The human body was a special thing. Pillows, blankets, plush mattresses… None of it mattered. The body would find a way to be uncomfortable. When Ryu woke in the dark cell, his body did not have to search far.

The floor was cool. Blissfully cool. He pressed his face against it, hoping the pain would go away. It didn’t. Sensory information trickled in. He smelled dirt, tasted blood, and heard the rattle of his own lungs.

Dead. He should be dead. Keira had won. He had lost. His family… His family was safe, if he believed a liar. They should have killed him. He wished they had.

He tried to sit up, but the chains around his hands sapped his strength. He inched himself to the wall and propped himself against the wall, drooping his head like a drunk. Wretched. So wretched. No, he would be strong.

His wounds were healed. Sort of. His ribs and jaw were both restored but not well. His body ached. Gods, but he did not even know where he was.

“Are you awake, human?” a dry, clinical voice asked. Strange, that. He was sure he heard the voice, but his ears picked up odd clicks. He guessed he never had heard a Bug talk before.

“Aye.” His hoarse voice almost choked on the words. Damn, he needed water.

Soft, white light filled the room, and Ryu blinked away tears. He looked up. His cell was an octagon. Its smooth, black stone walls of the room seemed to eat at the light. A Bug stood in one corner like a sentinel.

“I am Thirty-Seven,” it said in the same odd clicks. Its two clacking mandibles set below its wide, buggish eyes. Its carapace exterior had an almost crystalline look.

Ryu scratched at his unkept beard. Tried to, anyways. “Ryu.”

“You will fight.”

He no longer had the energy for anger. “Fight?”

“You are a warrior, are you not?”

“I suppose.”

The Bug clicked its mandibles together. “Then you will fight,” it said.

“Can I have some water?” Problems were best taken one at a time, it had to be said.

“Yes,” it said. A bowl appeared from its storage device, and it sat the plain metal dish in front of Ryu. It poured water in the bowl from a bottle.

Ryu sighed. “A bowl?”

“Yes, humans use bowls, do they not? Drink. I will have another bring food later. You will fight tomorrow.”

A piece of the wall slid down, and the Bug exited the room with clipped steps. Ryu was left looking at the bowl. Dead. Aye, it was better to be dead.

Brother, Ender said in his mind, disturbing the thick, oppressive silence left in Thirty-Seven’s absence.

“Yes?”

We lost.

“Aye.”

Do you want to be stronger, then?

Ryu sucked in a deep breath, pressing an elbow against his sore ribs. His eyes darted around the small cell, while his mind replayed the fight with Thirty-Seven. He had never stood a chance. A part of him he thought long dead woke up.

“I do.” More than anything.

Ryu’s vision blackened, and when it cleared up, he was in the bare white room of his Shard Realm. Ender paced across from him, jerking his head and snapping at the air. It seemed they were both in cells, then.

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“Welcome brother,” Ender said, stopping his pace. The predatory slits his Twin called eyes seemed to measure him.

“How am I here?”

“It is your Shard Realm. You were always allowed here.”

Ryu grunted. “And you never told me?”

Ender smiled with his too-perfect teeth. “I had hoped to wait until I had the advantage, but our loss will not remain unpunished.”

Ryu chuckled, letting his self-loathing and anger escape their cages in his heart. “Unpunished?” he asked. “We’re dead, brother. You just haven’t realized it yet. Good while it lasted, right?”

Ender shook his head and disappeared in a puff of familiar black smoke. “The Shard Realm is an odd place. Here, Techniques can be used without restraint. Injuries, maladies, and restraints can’t enter this place, and death… Well, you will soon learn of death.”

The first blow rattled Ryu’s teeth, and he was reminded of Thirty-Seven’s bone breaking strength. He let the next blow throw him to the ground. A stomp shattered one of his legs. A groan escaped his lips. His arms went next.

“Having fun?” he asked with blood-stained lips. Ender paced the other side of the room once more, leaving Ryu broken and on the ground.

“Why… Why must you be so weak?”

Ryu ran his tongue over his lips. Fear had a poor taste, all things considered. “My bad, brother. Guess we can’t all meet your standards.”

He never felt the stomp that splattered his insides outward, only blackness. Some time later, he woke up in the stone cell once more. His pain returned. Broken inside and broken outside.

