I used to think the Sight was a gift.
That was before I learned that gifts come with instructions no one bothers to read.
Before the hallway. Before the knife. Before realizing that every advantage could carry a price. Power without rules isn't power—it's a leak. And leaks drown you quietly, without ceremony, without warning.
That night, I didn't sleep. Not really. Every time I closed my eyes, the ache returned, pulsing like a second heartbeat behind my skull. The Sight had changed. It no longer offered predictions of punches, no longer whispered before hooks landed. It had grown ambitious, sentient almost, showing me choices—moments that hadn't yet decided where they would land. Violence. Intent. Futures splitting and fracturing in ways I hadn't prepared for.
By dawn, I wrote the first rule in my head.
Rule One: The Sight only shows intent.
It doesn't care about accidents. It doesn't warn you about love, laughter, or silence. Only moments when someone means harm—when thought sharpens into action.
That explained the ring. The knife. The stranger in the hallway. The danger that had never belonged to boxing, yet had threatened to kill me just the same.
Rule Two came harder.
The Sight weakens when I rely on it. The more I trusted it, the lazier my body became. Timing slipped. Reflex dulled. Punches arrived too late. Defense lagged behind instinct. It was subtle at first—just a flicker of hesitation—but enough to leave bruises, enough to leave me wondering if the Sight had been teaching me humility all along.
It wanted me to remember something basic: eyes don't fight—hands do.
Rule Three nearly broke me.
The Sight doesn't show everything. It chooses. And whatever chooses can also hide. The visions I depended on, the clarity I had worshipped, could be incomplete, misleading, selective. The future isn't an open book. It's a library with some doors locked. And anyone walking inside, anyone relying too heavily on the Sight, could get trapped between the shelves, suffocating under choices that weren't theirs to make.
At the gym, I trained like a man learning to walk again. Every drill felt like a test of patience and endurance, every punch a question rather than an answer. Coach Musa said nothing, but he changed the exercises. More chaos. More unpredictability. No patterns. No mercy.
"Boxing is about truth," he said once, voice low and raw. "If you need magic to survive it, then you don't belong here."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him the Sight saved me. Kept me alive. Gave me six championship belts and thirty victories. But that would have been a lie, and I wasn't lying anymore. Instead, I bled.
Mid-session, the Sight flared—sudden, sharp. A sparring partner's elbow, a cheap shot after the bell. I felt it before I could react, but this time, I didn't panic. I stepped away just in time. Control. Not instinct. Not gift. Control.
And I wrote another rule.
Rule Four: The Sight responds to restraint.
It doesn't reward desperation. It punishes hunger. The more I chased it, the more it slipped away. The calmer I became, the clearer it spoke. That terrified me because calm is dangerously close to faith. Faith asks questions I had been avoiding since the day I first saw the future. Questions about limits, about mortality, about responsibility.
I trained for hours, pushing past exhaustion, testing every reaction, every sequence of muscle memory. My knuckles split, my ribs throbbed, my legs ached. But the Sight watched, silent, like a teacher who gives no applause. I began to understand that the gift wasn't here to help me win. It wasn't here to save me. It was here to teach me, to punish me, to remind me that the world didn't care about my belts, my fame, or my ego.
By the end of the week, I had established rules in my head, each one etched into muscle memory as well as thought. I would not chase the Sight. I would not worship it. I would not replace the fighter I had become with something I didn't fully understand.
And yet, there were moments when the visions came uninvited.
One night, after the gym had emptied and the city had fallen silent, I wrapped my hands in the locker room mirror, trying to focus, to feel grounded. The tape snapped against my knuckles like a warning. Then it hit me—sudden, violent, and vivid. Not a punch. Not a knife. A body on canvas. Mine. Motionless. Still.
No sound. No crowd. Just the cold, indifferent truth of the ring.
I gasped, pressed a palm to my chest. The reality of the vision shook me more than any blow ever had. I had never been shown death before—not like this. Not intimately. Not as if it were a photograph I could touch.
The Sight doesn't care about survival.
It isn't here to save me.
It's here to tell the truth.
I understood then what the man in the hallway had meant. The one who had walked toward me with calm eyes and vanished like smoke. Seeing the future doesn't make you safe. It makes you responsible.
And responsibility is heavier than any belt, heavier than any trophy, heavier than any crowd cheering your name.
I spent the next few days retraining everything I thought I knew. No patterns. No assumptions. Every combination had to be executed consciously. Every movement deliberate. My body and mind had to be awake, aware, alive in a way I hadn't been before.
I began journaling in secret. Not to record victories, but to record rules. Observations. Failures. Patterns in my failures. Notes on restraint. Notes on timing. Notes on the weight of seeing.
Rule Five: The Sight is a teacher, not a weapon.
Rule Six: Respect its silence as much as its voice.
Rule Seven: Fear is informative. Panic is dangerous.
Rule Eight: Flesh remembers what vision forgets.
Each rule was a step toward survival. Each rule was a step toward reclaiming myself from the shadow the Sight had cast.
Coach Musa watched quietly. I don't think he knew all of it, not fully. He only said what fighters say when they see someone wrestling with something too big to name. "Keep your head, keep your hands, and don't let the fear get inside you."
But fear had already gotten inside me. Fear had roots in my chest, in my eyes, in the moments between punches, in the silence of empty hallways. Fear was teaching me the most important lesson yet: seeing doesn't equal control.
The final rule arrived without warning. A vision, sudden and unbidden, while I was alone, wrapping my hands for another late-night session. Not a punch. Not a knife. Not a warning for someone else.
Just me. Falling. Alone.
I sat on the bench, breathing ragged, staring at my fists. My knuckles white under the tape. The cold of the locker room felt like ice in my veins.
The Sight doesn't care if I survive. It only cares that I know the truth. And the truth is merciless.
I finished wrapping my hands, standing slowly. If the Sight had rules, then so did I. I wouldn't chase it. I wouldn't worship it. I would never let it replace the fighter I bled to become.
Because prophets who forget they're human don't die in visions.
They die in real life.