Vek stared into the darkness of the barracks, his body trembling in the cold. His mind was far from the desolate camp, far from the blood-soaked arena that awaited him. He was back in another life—one that seemed like a distant, fading dream.
Before the chains, before the blood, Vek had been a soldier. A loyal man who fought for his kingdom, for a banner that meant something once. But most of all, he had fought for his wife.
Her face was the only thing that kept him sane during the endless nights spent in the camp. He could still see her in his mind—soft blonde hair, eyes as clear as the morning sky, her smile the light that cut through the darkest parts of his soul. Lysa.
But those memories were tainted now, twisted by the horrors that followed.
Vek had been captured in the middle of a bloodbath. His company was ambushed by the king's forces, slaughtered like cattle on the battlefield. He had fought, tried to push back, but the enemy's numbers were overwhelming. By the end, he had been beaten, chained, and dragged across miles of desolate wasteland until he found himself in this hellhole. A slave, broken, and waiting for death.
The night they took him, they burned his village to the ground. He had been away on duty, far from home, unable to protect Lysa. The screams still echoed in his ears—the cries of the people he couldn't save. The thought of his wife being there, trapped in the inferno, haunted him every day.
But deep down, he held onto hope. **She wasn't dead. She couldn't be.**
He had clung to that belief like a drowning man grasping at a rope. It was the only thing that kept him alive through the endless days of labor, the torment of the overseers, the suffocating hopelessness of it all.
He remembered the last time he saw her, standing in the doorway of their home, waving goodbye as he left for another campaign. Her belly had been swollen with their first child, and she had begged him to be careful, to come back to them.
"I'll come back," he had promised her. "I'll always come back to you."
Now that promise felt like a cruel joke.
Vek had failed her, failed their child. He had been strong once, but now he was nothing. Just another slave waiting to die for the amusement of the king.
The campfire crackled in his memory, the night before the ambush. His comrades had laughed, shared stories of home. Vek had stayed silent, his thoughts only on Lysa. He had been eager to return to her, to hold her in his arms again, to finally meet their child. But that future had been ripped away in a single, bloody moment.
And now, sitting in the barracks, awaiting his turn in the tournament, Vek knew that he might never see her again.
His hands clenched into fists, the old rage rising in him again. The rage that had driven him to survive this long, despite the odds. He wasn't just fighting for his life—he was fighting for **her**.
He had heard rumors, whispers among the slaves. Some said that his wife had been taken, captured by the king's men, and sold into slavery. Others claimed she was dead, buried beneath the ashes of their village. But Vek didn't believe them. **He couldn't.**
He had to find her. He had to know.
His mind drifted back to the battlefield, to the moment everything had fallen apart. He had watched his men die, their bodies torn apart by arrows and blades. He had seen his captain's head cleaved from his shoulders, rolling across the blood-soaked ground.
And when they had captured him, they didn't just take him prisoner—they made an example of him. They stripped him of his armor, his pride, and beat him until he could barely stand. They dragged him through the streets of the enemy's capital, parading him like an animal before throwing him into the pits with the other slaves.
He had been left for dead more times than he could count. The overseers had beaten him within an inch of his life, testing just how much a man could endure before breaking. But Vek hadn't broken. Not yet.
Every whip, every lash, every scar carved into his skin was a reminder of what had been taken from him. His freedom, his family, his dignity.
And now, they wanted to throw him into the arena, like a piece of meat for their amusement. But Vek wasn't going to give them the satisfaction.
Lysa was out there somewhere, waiting for him. He could feel it. And if he was going to die, it wasn't going to be in some pit, torn apart by animals or men. **He would die on his own terms.**
The darkness around him seemed to press in closer, the sounds of the other slaves fading into the background. He stared at his hands, calloused and bloodied from years of fighting, years of survival.
He had always been a fighter, even before the army. He had grown up in a poor village, the son of a farmer who had died when Vek was still a boy. His mother had struggled to feed him and his siblings, and Vek had learned early on that the world was a cruel, unforgiving place.
He had fought for everything—his food, his home, his place in the army. And now, he would fight for his life.
The overseers thought they had broken him, thought they had stripped him of everything that made him a man. But they were wrong. Beneath the scars, beneath the fear, there was still a spark of the soldier he used to be.
He had been trained to kill, trained to survive. And no matter what they threw at him in that arena, he would find a way to come out alive. He had to. For Lysa.
A part of him feared what he might find when he eventually escaped—if he escaped. What if the rumors were true? What if Lysa was dead, or worse, living in chains somewhere far from here? What if their child had died with her?
The thought twisted in his gut like a knife, but he pushed it away. He couldn't afford to think like that. **She was alive.** She had to be.
Vek's body ached with the weight of his memories, the weight of his guilt. He had failed her once, but he wouldn't fail her again. Not this time.
The tournament was coming, and with it, a chance—however slim—to escape. To survive. And if he could make it through, if he could somehow outlast the others, he would find a way out of this hellhole. He would find her.
The overseers could whip him, starve him, throw him to the dogs, but they couldn't take away the only thing that kept him going. The only thing that still mattered.
As Vek lay down on his bunk, his mind still racing, he closed his eyes and pictured her face one last time. He would see her again. He would hold her in his arms, kiss her lips, and tell her that he had never stopped fighting for her.
He would find her, or he would die trying.