Kai Ricky: Bro, you should just cancel the match man Danny replied: Yes. Ricky: It's not worth it. You know how strong Chen is. He could kill you. The phone screen blurred as I scrolled through the groupchat, each message reminding me of how big the risk I was taking was. My thumb hovered over the keyboard. They were right. Of course they were right. Chen would destroy me. He’d proven that already, hadn’t he?But I couldn’t cancel. I wouldn’t. There was too much at stake. My chest tightened, and I forced myself to take a slow breath. Stay calm, stay calm. I took another breath in, then another. The wheezing started–the familiar whistle in my lungs, I was about to have an attack, that meant I needed my inhaler. The same inhaler which was now in pieces on the gym floor. I forced my eyes trying to push the image away, but it felt like an annoying buzz in my head that wouldn’t just go away. The way Chen grabbed me by the collar during training, lifting me like I weighed absolut

kaiMy lungs seized completely. No air in. No air out. Just nothing. Pure, absolute nothing.I tried to gasp, but my throat had closed. My vision tunneled. The crowd's roar became distant, muffled, like I was underwater.Chen Wei didn't stop.Punch after punch after punch. My ribs cracked. My face split open. Blood poured from somewhere—everywhere. I couldn't tell anymore.I hit the canvas hard. The impact jarred something loose in my chest, and I managed one tiny, wheezing breath. Then another."Stay down," someone was saying. Ricky? Tony? I couldn't tell.But I could see.See Maya, standing there in that goddamn shirt.See Chen Wei, walking back to her, leaning over the ropes.See her reach up.See her kiss him.Right there. In front of everyone. In front of me, bleeding out on the canvas.She kissed him.And he kissed her back, his bloody gloves resting on the ropes, her hands on his face.The crowd went insane.Something inside me shattered. Not my ribs—those were already broken.

KAI"Yes."The word left my mouth before I could stop it. Before I could think. Before I could understand what I was really agreeing to."Yes," I said again, stronger this time. "I accept."The seven figures seemed to shift, though they didn't actually move. Like reality bent around them for just a second. I felt something change in the air—or maybe it changed in me. Something fundamental. Something I couldn't name."Good," the center woman said, and I swear I heard satisfaction in her voice. "You've made the right choice, Kai Wang.""Then send me back," I said. "My mom needs me. My sister—""In time," one of the men interrupted. "First, you must understand the terms fully."My stomach dropped. "What terms? You said I'd get a second chance. You said—""We said you would receive power in exchange for service," the center woman said. "And you will. But service requires... specificity.""What does that mean?""It means," another woman said, her voice cold and clinical, "that you will fig

KAIIt was a dream. It had to be a dream.I stared at the words floating in front of my face—[SYSTEM ACTIVATED]—and blinked hard, trying to make them disappear. They didn't. Just hung there in my vision like someone had projected them onto my eyeballs.[INITIALIZING...][LOADING USER DATA...][DAILY TASKS PENDING...]"This isn't real," I whispered. My voice came out rough, like I'd swallowed gravel. My throat burned. Everything burned, actually. My chest felt like someone had parked a truck on it. My ribs screamed with every breath.I looked around the hospital room, trying to ground myself in something real. Beeping monitors. IV poles. Tubes running into my arms—one, two, three different lines. A catheter I definitely didn't want to think about. Heart monitor showing a rhythm that looked way too erratic to be healthy.And that damn glowing text still floating in front of everything:[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE][WELCOME, KAI WANG][LEVEL: 1]"No," I said out loud. "No, this is—I'

KAI Two months.I'd been in this hospital for two whole months, and today I was finally getting out.Parts of me had healed—the ribs were mostly better, the lung was working again, the worst of the bruising had faded to a sick yellow-green color that almost looked normal in the right light. But other parts... other parts were still broken. Just not the kind of broken that showed up on X-rays.I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, staring at my phone. It had been charging on the nightstand for weeks, powered off, ignored. I hadn't had the courage to check it. I hadn't wanted to see the messages, the missed calls, the evidence of a world that had kept turning while I was stuck in this room doing push-ups and fighting with a system only I could see.But today was different. Today I was leaving. And I needed to face whatever was waiting for me out there.I pressed the power button.The phone vibrated to life, and immediately—immediately—notifications started flooding in. Hundreds of the