Kira didn't have time to realize the fight had begun.
The gong struck, and the air in front of his face exploded.
To the crowd, it was the charge of a maddened bull, but for Kira, reality suddenly splintered into static frames. His perception, sharpened by a week of sepulchral silence, broke its leash.
He saw everything: the capillaries bursting in Halden's eyes, the whitening knuckles of the fist flying straight for its mark.
Move! Kira's mental command shattered against a deafening wall.
The trajectory of the fist had been clear to him for an eternity. He had seen this swing a thousand times in nightmares he couldn't remember.
"Dodge left. Step back. Come on, Kira."
The connection between brain and muscle felt severed. Kira watched his own death, imprisoned within his own head.
Halden's right fist slammed into Kira's jaw.
It was the dry crunch of breaking timber. He was tossed into the air, flipped, and hammered into the arena floorboards.
"DEAD!" someone in the front row roared.
"I TOLD YOU, HE'S MADE OF SOAP!"
"HALDEN, YOU SWING LIKE A DRUNKEN OLD HAG!" came shouts from the upper tiers.
Halden didn't even bother to check his work. He lazily lowered his arms and spat, looking down at the motionless body with disappointment. He began to turn toward the Master's balcony, raising a fist in a victory gesture.
The referee stepped closer, looking down at the boy in the sand with disgust.
"ONE!" the referee barked.
Kira tried to breathe, but his chest was a void. His mouth instantly filled with hot copper. White noise howled in his ears.
I... am I still alive?
He wanted only one thing: to pull the blanket of darkness over himself, away from this maddening light and noise. To slip into unconsciousness, for every impulse of life triggered a new flash of torture.
Please, enough... let it all end...
"TWO! THREE!"
Kira's left arm was pinned beneath his torso. As he tried to shift, something in his elbow gave a sickening squelch; the joint simply slipped from its socket.
And then, into this chaos of pain, a single word drilled itself.
"Zero" echoed in his mind like a strange haunting.
It was familiar, yet humiliating.
It was a protocol that didn't give a damn about his desire to die.
"FOUR!"
The signal didn't come from his brain; it came from his bones.
The fingers of his right hand clawed into the wood. With horror, Kira felt his arm, ignoring his will, begin to straighten.
It was like a cocked trap snapping shut.
What the... what is this?! Stop!
Kira tried to unclench his fist to simply collapse, but his fingers dug deeper into the planks.
In response to that thought, something shifted in his shoulder. A sharp crack rang out.
Kira didn't immediately realize it was his own shoulder snapping as his body forcibly wrenched it into place.
Bewilderment flared brighter than the pain. He felt his triceps strain to the limit, thrusting his broken body upward.
The muscles should have failed; the nerves should have burnt out. But the right arm operated with terrifying precision.
Kira couldn't even scream; his throat was choked with salty foam.
"FIVE!"
The stands began to fall silent. A hush crept across the arena.
The body rose in jerks. Kira felt his left knee, taking the brunt of the weight, begin to tremble.
His tendons tightened until they hummed. He waited for them to snap so he could plunge back into the merciful dust.
"SIX..." the referee's voice trailed off.
But instead, a spasm rippled down his thigh. It locked the muscles, turning the leg into unyielding steel.
This wasn't recovery; this was exploitation.
Kira felt like a front-row spectator at the torture of his own body.
His frame no longer belonged to him. Every inch of his ascent echoed with a nauseating spasm in his gut.
Halden felt the silence at his back. He turned slowly, his triumphant smirk sliding away to reveal yellow teeth in a grimace of confusion.
"Are you... are you immortal, you little rat?" he growled, a note of uncertainty cutting through his voice for the first time.
The arena, which a second ago had been drowning in ecstatic shrieks, suddenly choked on its own breath.
It was the collective delusion of hundreds whose logic had just been crushed.
"WHAT THE HELL!"
"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STANDING!" a bookie on the balcony wailed, gripping the railing so hard his knuckles turned white.
"STAY DOWN, CARRION! JUST DIE ALREADY! YOU'RE RUINING MY ODDS!'
The referee froze with his hand raised, unable to believe his eyes:
"Can you... can you even stand?"
Kira couldn't even answer; he simply couldn't.
Halden didn't wait. His calm was replaced by a leaden focus. He realized that what stood before him wasn't meat... it was something that shouldn't be moving.
The giant closed the distance with one powerful lunge.
The wind-up for the final blow faltered; the fist never moved.
For a moment, his eyes, accustomed to seeing vulnerable points, saw... nothing to latch onto.
Something was wrong.
He couldn't see where to strike.