Ganesha Familia — Prison
BOOM!
The explosion rocked one of the cells, shattering the cold silence of the prison.
Inside, Zagan didn't stop. His breath came in heavy, ragged bursts — but his body kept moving.
His fist drove into the same spot on the concrete wall, over and over, like the wall was the only opponent he had left.
BOOM!
A massive crack had already split across the surface from the last hit. But apparently, that still wasn't enough.
Zagan drew a deep breath, gathering what remained of his strength, and threw another hard punch.
BOOM!
The wall shuddered. Concrete dust and small debris scattered through the cramped cell air.
Zagan didn't step back from any of it. He stayed right where he was, right hand pressed flat against the wall. Like he didn't feel the pain crawling up his arm. Or like he simply didn't care.
Slowly, he pulled his hand back. Fresh blood was already dripping from his knuckles, staining the grimy floor beneath him.
---
Zagan went quiet. His eyes moved from his injured hand, then lifted slowly to the wall in front of him.
That massive crack. The mark of everything he'd put into it.
"...Not yet." His voice came out low and hoarse, like it was scraping through a dry throat.
"Nowhere near enough," he muttered, soaked in regret.
His fingers trembled as they brushed the bandage covering his left eye. "At this rate, I'd never stand a chance against Kaen."
He raised his fist and hit the wall again, jaw locked so tight his teeth ground together with a faint, muffled sound.
---
The ghost of losing that eye came back to haunt him.
But, ironically, it was through that very wound that he'd found something he'd been missing his entire life: a purpose.
Before all this, he'd been nothing but a directionless wanderer drifting through the world without meaning. Then the crushing defeat at Kaen's hands had given him a compass.
He finally knew what he had to chase.
Zagan stopped punching and pressed his palm flat against the dented section of wall, feeling the rough concrete under his fingers.
"I keep wondering," he whispered, "whether Kaen was actually a beginner — or just pretending to be one to fool me."
He grabbed a chunk of debris and crushed it in his grip.
"If he really was a beginner and everything he pulled in that fight came purely from instinct... then that guy's genuinely terrifying."
---
Zagan turned, eyes landing on the small window of his cell — a narrow view of a wide, open world beyond.
He had no idea who Kaen's next victim would be. But he knew one thing for certain: he felt sorry for whoever it was.
He shook his head, brushing off the doubt that had crept in, and clenched his fist again — letting the pain from his knuckles stoke the fire back into him.
Bam.
Bam.
---
[Dungeon]
The air in the dungeon corridor seemed to thicken, dense and oppressive, bearing down on anyone caught inside it.
For Aiz Wallenstein, time felt like it had slowed to a drip.
She watched the young man press the tip of Desperate toward his own heart. Her golden eyes went wide on instinct.
Don't, Aiz thought, stepping forward, her right hand reaching out to grab the sword — or at least knock it aside before the blade broke skin.
She didn't want to kill him.
But when her fingers were only centimeters from the hilt, time seemed to stop entirely.
SRRRT!
The sound of pierced flesh was wet and horrible, cutting through the silence of the corridor.
Aiz's eyes flew wide in horror. The tip of Desperate punched through the young man's chest — entering from the front, exiting through his back — with a burst of deep red blood that sprayed into the air like a dark firework.
His body froze for just a moment, the blade lodged through his own chest, before he collapsed and hit the stone floor with a heavy, bone-deep thud.
---
Aiz froze.
Her heart felt like it stopped.
She'd just watched someone stab himself in front of her. Her mind refused to accept it. Why? Why would he choose this over simply surrendering?
Without thinking, Aiz lunged forward, her hand shooting out to reach for his shoulder — to check whether that thin thread of a life was still there.
"You—" The word barely made it out of her mouth.
Because the young man's left hand, which had looked completely limp just a second ago, suddenly moved like a striking snake and seized Aiz's right wrist with a grip so fierce it instantly shut down the flow of strength through the Sword Princess's entire arm.
Aiz flinched hard. "What—?!"
