me. But the moment they screamed—" he tapped his own chest once, slow "—this moved."

Max didn't answer.

He couldn't deny it.

Orobas crouched, one knee cracking the stone, until his eyes were level with Max's. His irises were dark gold, burning quietly like coals long past ignition.

"Moloch will come again. He's... pleased, in his way. But this?" He gestured to the door, the blood, the echoes still clinging to Max's skin. "This is too slow for his plans. He needs more. He wants more."

Max narrowed his eyes. "What plans?"

Orobas said nothing.

Just watched him.

And then – something strange.

A nod. Barely a tilt. Almost respectful.

Max blinked.

But before he could ask, the demon stood to his full height again and turned without a word. The door groaned shut behind him like the mouth of a beast swallowing its kill.

Silence returned.

Max exhaled slowly and leaned back against the wall.

The chill of it seeped into his spine. His hands trembled. He looked down.

No flame.

Just the faintest trace of light still marked his palm. A tiny crescent scar where the power had burned through him – transferred to the humans who now bore it instead.

He pressed the hand against his chest.

He wasn't whole. Not anymore.

But they were alive.

He closed his eyes.

"I saved them," he whispered. Voice hoarse. Barely more than breath. "That's enough."

A pause.

Then again, quieter: "That has to be enough."

The cell stayed silent.

But in the distance, the pit roared for its next fight.

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