The atmosphere around us shifted then—one moment charged with chaotic energy, the next pressed flat beneath a weight so heavy it crushed sound itself into submission.
A hush settled over the crowd, prisoners who’d been shouting and jostling moments before now froze mid-motion, every eye tracking toward me and the scarred mountain of a man looming above my considerably smaller frame, anticipation crackling through the air like static before a lightning strike.
The silence stretched so taut I could practically hear it groaning under the strain, threatening to snap and unleash whatever violence had been building in the space between heartbeats.
I let the quiet linger for a few seconds—timing was everything in moments like these—before I gestured up at the man with a lazy flick of my wrist, my voice carrying across the courtyard with theatrical clarity.
"This charming fellow used to be my old Boss’s right-hand man, back when I was making a general nuisance of myself in the lower layer." I tilted my head with playful curiosity that didn’t quite reach my eyes. "Small world, isn’t it?"
The man’s entire face contorted into something approaching a snarl, his ruined features twisting in ways that shouldn’t have been anatomically possible given the extent of scar tissue pulling everything tight.
Surprise flickered behind his dark eyes, brief but unmistakable, as though he couldn’t quite believe I’d remembered him through all the burns and disfigurement. "You..." His voice came out rough, scraped raw by damage and time. "You actually remember me?"
I let out a laugh that bubbled up bright and airy despite the tension coiling through every muscle in my body. "Of course I remember you!" I paused, my expression shifting into something more contemplative without losing its playful edge. "Although I’ll admit, I didn’t think you’d survive after the Boss’s betrayal. Color me impressed by your continued existence."
The man’s jaw clenched hard enough that I heard his teeth grind together, a wet clicking sound that made my skin crawl in response.
"How did you make it to the city?" I asked, crossing my arms with casual interest. "That’s quite the journey from the lower layer. Must be an interesting story involving violence, betrayal, and several regrettable decisions."
He brushed off my question with a sharp shake of his head. "None of your business." The words came out clipped and final, carrying the kind of hostility that made small talk feel like negotiating through a minefield.
I sighed with exaggerated disappointment, letting my shoulders drop in a theatrical display of wounded feelings. "Well, if you’re going to be rude about it, I suppose I’ll just let it go. No need to strain yourself with conversation." I straightened again, my expression shifting back into something more businesslike despite the humor still dancing in my eyes. "So what do you want from me?"
Without warning, his hand shot out so fast my enhanced reflexes barely registered the movement, his fingers closing around my throat with bruising strength.
The crowd gasped—a collective intake of breath sounding like wind rushing through a tunnel—and I felt the air pressure shift as multiple guards raised their weapons in my peripheral vision, fingers hovering over triggers with visible hesitation.
They wanted to intervene but something held them back, perhaps the same morbid curiosity that had frozen the prisoners in place.
The man leaned in close enough that I could smell the particular funk of someone who’d been living in a hellhole for far too long—sweat, old burns, and something acrid that might’ve been desperation fermented into physical form.
His grip tightened incrementally, cutting off just enough air to be uncomfortable without quite crossing into fatal territory, like he’d practiced this exact amount of pressure on previous victims.
"You," he growled, his voice dropping into registers that resonated in my chest cavity, "robbed me of everything. My luxury life in the lower layer, my position, my respect—all of it gone because your crew decided to kill the Boss, the one man who saved me from nothing and gave me purpose."
Spittle flew from his ruined lips as the words poured out faster, building momentum like a runaway cart careening downhill. "He pulled me from the gutter, taught me how to survive, how to thrive in that cesspool, and you destroyed him like he was nothing! Like his life meant nothing! Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch the person who saved you get torn apart by animals pretending to be people?"
The rant continued, words tumbling over each other in a torrent of accumulated rage. He detailed every slight, every loss, every humiliation that had followed the Boss’s death, his voice cracking around the edges as emotion threatened to break through the fury.
The prisoners leaned in despite themselves, caught up in the raw display of feeling, while I hung there in his grip with my feet barely touching the ground and tried very hard not to look bored.
When he finally paused for breath—lungs heaving, eyes wild—I brought my hand up to my mouth with deliberate slowness and let out the loudest, most obnoxious yawn I could manufacture. My jaw cracked with the force of it, and I even added a little sound effect at the end for emphasis.