Before she could yank her hand back or land a kick, the young man's body rose in one fluid, almost weightless motion — as if gravity had temporarily forgotten he existed.
Desperate was still lodged in his chest, but he didn't seem to care. The blood pouring freely from his wound looked almost like a choreographed part of this death dance.
With a sharp pull, he dragged Aiz toward him.
Her unprepared body immediately lost its balance. In an instant, her perspective flipped — sky and floor seemed to swap as she lurched forward.
CRACK!
---
The impact slammed through her body. Aiz's back hit the dungeon wall hard, forcing all the air out of her lungs in one rough punch.
Before she could even process the pain — before her eyes could refocus — a shadow had already fallen across her vision.
The young man's right foot came down squarely on her face. His heel pressed her nose and mouth flat against the stone, pinning her head so completely she couldn't move an inch.
Aiz tried to fight back. Her core tensed. Her free hand immediately searched for an opening to strike.
She was the Sword Princess — she read her situation in an instant. Her left fist launched toward his jaw with enough force to shatter a monster's bones if it connected.
But the young man didn't dodge by jumping back. He simply tilted his head a few millimeters.
Aiz's fist flew wide, punching empty air right beside his ear.
In that fraction-of-a-second gap, the young man smiled — eyes still closed. Cold and expressionless, deeply unsettling for it.
His face said it without words: too slow.
---
Then the foot pressed against Aiz's face stopped being just a foothold. It became a pivot point.
Using that pressure as the axis, his body spun through the air in one fast, controlled arc — like a hinge being forced around. Smooth, quick, precise — flipping his position in an instant to chain into the next attack.
His left leg swung out like a whip, cracking against the side of Aiz's head with surgical accuracy.
Whoosh!
Aiz caught only a flash of light-blue aura around his boot before the world started spinning. Her head snapped hard to the side, vision instantly blurring.
But the combat instincts honed over years of fighting refused to quit. Through the dizziness, Aiz felt cold air at her throat — the sign of another incoming strike.
With what consciousness she had left, she dropped to the floor, rolling fast beneath a second kick that swept the air directly over her head and shattered the dungeon wall behind her into a shower of stone dust.
Aiz came back up in one smooth movement, eyes sharp.
She wasn't underestimating him anymore.
The young man's short sword was already in her left hand, her right clenched and ready to release Ariel.
---
The young man landed lightly, back still turned toward her. Without looking, he seemed to know exactly where she was.
Aiz charged again at full speed, leaving a trail of displaced air in her wake. Her blade went for his neck — a strike completely unavoidable for any normal adventurer.
But again, just like before, the young man didn't retreat.
He simply tilted his left shoulder a few centimeters.
Shing.
The tip of Aiz's blade split nothing but empty air, grazing the skin of his neck by a hair.
Before Aiz could pull back for a follow-up, the young man's right elbow had already driven into her ribs from a blind angle. Short — but it landed like an iron mallet.
"Uh—!" Aiz sucked in a sharp breath, her stride breaking for just a moment.
That was the opening he'd been waiting for.
In a flash, he pivoted sideways and grabbed the wrist of her sword hand. His grip locked in hard. One sharp pull broke her balance, a rotation of his hips using his shoulder as a fulcrum — and Aiz's body was lifted and sent flying over him.
---
But the Sword Princess wasn't someone who went down that easy.
Still mid-air from the throw, Aiz twisted herself around. Instead of taking the fall cleanly, she used the spinning momentum to fire a retaliatory kick straight at the young man's face.
He bent his body at just the right moment. Aiz's heel swept through empty air a few centimeters above his head, the gust of it tossing his brown hair.
They landed almost simultaneously, then immediately put distance between each other.
For a few seconds, neither moved — just sharp gazes locking across the corridor. Both of them breathing hard.
Blood kept dripping from the wound in the young man's chest, while Aiz wiped the blood from her lip with the back of her hand.
Even injured, the look in her eyes had only grown sharper, burning with the intent to keep going.