He returned to his Shard Realm. Getting beaten never had appealed to him. He looked at Ender, who seemed startled by his return.

“Techniques without restraint, you say?” he asked. His anger had returned, burning away his fear. Keira had to die. He would see his family once more. Bonny…

“Yes, brother,” Ender said. The Twins gazed at each other, and then both blurred into pools of black smoke. Madness was always appealing to the desperate.

---

Thirty-Seven entered the cell some hours later. A day later. Gods, but time was meaningless in the black cell. The Bug drug Ryu to his feet, the man too weakened to by his chains to resist.

“You will fight,” it said in the same clinical, clipped tones. “I will bring you to fight.”

Ryu grunted. Had not even had breakfast yet, but what was a man to do? Fight, bleed, and die, the story of his miserable life. Between Ender and now the Bugs, his humanity had little remaining chance for survival. Not that he minded. He needed something- anything- to stave off the hopelessness that beat at the gates of his heart.

He followed behind the Bug. Tired, beaten, and chained as he was, Ryu was sure he painted a desperate picture, but then, he felt the Bugs would not mind, simple comfort though it may be. Dark, glassy stone hall passed dark glassy stone as they walked, and Ryu was sure the Bugs did not need light to see. Neither did he for that matter. At least, he hadn’t before the chains had nullified his Skills.

The only power left to Ryu was to die at Ender’s hands in his Shard Realm, and even that was temporary, more a figment of his imagination than anything tangible. Fight? Ryu was unsure how he would fare against the most base of monsters in this state.

Even his cultivation was suppressed to the limits of his body. Denser muscle fibres, stronger bones, and enhanced lungs were well and good, but he had passed beyond their aid long ago. At his stage, his body unconsciously limited the forces suppressing his movement and supported him through some interchange with the world. His chains hampered this interaction, leaving him with maybe half of his real power.

“I will collect you after the fight.” The Bug’s voice interrupted his thoughts, and he looked at the stairs that awaited him.

The chain that joined the manacles on his wrist fell to the ground, but his power failed to return. Thirty-Seven blocked the way back. Ryu sighed. Fight, bleed, and repeat. It was hard to imagine anything else anymore. How foolish he was to expect anything different.

He climbed the stone stairs, his eyes adjusting to the light that drifted in from above. Before long, he reached a triangular doorway that opened into a barren stone warehouse. Light drifted in through plain windows high above. The Bugs lived underground, he realized. His cell, the halls, the stairs were all underground. The buildings on this side of the river were fake. The Bugs’ aboveground defenses were the exception rather than the rule.

His discovery only cracked his indifference. The man in dirty and torn clothes that waited on the other side of the warehouse shattered it, however. Fight. That word had triggered images of monsters and Bugs, yet Ryu was to fight- to murder- once more. Or he could surrender. He could die without soiling his soul further. He could-

“The winner will be rewarded with extra meals and a more palatable cell,” a voice said, one as dry and genderless as Thirty-Seven’s.

“Why are you doing this?” the man across from Ryu cried. The tattered remains of his uniform showed the emblem of the Third Republic, and tears carved trails through the dirt on his tan cheeks.

As if it mattered why. The end result was the same. One would die, or they both would. The only question was if the winner could live with the results of his victory. Ryu could not find the answer. The voice never responded, leaving Ryu and the man staring at each other.

“I-I have a son,” the man said. “Please, don’t kill me. I have a son.”

Ryu felt his heart harden. “I know,” he said. His next words came out a whisper. “Forgive me. Please forgive me.”

Ryu’s first punch shattered the man’s nose. The next sent him to the floor. Whimpers rose up to meet him, but the man’s body did not. A stomp prompted a scream. Ryu bit back tears and choked back bile. The skin of his knuckles was cracked, the man’s blood staining it like ink.

Another stomp. A cry. A third stomp. No more sounds. Only blood, so much blood.

A man was dead, another was broken, and the divine laughed. Life? What was life but the neverending pursuit of happiness from the back of despair? Happiness was unobtainable. Man’s peace came in the time between disappointments, and in that regard, Ryu’s life was as far from peace as could be.

Yet he continued because the pursuit was all anyone had.