"Are you done yet?" I asked with saccharine sweetness, my voice slightly hoarse from the pressure on my throat but otherwise unbothered. "Because this is all very cathartic for you, I’m sure, but I have places to be and prisoners to deposit. Maybe we could schedule your emotional breakdown for a more convenient time?"
Something inside him snapped—I saw it happen in real-time, watched the last threads of control fray and break as his eyes went bloodshot. Red spread through the whites in violent spiderwebs of burst vessels, transforming his gaze into something feral and completely unhinged.
"You—!" The word came out strangled, caught between fury and disbelief. "You absolute fucking—! Your whole demeanor, that blatant attitude, that smug little face that needs to be corrected!" His free hand came up to gesture wildly, nearly clipping my cheek in the process. "You need to learn your place, need to understand what happens to pretty little things who think they can waltz through life without consequences!"
He went off then—really went off, launching into a detailed fantasy that was equal parts disturbing and oddly creative in its violence. He described exactly how he planned to fuck me, his words painting vivid pictures of brutality wrapped in sexual aggression that made several prisoners shift uncomfortably.
He’d pin me down, he said, force my face into the dirt until I choked on it while he tore my clothes off in strips, leaving marks and bruises that would last for weeks. He’d spread my legs so wide they’d threaten to dislocate, hold me there helpless and exposed while he rutted into me like an animal, no gentleness, no mercy, just raw violent claiming that would leave me broken, bleeding, and begging for it to stop.
He detailed the sounds I’d make—whimpers turning to screams turning to pleading sobs—described how tight I’d be around his cock, how I’d clench and struggle and eventually go limp with submission once I realized fighting was pointless.
The words kept coming, each one more graphic than the last, building this twisted narrative where my humiliation became his vindication and my pain became his pleasure.
I caught a glimpse of his cock through his trousers then—couldn’t really avoid it given how prominently it strained against the cheap fabric, the outline so clear I could practically map its dimensions.
The thing looked ready to tear through the material entirely, twitching with each word he spoke like his fantasy was feeding directly into his arousal. A wet spot had already bloomed at the tip, dark against the faded green jumpsuit, growing larger with each passing second.
I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly completed a full rotation in their sockets. "Fascinating," I said flatly, my voice cutting through his rant like a blade through overcooked meat. "Truly riveting storytelling. Have you considered a career in erotic fiction? Because I think you’ve found your calling."
My hand moved before the rest of me fully caught up with the decision—snapping out with practiced certainty. My fingers closed around his wrist with surgical precision, locking into place as though they’d been waiting there all along.
Then I squeezed.
Not casually. Not as a warning. I poured strength into the grip with focused intent, muscles tightening until my hand felt less like flesh and more like a vise closing around fragile machinery.
Enhanced power flooded the motion, compressing bone and tendon beneath my fingers until I felt the unsettling, unmistakable sensation of structures grinding together under pressure.
The effect was immediate.
His grip on my throat faltered, confidence dissolving into shock as the pain reached whatever part of his brain still believed he was in control of this exchange. His fingers spasmed reflexively, tightening for a split second before betraying him completely.
The hold collapsed. Air rushed back into my lungs as his hand slipped free and I dropped back onto my feet with a small, undignified thud that echoed faintly across the stone floor.
Confusion rippled through the watching prisoners like a wave hitting shore, voices rising in scattered exclamations of disbelief.
"What the fuck—?" "How did—?" "Did you see that?" They turned to each other with wide eyes, gesturing between me and the man with frantic energy that spoke to how thoroughly I’d violated their understanding of power dynamics.
I gripped even harder then, squeezing with enough force that the bones in his wrist ground together with audible protests. The man cried out in pain—a sharp, involuntary sound that echoed across the courtyard—his knees threatening to buckle as agony shot up his arm in electric spikes that made his entire frame shudder.
I held it for three more seconds, watching his face cycle through shock and suffering and dawning understanding, before releasing him with casual dismissiveness.
He retreated backward in stumbling steps, cradling his injured wrist against his chest like it was something precious and breakable. His expression went through a fascinating journey—first confusion, eyes blinking rapidly as though he couldn’t quite process what had just happened, mouth hanging open in surprise.