---
"You..." Aiz's voice was low, but it cut like a blade. "How are you this strong...?"
The muscles in her legs tightened.
In one burst, she exploded from a standing position — not quite disappearing, but moving fast enough that the naked eye couldn't follow. The ground beneath her seemed to lag for a fraction of a second.
The three meters between them vanished in an instant. Aiz was already right in front of him.
She dropped slightly, right shoulder pulling back. From that position, her fist shot straight forward toward his solar plexus — like a spear released from point-blank range.
At the same moment, her left leg swept around from the side, low toward his supporting knee — a double attack designed to shatter his balance. Two strikes, one rhythm.
But the young man didn't retreat.
His eyes stayed closed, as if he'd read the direction of Aiz's attack a fraction of a second before it arrived.
---
The punch wasn't blocked directly. His left hand rose and formed a curved angle, redirecting Aiz's strike outside the line of his body — guiding that massive force to slide sideways without finding its mark.
A small sound rang out, like the scrape of deflected momentum.
At the same time, he stepped forward, not back. One step into the empty space between Aiz's body and the arc of her sweeping kick, landing perfectly in the blind spot of that low sweep.
Aiz's leg cut through air a few centimeters from his body.
Now the distance collapsed completely. No more room to extend attacks. They were nearly chest to chest, arms locking down each other's space.
At this range, there was nothing left but split-second reflexes, muscle pressure, and raw violence erupting from the closest possible distance.
---
Aiz moved again.
At zero range, she unleashed a rapid chain — left, right, high, then low. Every punch carried her full body weight, enough to pulverize granite if it connected.
But the young man didn't match her with equal force. He moved like water through a storm.
Every incoming fist wasn't stopped head-on — his hands and forearms shifted each strike slightly outward, just enough to make them slide past the target. Aiz's power didn't disappear; it got redirected sideways, leaving her body fractionally open with each exchange.
Bit by bit, her patterns were being read.
Then Aiz switched it up. She raised her leg — a high kick launching toward his head, a clean shot to break the rhythm.
He reacted fast. His left hand came up and caught Aiz's leg at the shin. The impact stopped her momentum cold, leaving her body hanging open for just a moment.
Aiz smiled slightly. "Got you."
But that was exactly when she moved.
---
Using the caught leg as a pivot, she twisted her hips mid-air — trying to use her own weight to rotate and fire a follow-up from the other leg. Quick and adaptive, like a whip changing direction mid-swing.
But the young man had already read her intention before the movement finished.
He released her leg first — not because he lost the grip, but because he deliberately opened the space in front of her. And in that exact same second, he stepped in.
His right elbow drove into Aiz's stomach with a short, dense explosion of force.
THUD!
Aiz's body folded forward. Air was punched out of her lungs in one forced burst.
Before she could fully fall, the young man had already moved again. He was behind her now, his arm looping quickly around her neck — locking in from behind with a tight chokehold, cutting off her airflow and restricting her head and shoulder movement.
Aiz was completely locked down.
---
Still trapped in the hold. His arm coiled tightly around her throat, cutting off her breath and pinning her head in place.
But Aiz didn't go still.
In the near-zero space available, she forcefully twisted her shoulders and hips sideways, carving out a thin gap at the side of the lock. Through that gap, her right elbow came up and drove backward in a short, vicious arc, searching for a weak point on her opponent's body.
KRRRAK.
The elbow landed squarely on a rib that had already been cracked earlier. The small sound of something giving was clear even through the chaos of the fight.
But the hold didn't break. The young man kept her locked in. His face stayed nearly expressionless — even as cold sweat mixed with blood ran down his temple.
His breathing was heavy, but his body control remained solid. His grip actually tightened, locking down harder.
Then he attacked from behind. One knee came up.
THUD!
The first hit slammed into Aiz's lower back, snapping her body forward, her spine shuddering as though the impact had gone straight into her organs. The hold on her neck meant she couldn't escape — she could only absorb it in full.
