Darkness, just, endless darkness. It felt liquid and heavy all around him as if he was as if he were stuck in liquid darkness. He tried to open his mouth, but the liquid rushed into his mouth, then into his nose and ears. Pain exploded in his every cell, making him want to scream, but every time he tried to scream, more of the liquid darkness entered through his mouth, making his cells burst into even more pain, and the process repeated itself over and over again in an endless sequence.
It felt like he was stuck in nothingness, with no beginning and no end. It went on and on, only a weightless, dark pressure that pressed in from every direction, thick like water but empty of resistance. He did not float. He did not fall. He was held within it as if it were under control, and he could not escape it. Thin, invisible lines wrapped around his wrists, ankles, throat, spine, pulling just enough to keep him stretched, suspended in a posture that was neither standing nor lying. They did not cut. They did not tighten. They just kept him in place tightly.
He could not breathe. The motion happened, but no air answered it. His chest rose and fell in a slow, useless rhythm, like drowning without water. Panic never fully arrived. It had nowhere to take hold. Even fear felt distant, dulled, stretched thin across time. There was no essence of time. It felt like he had been stuck in forever. Moments did not follow one another. They stacked, heavy and unmoving. A second could have been a year. A year might have passed in the space between one thought and the next.
He tried to move his fingers. The command reached them, but the body did not respond. The strings held easily, as if they had motion. there was no sound. Just endless silence that he couldn't hear, even the beating of his own heart. It was like he had only ever experienced sound in his memory, like a distant ringing. Silence filled the space, deep and constant, as the echo left behind after a scream that never happened.
He wondered if he was asleep or if he was dead. The thought drifted, slow and incomplete, then sank before it could settle. Even thoughts drowned here. They surfaced briefly, then slipped back into the dark, unfinished. There was only pain without relief, only suspension in endless darkness.
The stillness did not break for a long, long time. then it raptured. The pain that he had been experiencing till then felt like a whisper compared to what came next. Pain arrived without warning, without source, everywhere at once. Not sharp, not sudden, but vast. A pressure that crushed inward and pulled outward at the same time, as if his body had become a fault line and something ancient was forcing itself through.
The strings holding him tightened violently. Something inside him began to tear. Not his flesh, this pain did not care for flesh. It reached deeper, into the quiet places where thought and feeling lived. His mind fractured in slow motion, stretched thin and peeled apart layer by layer. Every memory, every instinct, every fragile piece of self was pulled, separated, then forced back together wrong. It felt like his very existence was being torn and rearranged.
He tried to scream. The urge was there. The command formed. But his mouth filled with nothingness, thick and suffocating. It poured into him like black water, flooding his throat, his lungs, his chest. He gagged without sound, drowned without air, suffocated without dying.
The pain intensified.
He was being taken apart piece by piece and then put back together, only to be taken apart again. he was pulled into fragments, arms that were no longer, thoughts that no longer belonged to him, emotions stripped down to raw sensation. Then, before he could vanish entirely, he was forced back together.
Again.
And again.
Each time, different. Each time worse. It felt like being shaped by hands that did not understand mercy, molded, broken, remade. The process never finished. It only repeated, endlessly, as if completion itself was forbidden.
Time stretched until it became endless. He did not know how long it lasted. Duration had dissolved. Pain was the only measure left, the only thing that moved. It crawled through him, rewrote him, hollowed him out, and filled the space with fire. His thoughts splintered into fragments of instinct.
Stop.
Please.
End.
None of them reached anywhere. The drowning deepened. His body convulsed against the strings, useless, trembling, suspended in an agony that had no peak, only continuation. he wished more than anything to pass out, but he was the most conscious he had been experiencing the endless torture. Whatever was doing this had no intention of letting him break free, only of making sure he survived every second of it and experienced every pain.
Lotaga had been watching Team 25 from a distance, especially Sagiri. Everyone in Captain Salka's battalion had been amazed by his sensory skills, and no one had believed his lie about bad hearing. Not even those born deaf could develop sensory skills that far, sensory skills that could feel the accurate presence of thirteen men, especially assassins. Only highly skilled soldiers could hear enemies approaching a few vaara away, and even so, sometimes they couldn't pinpoint the exact number. The boy was special even though he was still weak. He wondered just how powerful he could become. Salka had said to keep what they had seen secret since the boy seemed to want to keep it a secret, but that didn't mean he could not spy on him. The boy had captured his curiosity, and he loved interesting people. Salka was going to kill him if he found out he had been skulking around and being where he shouldn't be.