Then realization crept in, slow and terrible, widening those bloodshot eyes as he understood that I wasn’t weak, wasn’t helpless, wasn’t anything he’d assumed I was. And finally—inevitably—that realization twisted into pure molten rage that turned his ruined face into something approaching demonic.
Fury consumed every other emotion, burning through shock and pain until only white-hot anger remained, so intense it seemed to radiate from his skin in waves of heat.
He lunged without a second thought, without strategy or planning or any of the things that might have made this interesting. Just pure animal aggression launched in my direction with all the subtlety of a battering ram, his massive form hurtling forward with speed that should have been impossible for someone his size.
I stepped in to meet him—matched his energy with my own forward momentum—and in that precise instant I activated the ability I’d stolen from Grisha. The primal fear ability, raw and instinctual, designed to trigger the most basic survival responses buried deep in mammalian brains.
The wave of terror washed over the crowd, hitting every prisoner within range with concentrated dread that bypassed rational thought entirely. They stumbled backward with strangled gasps, eyes going wide, hearts hammering against ribcages as their bodies screamed danger without knowing why.
The man faltered mid-lunge—just for a heartbeat, just enough—his charge losing coordination as fear spiked through his system and made his muscles lock briefly in conflict between aggression and self-preservation.
That heartbeat was all I needed. My fist drove forward with enhanced strength behind it, channeling everything I had into a single devastating strike that connected with his gut dead-center.
The impact was wet and crunchy in equal measure—flesh compressing with a sound like meat being tenderized, followed immediately by the sharp crack of something inside him giving way under pressure. Ribs maybe, or cartilage, something structural that wasn’t meant to bend that direction.
The wet squelch that followed spoke of internal damage, organs shifting positions they weren’t designed to occupy, blood vessels rupturing and flooding cavities with warmth.
He collapsed to his knees with a heavy thud that sent up small clouds of dust, his massive frame folding in on itself as he struggled to draw breath through whatever I’d just broken.
His mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning out of water, no sound emerging except small gasping whimpers that spoke to the pain currently radiating through his torso. He panted like a wild puppy someone had kicked too hard, tongue hanging out slightly, eyes unfocused and watering.
A smirk tugged at my lips as I noticed the dark stain spreading across the front of his jumpsuit—warm, wet, and unmistakable, pooling around his knees and soaking into the packed dirt beneath him.
He’d pissed himself.
The terror, the pain, the sudden complete loss of control—it had all combined to override his body’s basic functions, reducing him to the level of a frightened child who couldn’t hold their bladder. The urine kept coming in steady streams, darkening the fabric further, creating little rivulets that tracked down his thighs and dripped onto the ground in soft pattering sounds.
Silence held for approximately five seconds—long enough for everyone to process what they’d just witnessed—before one man in the crowd began to chuckle.
It started quiet, almost uncertain, like he wasn’t sure if laughter was allowed in this situation. But then it built, confidence growing as he realized no one was stopping him, his chuckle transforming into full-bodied laughter that shook his shoulders and made him double over slightly.
The sound was infectious, spreading through the watching prisoners like a disease they were all too eager to catch.
Another man joined in, then three more, then a whole cluster, until the entire courtyard rang with cascading laughter that built on itself in waves of escalating mirth. They howled and cackled and wheezed, pointing at the kneeling giant who’d been reduced to this pathetic state, their voices overlapping into a symphony of cruel amusement that echoed off the dark iron walls.
I leaned in close to the man’s trembling form, dropping my voice to a whisper only he could hear despite the noise surrounding us.
"I don’t have time to waste on you right now," I murmured directly into his ear, my breath hot against scarred skin. Then I straightened and walked past him with deliberate casualness.
The guards standing behind us were absolutely dumbfounded—I could feel their stares boring into my back, could practically hear their thoughts grinding to confused halts as they tried to reconcile what they’d just witnessed.
They glanced at each other in perfect synchronization, visors turning toward visors in a moment of shared bewilderment, before slowly lowering their weapons completely. The barrels dipped toward the ground with mechanical precision as they came to the collective realization that violence from them would no longer be necessary.
I brushed invisible dust from my dress and smiled at Willow with breezy satisfaction. "Shall we continue? I believe we have a gambling lord to deposit and I’d hate to be late for what promises to be a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to this particular adventure."