Chains of Desire

The bandage on my palm was stiff and itchy, a sharp reminder I wasn’t immune to pain. But pain was something I could bear now.

What I couldn’t bear was the silence.

Ranvijay didn’t speak to me until the sun was high enough to burn away the cold shadows of dawn.

When he finally entered the room, he moved like a shadow sliding across the floor—silent, inevitable.

He stopped just short of the window, where I sat staring out, my thoughts tangled like the weeds in the compound’s broken garden.

“You didn’t run,” he said, his voice low and deliberate.

“No,” I replied. “I stayed.”

He turned, his gaze sharp as broken glass. “Good.”

Then he stepped closer, and for a moment, I thought I might crumble under the weight of it.

“Today, you will learn why loyalty is not given — it is earned. Not from me. From yourself.”

I met his eyes, searching for something — mercy, weakness, any crack in the armor.

He gave me none.

“You will meet the others again. They will test you. They will try to break you. But remember—” His voice dropped to a whisper, a promise and a threat—“the empire does not forget those who stand.”

His words echoed in the room after he left.

I was alone again.

But something inside me had shifted.

Fear was still there — sharp and biting — but beneath it, a spark.

Loyalty was not a word. It was a choice.

And I was starting to choose.

The sun burned high, baking the cracked concrete of the training yard.

I was back among the others.

They didn’t welcome me. No one did here. In the Black Lotus, alliances were temporary, and trust was a weapon that cut deeper than any blade.

Bhagat stood nearby, silent. But this time, a woman stepped forward.

Her name was Aarya.

She moved with a predator’s grace — quick, deliberate, and cold. Her eyes were dark pools of calculation, and the moment she looked at me, I felt exposed.

“New blood,” she said, voice smooth but sharp. “I’m Aarya. You’ll learn to hate me.”

The others shifted, watching us like a pack waiting for a spark.

“Why?” I asked, steady despite the knot in my stomach.

She smiled — a flash of teeth that didn’t reach her eyes. “Because you’re a threat. Because you survived yesterday. Because Ranvijay thinks you’re special.”

I clenched my fists.

“Don’t fool yourself,” she said. “In here, we survive by tearing each other apart.”

Her words were poison — but I needed to hear them.

Bhagat clapped his hands sharply.

“Lesson two,” he barked. “You fight as a unit now. Cooperation is survival. But only one leaves this yard standing.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Aarya was my partner — for now.

We moved through drills, strikes, and counters — the dance of war stitched together by mutual suspicion.