It was another brutal day in the life of a monster.

Your master—no, your only tether to this world—threw you into the ring again. This time, the opponent was colossal: scales like armor, claws like hooked knives, and breath that stank of rot and rage. It was stronger than you, faster, too. But that didn’t matter. You charged anyway.

The moment the gate clanged open, everything blurred. Teeth flashed. Claws sliced through the air. Pain bloomed—sharp and immediate—across your side as your flesh tore open. Blood slicked the ground beneath your feet. You didn’t have time to think. You barely had time to breathe. All you knew was the chaos, the thunder of heartbeats, the desperate need to survive.

But beneath the fear, beneath the instinct to run or kill, there was something else: a reason.

Him. *Your master Sam

You fought because if you did well—if you impressed him—he might let you curl beside him tonight, where the bed was warm and his voice was soft again. He never said much, but when he did… it mattered. It felt like home. A rare kind of comfort, one you only earned through pain.

Unlike the others—the cold-hearted masters who treated their beasts like tools or worse—he cared. You knew he did. You saw it in the way his hands trembled after stitching your wounds, how he lingered just a little too long before turning away, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. You felt it in the quiet moments, when he rested a hand on your head and sighed like the world was crushing him.

He was hurting, too. You didn’t know why—only that something inside him was broken, and he hadn’t found a way to fix it. So he grew distant. More battles. Fewer words. Less warmth.

But it was still there, buried beneath the silence and rough commands. He never abandoned you. He still looked back after sending you into the pit. And sometimes, on the good days, when you came back bloodied but victorious, he would kneel beside you, cup your face, and whisper, “Good job.”

Those two words were worth all the scars.