A spark, small but stable, danced across his palm. A flicker no bigger than a lighter. The cafeteria ruptured in noise. Half laughing, half gasping.
The giant paused. Then laughed—a thunder that shook tin trays.
"That's it?" he mocked. "That's your power? A candle?"
Ajax didn't answer. The laughter only covered the way his brain mapped every path the fire could take. He couldn't match flames on strength, but with mastery—he could make one flame worth a thousand.
The silence broke as the giant lunged, molten hands swinging straight for Ajax's skull.
Ajax exhaled once, stepping left, controlled, precise. His fingers snapped—and the spark in his hand exploded like a miniature flare, blinding the giant.
Screams erupted. The crowd scattered away from tables, gasps echoing as men ducked their heads.
The fire giant staggered, eyes seared by sudden precision flame. Ajax didn't press. He'd proved one thing. That he was not prey.
The guards rushed in then, batons crackling with electricity, voices booming for order. The giant was dragged down, snarling, half-blinded. Ajax stood still, tray untouched.
But in his chest, his heart thundered with revelation.
It worked. His ability worked. The fire danced to his command. Only twenty percent… but mastery bent twenty into infinity.
And yet, if fire was his first… what would the second be?
As his eyes wandered across the room, past static-filled guards, past whispering murderers, they landed on something that froze him still.
A flag on his jumpsuit. A patch on his chest.
Peacemaker.
He smiled as if amused. As if measuring Ajax already.Ajax's breath slowed. His first trial wasn't over. His next predator had just chosen him.
And the monthly clock had begun to tick.
Ajax's chest tightened. Fire still tingled across his veins, sparks itching under his skin. And yet, under that gaze, he felt colder than he ever had before.
This wasn't over.
This was barely the invitation.
Peacemaker's eyes held him like a vise. Calm. Cutting. The cafeteria's chaos pressed on around Ajax—the roar of guards dragging the blinded fire brute away, prisoners screaming for blood or cackling at the spectacle—but it all dissolved into static under that gaze.
Ajax's pulse slowed to match the thrum of his new power still sparking low in his veins. It should have been triumph, validation of survival instincts now turned into something tangible, something weaponized. But all he felt was exposed.
He wasn't supposed to have shown it.
Not this soon, not here in a pit where strength defined worth and the weak were peeled apart for scraps. Already, the lines had shifted. He could see it in the glares cutting across the room. Prisoners whispering, evaluating. To the predators, he wasn't invisible meat anymore. He was a rival.
And rivals didn't last long in Belle Reve.
Peacemaker finally looked away, as if dismissing Ajax—or maybe deciding to save him for later. He rose from his bench, collected his tray, and walked off into the ordered chaos with the detached grace of a soldier who'd already figured out tomorrow's battle plan.
Ajax sat stiff, every sense burning. Slowly, he unclenched his hand, noticing the faint red marks across his palm where his own sparks had danced. It hadn't even hurt. Fire wanted him now, whispered at the edges of his thoughts, begged to be pulled, folded, refined into meaning.
If 20% felt like this… then mastery itself was the weapon. He didn't need to be the strongest. He only needed to be the sharpest.
But what gnawed at him, corrosive and quiet, was the realization of discipline. Two powers. Twenty percent each. A month per choice. There wouldn't be second chances until time reset. And in that gap, in this cage, hesitation equaled death.
His eyes slid across the crowd again, sharper this time, studying as if the people around him weren't monsters but tools. Who was too obvious? Who was too dangerous to touch? Who carried something subtle he could turn into precision, into leverage?
Because fire wasn't enough. Not here. The giant whose power he had just stolen should have killed him easily. If not for wit, if not for impulse mastery… he'd have been ash on the floor. And next time? Instinct wouldn't save him alone.
A guard slammed his baton onto his table, forcing him upright. "Back to the tier. Move, freak."
Ajax shoved back the memory of Peacemaker's measuring smile and followed the stream of shackled inmates, legs stiff with exhaustion. The mess reeked of smoke and burnt flesh clinging to his shirt. Ten minutes later, the metal doors slammed shut on his cell again, leaving him once more in silence.
Only this time, he wasn't the same boy who'd woken confused earlier.
He held a flame. And Belle Reve already knew it.
Ajax sat down on the corner of his bed, pressing his hands together in the dark.
One thought rooted itself, firm as steel, inside his chest:
If I stay here, I die here...
The fire coiled across his knuckles, small, flickering, dangerous. Patience wasn't in its nature. But patience had to be in his.
The other prisoners were not his friends. The guards weren't either. Not Peacemaker, not Harley, not the flames he'd already stolen.
But if Belle Reve could be broken—cracked open with the right angle, the right pressure, the right timing—he could find a way out.
And that meant enduring the eyes watching him through the gaps in the bars.
That meant feeding the wolf.
Because Ajax Valerius was trapped in a world he'd once loved only in fiction. He'd died an ordinary man.
But he'd fight like hell to live as something more.
The fire settled back into his veins, waiting.
Not a weapon yet.
Not an escape tool yet.
But the first step.
The first piece on the board.
And tomorrow, the game would truly begin.
.....,....... .........
Hello reader give me stones to practice the Dao