It was hard to tell how long Kirin had been lying there. He couldn't remember the last time he stood. His bones felt like stone stiff, weightless, useless. His stomach hadn't screamed in a while, but that didn’t mean the hunger was gone. It just meant his body had given up protesting. Now, it just hurt. Dull, quiet, and constant. His mouth was dry. His lips cracked. The water from the ceiling had become his lifeline, the occasional drip, caught with the edge of his tongue like a starving dog.The collar around his neck burned. It never stopped. Every time his thoughts drifted to using his powers, even just the idea of escaping, searing pain would shoot through his body. The cursed collar pulsed with demonic essence. It wasn’t just a trap, it was a leash. One word had been engraved into the metal band. Slave.It made him sick to his bones.His fingers ran along the cold floor, tracing grooves in the stone for the hundredth time. There was nothing to count. No way to tell what time it w

He didn’t know how long it had been.Once again, time had lost all meaning. Seconds stretched like hours, and hours blended into years. His ribs stuck out like broken railings on a collapsed bridge. His tongue was dry, his stomach gnawed at itself, and his breath came out in short, desperate huffs. The only thing he could still taste was the metallic tang of blood in his mouth from biting his own tongue in his sleep.Then it happened.The door scraped open.He didn’t look up immediately. He’d learned not to but the shift in the air gave it away, something different, something new. Two demon guards stepped in, their grotesque silhouettes casting long shadows across the damp, moldy floor. Their hooves clacked like cracked bones on the stone. They said nothing at first, just chuckled to themselves. One of them was carrying a wooden bowl. The other one trailed behind, swinging a chain like it was a child’s toy.The smell hit him before the sight did. Something...warm and quite awful to lo

He slept with his back against the cold wall, arms crossed tightly over his chest like it could keep the loneliness from slipping into his bones. Nothing was comforting about the stone, the damp, or the silence, but it was safer than being awake. At least in sleep, the underworld couldn’t reach him.And that night, for the first time in what felt like years, the darkness gave him something else.He dreamed.He was back in the Lightning Sect.The sun was shining. Not dim or dying, not wrapped in ash or tainted by blood but actually shining, he had missed the sight of that, real sunlight. It touched his face and warmed his shoulders. He was younger again, lighter, his robes weren’t torn, his fingers weren’t bruised. He could breathe without feeling like something was sitting on his chest.And Grand Zenin was there.“Again,” Zenin barked, watching Kirin’s form with that same impossible standard. “The Third Stance is for balance, not for power. Feel the current, do not force it.”“Yes, Ma

Kirin still slept after the humiliation of the arena, and worse than sleeping, hr dreamed about it. His dreams were vivid and real, they had become that of late, and it almost felt like he actually did experience it himself all over again.They dragged him back by the chains, not like a man, not even like an animal.But like a sack of trash.His knees scraped the jagged stone floor. His wrists bled where the cuffs bit into his skin. His body felt like a wet rag, bruised, soaked in sweat, dirt, and humiliation. The laughter from the arena still echoed in his ears like a haunting curse.A game. That’s what they called it, entertainment that used the lives of others for pleasure.They had laughed as the prisoners fought, clawed, and whimpered like puppets on display, shackled together, stumbling like drunks, starving and desperate. Kirin hadn't even fought back. He didn’t know how to anymore.When they tossed him back in his cell, he didn’t move for a while. He lay there staring at the w

He didn’t know what day it was anymore. The concept of day and night barely made sense in a place where time wasn’t marked by light, only by how long the rats took to nibble at corpses. He hadn’t eaten in what felt like weeks. His skin clung tightly to his bones, his breathing shallow, cracked like paper tearing in half. He lay on the cold, stone floor, barely alive, barely conscious, and not sure if either mattered anymore.Then came the sound that he had come to dread over time.Heavy footsteps that made metal scraping sounds, the doors clanking open and the clatter of rusted keys on a chain.Kirin blinked slowly. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t speak either. He just waited for the next inevitable punishment.Perhaps it would be the arena this time.Two demons appeared. One carried a long pole with a hook at the end, the other held a set of cuffs lined with barbs. Without a word, they dragged him out. His body was limp, his legs trailing behind like dead weight. They didn’t care, to the