The world swam back into focus slowly
Soren became aware of cold first. Stone beneath him. His head throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache that made thinking difficult. He had no memory of falling but his body was on the cage floor and the merchant was gone, which meant time had passed. How much, he could not say
His eyes opened to the same darkness as before
For a long moment he simply lay there, breathing, trying to piece together consciousness. The pain in his skull gradually resolved into something manageable
He was still wearing the collar
The realisation came with a spike of helplessness. He was still trapped in this cage, still unable to cast, still imprisoned in whatever this place was. The merchant had made a deal. Payment had been discussed. And that meant-
A sound interrupted his thoughts
At first Soren could not identify it. A deep rumbling that started somewhere impossibly far above, so vast and formless that his mind could not quite process it as noise. It just was. A presence. A weight pressing down through stone and earth toward the cage where he lay
Then it resolved into something worse
Screaming
Thousands of voices screaming together, the individual sounds blending into something that felt less like noise and more like pressure. Soren's body reacted before his mind caught up, muscles tensing, breath catching. Where was he? The sound came from above but how far above? The space seemed to extend upward into infinity, a cavernous darkness that held thousands of voices
A voice cut through the chaos
Amplified. Theatrical. Designed to carry across vast distances
"—and tonight, we are PLEASED to present a match of EXCEPTIONAL calibre!"
The announcer's words echoed through the stone. Soren's mind grabbed at them, trying to build meaning from the fragments
"Two rank two mages! One rank one mage! All facing off against off our Umbrax! A creature that has claimed SEVEN victories in the arena!"
The crowd noise spiked. Thousands of people responding in unison
'What is this place?'
Soren's thoughts scattered, 'The merchant. The payment. A rank two mage. But what did it mean? What was an arena? Why were there crowds?'
'They're going to fight. Someone's going to fight'
"Will our fighters prove their worth, or will they become another triumph for the monster?"
The announcer's voice was almost gleeful. Soren's stomach twisted. The noise changed, became more structured, more ceremonial. The announcer was building toward something
"And now, we are HONORED to welcome special guests to tonight's proceedings!"
Soren's breath caught
"Hailing from Stormguard Kingdom, a guest of DISTINCTION! The eldest son of King Rael Stormguard himself! Please welcome PRINCE CANE STORMGUARD!"
The noise became deafening
Soren's entire body seized
Cane. He had been in the castle. In the early days. Moving through halls where Soren had trained. The prince. The king's son
'No'
His breath came faster, shallower. His mind spiralled, branching into possibilities that all ended the same way. If the prince was here. If anyone from the castle was here. If they looked down at the cages. If they saw
'They would recognise me'
"And accompanying His Highness, a warrior of LEGENDARY skill! The fastest person alive! Please welcome her LYRA DAWNHEART!"
The name hit Soren like a physical blow
'Lyra'
His teacher. She had taught him for those two years before the forest, before everything broke. She had stood across from him every day. Every single day. She knew his face better than almost anyone
She would recognize him
'No no no no'
Soren knelt in the darkness of his cage, his mind spiralling through options that dissolved before they could fully form. He could hide. He could stay silent. He could hope that Lyra or Cane wouldn't recognise him, but even if they didn't there was bound to be at least one person out of the many people that seemed to be screaming that would!
'I'm finished. I've come this far for it all to come to and end like this. I killed my friends, killed people just for it all to end like this? Without a fight?'
Soren now clenched his jaw and put his hands against his head seemingly angry, 'Why, why, why, why, WHY!'
'Why is this all happening to me! I hate this! I'm alone and tired! I haven't got a single second to rest and now I'm going to die after suffering for so long'
His pupils darted crazily around the whites of his eyes as his brain produced countless thoughts, anything that could help him, until his brain centred on something
The corners of Soren's mouth slightly raised themselves but were also trembling, 'If they know it's me I'm dead, but what if they couldn't tell?'
Saying this he looked at his unbound arms and hands noticing how only the chains stopped him from moving a certain distance, whilst his upper half remained unbound
There was no other way
The math was simple and brutal. Recognition equalled death. The only variable was whether that death would come quickly or slowly, but it did not have to happen. If he stopped being recognisable
If he made his face into something so damaged, so fundamentally changed, that no pattern-matching in her memory could connect it to the person she had known, then there was no way for anyone to realise that it him
It was the only solution
Soren's hands moved toward his face
Then stopped
His fingers hovered inches from his skin, trembling violently. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming at him to stop, to think of another way, to find literally any alternative to what he was about to do. He had second thoughts maybe there was another way, maybe he could hide, maybe-
The announcer's voice boomed through the mountain again
"LYRA DAWNHEART, the captain of her majesty's king's guard!"
