I’m at the center of the Colosseum. I turn slowly in place. There’s nothing. No visible opponent. No movement. The stands are empty, frozen in an artificial silence. Doubt settles in. Is this really where it starts?

  A voice rings out, mechanical, like an official announcement.

  "Heyo. Evaluation subject present."

  I don’t have time to react before a second voice takes over. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t insist. It’s already there.

  "Hello, Heyo."

  I lift my head.

  A woman stands alone in the upper stands. Straight. Still. A black jumpsuit with no insignia. Chestnut hair pulled into a tight braid. A tablet in one hand, a microphone in the other. Her gaze goes through me without emotion.

  "I’m Valie. My Mots is Evaluation."

  A pause, perfectly controlled.

  "You are classified as an anomaly. Your Mots is unstable. Your control is insufficient."

  She doesn’t look away.

  "This trial is meant to measure your ability to act without causing a catastrophe."

  Her voice stays flat.

  "If you fail, you will be executed."

  My fists tighten before I even notice. She doesn’t react.

  "Evaluation begins."

  A man enters from the opposite opening. Gray uniform, a single star on his chest. Shaved head. Fixed stare. His body is dense, trained. Every step is controlled. A silent pressure follows him.

  I step back. He stops a few meters away.

  "Norman. First-rank soldier. No Mots."

  I swallow.

  "I… my name is Heyo."

  "I know," he says without emotion. "Don’t waste time. Fight."

  Norman walks toward me without hurry. His pace is sure, measured. I back away on instinct, already late. He strikes without warning. His fist slips through my guard and smashes my nose. Pain detonates, clean and immediate. Blood runs and I stagger.

  "Tighten."

  I can’t answer. A second punch buries itself in my stomach and air leaves my lungs in a dry snap. My body folds, my legs shake, but I stay upright.

  "Your body is late."

  I grit my teeth. When the next hit comes, I let the energy circulate. Not to attack. Just to hold. The pain doesn’t vanish, but it spreads differently. Muscles absorb better. My footing stabilizes. I retreat again, but I don’t fall.

  Norman hits again. I block clumsily. My arms buzz under the impact, but they hold. My breath is short. My heart is pounding too hard.

  "Continue."

  I try to strike back. He dodges without effort and sweeps my legs. I crash hard into the sand.

  "You’re letting too much energy leak. Make it circulate."

  I get up with effort, already behind him. So I think of a weapon. I want a pistol. Light flares. The gun appears, then disintegrates immediately. A punch slams into my face before I can react. I sway. I want a pistol.

  Nothing.

  A kick snaps up under my chin. My body lifts off the ground and lands hard on my back. Vision blurs. Every attempt to rise costs more than the next blow. A weight settles in, dull and crushing, paired with a strange fatigue, like my own Mots is rejecting me.

  I understand. Wanting doesn’t work. I stop calling for objects.

  When Norman hits again, I push everything somewhere else. Into the body. The energy circulates better. Muscles answer faster. My footing holds. Pain stays, but it doesn’t stop me. I back up, I absorb, I hold.

  Valie watches without intervening. She writes. Then her voice drops, cold and clean.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "Norman. Eliminate him."

  He vanishes from my vision. A brutal pressure crushes into my back and an arm locks around my throat. The hold is perfect. Air cuts off. My throat burns. I struggle, I pull, I strike, but nothing gives. Energy compresses inside me, not to explode, not to create, only to survive.

  Refusal surges up. It isn’t a thought. It isn’t a request. It’s a shove. Something dense forms against my back under that pressure. Air compresses there, then detonates. Norman is thrown backward and the recoil knocks me away as the mass cracks and disappears. Distance opens at last.

  I collapse into the sand. I cough. Air comes back like fire. My arms fail. My body is empty. Norman is already standing. His breathing is calm. His posture intact. He looks barely touched. He adjusts. I lift my eyes for a second. Valie isn’t writing anymore. She’s looking at me.

  My body is drained. Muscles don’t respond and every breath is short, badly controlled. Norman doesn’t loosen anything. His stance stays locked, ready to strike the moment an order falls. They know. Evra. To them, I’m not a soldier at the end of his rope. I’m a risk. Norman steps forward, close enough to finish me if she says it.

  Valie’s voice echoes through the Colosseum, clear and perfectly controlled.

  "Result sufficient… for now."

  Norman freezes instantly. Valie continues, eyes still on me.

  "Overall combat rating remains insufficient. However, progress was observed at the end of the trial."

  I try to lift my head. My muscles refuse.

  "From this point on, your program changes. Rest. Recovery. Then constant training with Norman until you reach a combat level deemed satisfactory."