---
Before she could get her breath back — thud. A second knee came down at the exact same spot. Deeper. Heavier. Like something hammering the base of her spine inward.
Aiz ground her teeth. Her body was starting to lose stability.
Thud. A third knee followed without pause. The hit severed her breathing rhythm entirely. Air felt like it was being forced out from inside her chest.
The muscles across her abdomen and back tensed wildly — trying to hold, but not strong enough to resist that repeated, relentless pressure. The pain spread fast, not just at the point of impact but rippling outward through her whole nervous system like a wave.
Her vision was narrowing at the edges. The corridor around her seemed to pull away.
No... don't...
One breath failed. Then another. Her head was growing heavy, consciousness being dragged under.
The hold was still there. Still pressing on her throat. Still binding her in place.
Until finally, something inside her snapped — a survival drive forced out from the very edge of the limit.
Aiz let out a raw, ragged cry that tore up through her throat, sending a shockwave that forced the young man to release her and sent him stumbling backward several meters.
---
Aiz dropped to her knees immediately.
Hah... hah... hah...
She coughed hard, pulling in air like someone dragged up from deep water. Her whole body shook.
Her armor was dented in several places. Her muscles felt like they no longer fully belonged to her. Her skin was scraped raw, and a purple bruise was already forming across her neck.
Across from her, the young man didn't look much better. He was standing, but barely. His knees trembled. The stab wound in his chest bled harder now from the exertion.
But his eyes were still closed.
And he was still wearing that thin, unsettling smile.
He raised his right hand — an open invitation for her to come at him again.
---
Aiz stared at that hand, and for the first time, her anger broke completely loose.
The frustration that had been stacking up curdled into something sharp and bitter, while the fear still clinging to her only threw more fuel onto the fire already burning through her.
She rose slowly, settling into her most fundamental fighting stance. This time, she wasn't going to attack recklessly.
This time, she was going to fight with everything she had.
The wind in the dungeon corridor picked up, carrying the smell of blood and iron.
This fight wasn't over. It had just reached its peak.
But just as her heel was about to slam into the floor to launch her opening strike, something strange happened.
Without warning, the young man's right knee buckled forward at an unnatural angle. His body, which had been standing straight just moments ago, began to sway.
Jeg.
A small sound rang out as his foot caught on a tiny pebble — something that should have been utterly impossible for someone who had just made even Aiz struggle to keep up.
Aiz's brow furrowed. Her reflexes held back the attack she'd had locked and loaded.
"What..." Her frown deepened, but she didn't move.
Her instincts were screaming that this could be a trap. That this cunning opponent was waiting for her to lower her guard so he could drive a blade into her back.
Aiz stayed alert, eyes narrowing, ready to dodge or counterattack the instant anything moved.
---
Second after second ticked by.
No movement.
No hidden attack.
Just the sound of dripping blood.
Drip... drip... drip...
Deep red blood kept flowing freely from the stab wound in his chest, pooling slowly around his head where it lay tilted against the stone floor.
His breathing was barely audible. His chest rose and fell in the shallowest possible increments — as though every single breath was the last fight he had left in him against death itself.
Watching him show no signs of attacking, Aiz stepped closer — hesitantly, one careful step at a time — until the toe of her boot stopped right beside his head.
Up close, his condition was far more horrifying than it had looked from a distance.
His face was chalk-white. Nearly gray. His lips had gone blue from oxygen deprivation. Bones jutted through torn skin in multiple places. His right arm was bent at a completely wrong angle.
And what turned Aiz's stomach the most was Desperate — her own sword — still lodged straight through his chest, its hilt trembling faintly with each increasingly feeble heartbeat.
---
"He..." Aiz murmured, eyes going wide. "He fought like that?"
The memories of the fight came flooding back all at once — every punch, every kick, every throw.
He had never once complained. Never once looked like he was in pain.
She had assumed he still had plenty left in him.
Slowly, Aiz crouched down. Her trembling hand reached out to his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.
"Hey," she said, her voice softer than usual.
"Don't pass out on me yet. We're not done."