The crowd roared
Soren's stomach twisted into knots so tight he thought he might vomit
There was no maybe. There was only this
His hands came back toward his face
The nausea hit him before his fingers even made contact. His body was rejecting the concept entirely, his nervous system screaming warnings that contradicted everything his survival instinct was demanding
'Don't do this. Don't do this'
His hands were shaking so badly he could barely control them. They moved forward and then retreated. Forward. Retreated again
'Just do it, you need to live don't you? What's the point of you throwing everything else away, your friends, your humanity if you just die here?'
Then he started small
His left hand gripped a section of skin at the edge of his jawline. Just a small area. Just enough to test. His right hand braced against his cheekbone. He took a breath. Then he pulled
The sensation was nauseating
Not sharp pain exactly, worse than that. The sensation of his own flesh tearing under his own hands, the sound of it, the feeling of it separating. His entire body convulsed in revulsion. A strangled sound escaped his throat and his hands immediately released, but he did not stop. He could not stop
He pulled again
This time the pain was clearer, sharper, and tears sprang to his eyes immediately. Not from sadness. From agony. His body was rejecting what was happening, screaming at him to stop, sending waves of nausea through him with each movement
"What the fuck-" the bald man's voice cut through the darkness, then stopped abruptly. "What the fuck are you doing?"
Soren did not answer. His hands were already moving again, grabbing another section of skin, pulling with increasing desperation. The tears streamed down his face now, mixing with blood. His vision swam but he kept going, his jaw clenched so hard he thought his teeth might crack
The first section came away completely
The moment it separated, the moment he felt the skin detach from the tissue underneath, something fractured inside him. Not physically. Something deeper. Something psychological
He began to cry
Not small tears now. Wrenching sobs that shook his entire body. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely function but he did not stop. He could not stop. The pain was so intense it had become almost abstract, as if it was happening to someone else, as if he was observing himself from a distance
"Oh God," the bald man whispered. "Oh fucking God, out of all the people stuck in here why did I get stuck with a crazy nun and some crazy retard ripping his face apart.'' The bald man couldn't bare to look anymore it was sickening, he turned his head and started puking
But Soren was not stopping
He pulled at another section, larger this time. The pain was so immense that it almost felt clean, almost felt clarifying. Each tear in his flesh was a scream his body was making but his voice could not match. He was crying and pulling and destroying and his hands were moving faster now, less controlled, more frantic
The skin around his left eye was next
This time when he pulled, the sensation was different. Worse. His eye watered violently, the tears unable to fall properly because of what was happening around it. He was being careful enough not to rupture the eye itself but not careful enough to do anything except cause maximum damage to the tissues surrounding it
And then something shifted
The pain transcended into something else. The desperation, the horror, the complete and total violation of his own body morphed into something almost unhinged. A sound came out of his mouth, not a cry, not a scream, but something between a laugh and a sob. Hysterical. Uncontrolled
Soren was laughing
It was the sound of someone breaking. The sound of a mind fracturing under pressure and pressure and pressure until the only thing left was the sound. His hands continued their work, tearing and pulling and destroying, and tears and blood streamed down his face in equal measure. He was laughing and crying simultaneously, his entire body shaking with a kind of manic energy, as if destroying his own face was the most hilarious thing that had ever happened
More flesh came away
The laughter intensified, became more frantic, more broken. He was not entirely sure if he was even making sounds anymore or if the sound existed only in his head, the volume and pitch growing with each movement of his hands. His vision was fragmenting. One eye was nearly useless now, swollen so badly that opening it sent spikes of pain through his skull
"...and may your divine light illuminate the path before me..."
The nun's voice continued unchanged. Serene. Untouched by the horror unfolding meters away. Her prayers did not skip a beat, did not pause, did not acknowledge in any way that someone was tearing themselves apart in the darkness beside her. She knelt in her white and gold armour, hands clasped around her pendant, eyes fixed upward.
"...and may my suffering bring me closer to your grace..."
As if Soren was not a portrait of suffering made manifest in the cage beside her
Soren's hands found what remained of the structure of his face and he kept pulling, kept tearing, kept laughing that fractured, broken laugh that did not sound entirely human. His cheekbones were damaged beyond recognition now. His jaw was asymmetrical. His lips were torn at multiple angles. There was no pattern left. No structure that could be identified. No map that led back to the student Lyra had known
When he finally stopped, it was not because he chose to
His hands simply fell away. They would no longer obey his commands. They hung at his sides, trembling violently, covered in blood that was his own. His vision was mostly darkness now. His face was pain and wreckage and something that no longer resembled anything human
The laughter faded into gasping sobs
The bald man was staring at him from across the cage, his expression unreadable. Horror and fascination and something else that Soren could not quite process.
"...and may this trial strengthen my faith in the divine..."
The nun's voice continued, steady and eternal, as if the world was not breaking, as if nothing had changed, as if Soren was not a man unmade by his own hands in the darkness beside her