  She turns away already. For her, the file is closed.

  Norman says nothing. I don’t have time to react. The hit is precise, only just hard enough. The world tips and I drop.

  When I open my eyes, pain is everywhere. Diffuse. Crushing. Like my entire body was ground down and roughly stitched back together. I’m lying on a bed. When I sit up slowly, every movement protests, but I manage to scan the room. The bed is basic metal. A mattress too thin. A white sheet. A gray blanket. Nothing comfortable. Just enough to recover without lingering. The room is entirely white. Smooth walls, no texture, no pattern, no trace of life. Silence sits heavy, almost clinical. To my left, a gray door. When I open it, it makes no sound. Behind it is a compact bathroom. A sink fixed to the wall. A small shower hidden behind a white curtain. The toilet right beside it, no divider. Everything packed into one space, designed for efficiency, not privacy.

  A voice comes through the door.

  "This is your room. You stay here until further notice."

  A hatch opens and a tray slides onto the floor. Yellow mash that looks suspicious. A few dull vegetables, already wilting.

  "Enjoy."

  The hatch shuts. The lock clicks right after. Silence drops again, clean and without echo. I’m alone. Not free, but alive, and for now that’s enough.

  I stare at the tray for a long time. It isn’t hunger tightening my stomach. It isn’t the smell either. My body is still too tense to feel something that simple. Nausea hits without warning. It rises fast, then catches in my throat. It isn’t physical. It’s mental. My mind is trying to catch up to what my body went through without giving it time to understand. The evaluation. The Colosseum. Losing control. Helplessness. Being taken. Everything mixes with no order. Images stack, overlap, no transition. My body is here in this white room, but part of me is still there.

  I go into the bathroom and lean over the toilet. My reflection shows in the still water, slightly warped but unmistakably mine. My face is still my own. And still, something has changed. I stay there a moment. Then I straighten.

  I don’t throw up.

  I swallow it all. The unease. The doubt. The tension. I keep them like a reminder. I stand slowly and force my breathing to slow down, even though the fatigue is still there, lodged in muscle and behind my eyes. I rinse my face at the sink. The water is cold, almost aggressive. It runs over my skin and drags me out of the haze.

  When I lift my head, the mirror catches me. My reflection gives me an image I’d almost forgotten. Dark circles. A shadowed, nearly empty stare. Not sad. Not broken. Just closed. Light brown skin cutting hard against the clinical white of the room. Thick black hair, unruly, sticking up everywhere. I stay still a moment, looking at myself without truly recognizing it. Something about me feels distant, contained. Back in the main room, the food is waiting. It’s bland, cold, unpleasant, a texture you endure more than taste. I eat anyway. My body has to recover. I have to hold. The floor is almost better than the bed. It’s hard, but cool, and that sensation loosens the tension clinging to my shoulders a little. Without noticing, something rises in me.

  My Mots. My Soul Definition.

  I close my eyes and let myself sink inward. A wide prairie spreads beneath a sky of unreal colors. Nothing truly moves, and yet everything feels alive, present, attentive. I’m on the summit, like always, but something has changed. My vantage point is the same, but my gaze reaches farther. I turn. Behind me, the ocean stretches endlessly, immense and unstable. In front of it stand the golden doors. The first is slightly open, leaking a thin thread of energy that trickles down and feeds the first lake.

  I walk to it without hesitation. The descent is slow, almost gentle. I don’t know if I’m truly walking or if the world carries me in its own way. When I reach the lake, I let myself drop. The energy is dense, alive. It passes through me without crushing me. I let it circulate through muscle, bone, breath, as my heart begins to speed up.

  BOOM.

  BOOM.

  BOOM.

  Each beat locks something in place. My body strengthens, steadies, as if pieces are slowly being put back where they belong. Then I hit the bottom. The limit. I know, clearly, I can’t go deeper. Not yet. So I stay there, still, letting the energy soak into me without forcing it, without trying to push past what my body can handle. When I open my eyes, I’m back in the cell. Nothing around me has changed. Same walls. Same silence. And yet something is different. Clearer. More stable. Like part of the chaos has been filtered out, held at distance.

  I take a shower. The water is clean. I change after. A gray t-shirt. Gray pants. A small star stitched into the fabric. Recruit or prisoner, the difference barely matters anymore. I lie down on the bed. The day was short, but intense. Too dense to fit in a single breath. My mind replays images with no order. The brutal wake-up. The chains. Celia. The Colosseum. Norman. Before, I was prey. An easy target. Today, they want to turn me into a tool.

  But they’re wrong. They have no idea what they just set in motion.