Kane Arisaka's fist slammed into his opponent's jaw with a sickening crack. The crowd's roar faded into nothingness. It was just him and the man before him, a beast of a fighter who had learned to fear the cold, unrelenting precision of Kane's strikes.
Kane barely registered the blood staining his knuckles, the sweat dripping from his brow. His focus was singular, narrowed on the fight at hand. A lifetime of training, of constant battles fought for survival, had molded him into something brutal—something relentless. His mind was a machine, calculating every move before his opponent could react, every strike a warning, every block a countermeasure.
The man in front of him, towering and snarling, swung a haymaker at Kane's face, but Kane's body moved faster. He ducked low, feeling the wind of the punch skim past his ear. He countered immediately, his elbow crashing into the side of his opponent's ribs with a sickening thud. The man gasped, staggering, but Kane didn't give him time to recover.
He was already on him.
With a brutal knee to the stomach, the opponent doubled over, gasping for air. Kane grabbed his head and snapped it back with a vicious uppercut. The blow landed with a sound that could only be described as bone meeting metal. The man dropped to the ground, motionless.
Kane stood over him, his chest heaving, eyes still burning with the fury of battle.
"Pathetic," Kane muttered, his voice low, barely audible over the crowd's deafening cheers. "You should have stayed down."
But then, just as Kane prepared to step away, to leave the man behind as another broken corpse in a long line of foes, a strange sensation hit him. His surroundings blurred, the ground beneath him shaking with unnatural force. A crackling hum split the air, and a cold wave of energy washed over him.
Kane froze, every muscle in his body tensing. His senses were still wired for battle, but this—this was different. The air turned heavy, thick with magic. A strange pressure built around him, as if the very atmosphere was pushing in from all sides.
Before he could react, the world around him shattered like glass.
"What the hell—?!"
A sharp pain pulsed through his skull, and Kane felt his body being torn away from the fight. His surroundings twisted and warped, his vision turning white, then black, then white again. He was weightless for a moment, suspended in nothingness, his mind screaming at him to hold onto something, anything, but there was no ground to grip, no foe to strike.
His vision flickered back to life in an instant, but it wasn't the blood-soaked arena he saw.
Instead, he stood on solid ground—an enormous throne room, dimly lit, walls lined with banners of strange sigils he didn't recognize. Kane's breath hitched as he staggered, a cold rush of air sweeping through him, his combat instincts flaring. His body was still in fighting mode, but there was no enemy to fight, no danger to sense.
"What the hell is this?" Kane growled, his voice low, guttural, and furious. His hands flexed, his fists clenching as if the very act of being pulled away from the battle was a personal insult.
He looked around, but there was no one to see—no fighters, no audience, just the looming shadows of stone columns and the eerie silence that hung in the air like a death sentence.
Then, a deep, resonant voice echoed through the chamber.
"You have been summoned, Kane Arisaka. The king has need of you."
Kane's eyes narrowed, his rage mounting. He couldn't understand what had just happened—one moment, he was in the thick of the fight, the next, he was here. But what boiled his blood more than anything else was the utter audacity of it all.
"Summoned?" Kane sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. "I don't take orders from anyone. Not from you. Not from anyone."
The voice remained undeterred. "Your strength has been recognized. The kingdom requires your power, your skills. There is a war to be fought."
Kane's teeth gritted, fists tightening into white-knuckled balls of fury. He didn't know who this "king" was, or why he'd been yanked out of a fight he was finally winning, but what he did know was that no one, no one, had the right to pull him out of a battle before he decided it was over.
A man like Kane didn't need anyone. His hands had bled for everything he had. He'd fought for his survival, not for some kingdom's empty promises.
"I'm not your fucking pawn." His voice was low, cold as ice, but brimming with an anger that was just barely contained. He wanted to feel the crack of a jaw beneath his fist again, the rush of a fight, not this nonsense.
A presence—warm, oppressive—seemed to fill the room. It wasn't physical, but it pressed down on him like an invisible weight. "You will come. You will serve."
The temperature in the room dropped, and the shadows seemed to close in around him, the dim light flickering as if the very air was responding to the voice's command. But Kane didn't flinch. He didn't fear. He wasn't about to bow to anyone.
"You're making a mistake," he muttered, his voice full of seething rage. "I don't serve kings. I don't serve anyone."
For a long moment, the silence stretched on, and Kane felt the weight of the magic around him, pushing against him. But then, as if it were a mere whisper in his mind, the voice replied with the coldest finality.
"Then you will fight. And you will lose."