Give.
He stumbled.
Temple. Jaw. Throat.
Each strike surgical. Deliberate. Not designed to end quickly but to dismantle piece by piece until nothing remained except understanding: he'd been outmatched from the first breath.
Dmitri swung once more, desperate haymaker with nothing behind it but hope.
I caught his wrist mid-arc, twisted, heard his shoulder pop.
He screamed.
The crowd went insane.
I released him. Stepped back. Gave him the chance to quit. To go down. To acknowledge this was over.
He didn't.
His left hand came up trembling but defiant.
Something dark and hungry uncoiled in my chest.
Good.
I moved.
What followed wasn't Muay Thai. Wasn't any formal style. It was older—something that existed before rules and referees and the thin fiction of sport. I hammered his legs until standing became theoretical. Hit his body until his guard dropped from exhaustion. And when he finally collapsed to his knees, blood streaming from nose and mouth, I kept going.
Because this wasn't about him.
This was about the pressure in my skull that never left. The violence living in my bones, carefully contained except for moments like this when I could release it without consequence. Without judgment.
Dmitri fell backward.
I followed.
Knee on his chest. Fists finding his face. Again. Again. His eyes rolled back, consciousness leaving in stages, but I couldn't stop. The bloodlust had me—red haze making everything disappear except the next impact, the next?—
Hands grabbed my arms.
Six small Thai men who'd done this job a hundred times. They pulled hard, combined weight enough to drag me backward off Dmitri's body.
I let them move me.
The referee seized my wrist and raised it. The crowd exploded. Money changed hands in waves. Someone checked Dmitri, whose chest rose and fell shallow and rapid.
He'd live.
They always did. I knew exactly how far to go, when appropriate.
I pulled free and slipped through the ropes, landing light on concrete. The crowd pressed close, trying to touch me, claim some piece of what they'd witnessed.
I ignored them and found the promoter.
He was counting, hands moving so fast they blurred. He looked up when I approached, expression caught between fear and greed.
"Next time I'll pay double," I said, voice rough. "If you find a proper opponent."