They all had wondered why they were summoned to pick the boy from the headquarters, and only seasoned veterans and a war titan like Captain Salka were to lead a team. After the ambush, they had finally started to understand. Perhaps someone had their eyes on him and wanted to use his sensory skills to make him a formidable weapon.
He was even more amazed when he pinpointed a silent ambush. It was as if the boy was not affected by the invisibility and smell-impairing gases. his sensory abilities were even better than he had thought. The boy did not have a clan or tribe's name and was raised by adoptive parents, according to his secret file, and he wondered if he was from one of the lost clans that had gone extinct. He had not seen such sensory, not even from the Tamelku tribe of the west. The boy looked bad from the intense training of the past few days, yet he pushed himself. he was the only reason his team hadn't lost against the ambush. he had pinpointed not just the location of the three teams that wanted to ambush them, but their accurate positions. it was as if the boy could see the whole field or sense it. Lotaga smiled, perched on one of the pillars as he watched the scene down below with interest. He had seen many invisibility simulation trainings, yet this one was by far the most interesting. If he and that Kiuga boy, who was a genius strategist, and Kaka the powerhouse were ever to be put together, they could form a lethal team.
He stumbled on his knees, retching a mouthful of blood from his veins breaking, but he still kept his hand on the earth as if he used his hand to feel. Lotaga wanted to stop the exercise, fearing the boy's heart was going to burst open, but he let it go on a little longer. He was amazed at how the boy was giving accurate commands to his teammates, pinpointing the accurate positions of their opponents while he remained stooped on the ground. He wretched another mouthful, but he still held on. He might have been weak in body compared to his teammates, but his heart was made of stone. Salka had also told him the boy was a genius, absorbing what people read in a week in just a day. Of course, he was not to disclose that, but that made his insides twitch with curiosity. He was going to beg Salka to let him train the boy in core strength exercisers so he could stay closer to him.
The other team had not expected that, and even the Tamelku twins were at a loss. they had planned how to subdue them, but in their pride, they had forgotten one person. they had just thought he was weak, but they had not expected his senses to rival theirs. They were not affected by the invisibility gas because of the secret art of their clan, yet they had been bested and rivaled. They withdrew just as the boy collapsed, not able to hold on much longer.
He watched a little longer to see what his teammates could do in such a situation. The exercise was, after all, to teach them about teamwork. the decision they made could decide whether he could let them pass or fail. N'varu Neni was the first to move to him, and he could see clear worry from where he was perched. with the special gear, the gas did not affect any of the monitoring instructors.
"He has fainted!" Zolinka said, crouching beside him, too.
"How weak," Kaka remarked. yet he turned around to look at the boy who was now slumped on N'varu. Yet Lotaga could only see curiosity in his eyes.
"I assume he overused whatever skill he has to save your asses, but his body is weakened from training to handle whatever his tribe's secret art is." Kiuga made an assumption just by watching. he was a genius at deducing circumstances, and nothing missed his eyes. blood kept pouring from sagiris mouth, together with another substance.
"He looks bad, really bad," N'varu said, looking frantic. "There are still five more teams in the arena. We can't continue with him in this state," He added, and Kaka sneered, hating to throw in the game. The boy could not let anything stop him from winning, and Lotaga watched even more to see what his thoughts could be.
"I agree, let's forfeit," Kiuga said, and there was a sharp intake from everyone thinking of what was at stake. "We shall take a vote then," Kiuga continued.
"I forfeit!" N'varu Neni was the first to announce, not even missing a beat, and his eyes never left Sagiri. The look in his eyes was sorrowful, as if he could not stand to see him in pain. Lotaga was amazed at the boy's display of empathy.
"I forfeit." Zolinka was next.
Ulekai. "I forfeit."
Kiuga. "I forfeit," Kiuga said.
Bukata. "I forfeit!"
It was a tie since Sagiri's vote still counted. The others looked like they were waiting for Kaka to decide before they made theirs.
"Whatever, let's just call the instructor before he dies, and they blame me," Kaka sneered, abandoning his defensive stance. he refused to look at him, however, keeping his gaze forward. Lotaga smirked, watching him struggle with giving in,
"Seems you boys have reached a decision." Lotaga swooped down, landing gracefully.
"Team 25 forfeits the match! Their queen is incapacitated," he announced.
He lifted Sagiri from N'varu's hands, who refused to hand him over at first, but gave him up. He carried him in both his hands, and the team followed closely behind him.
"Will he be okay?" N'varu asked.
"He just burst veins from training too hard, he won't die," Lotaga said, moving fast to the central pentagon, half the team following behind him, of course, Kaka wasn't among them, too proud to show concern, and the four who did vote. Probably ashamed of not forfeiting first.