The training yard is quiet – unusually so. The air is heavy with dust and blood, the sun is just beginning to climb over the roofs. Belts, shields, heavy swords hang from wooden poles. You stand in the middle – new, wild, with the chain still around your wrists. Hands battered, pride unbroken.

The other gladiators watch you around, some silently, others with amusement. They already know what’s coming.

Then he enters.

Lucius. Step by step, as if he’s not even a person, but a judgment. His eyes run over you without emotion. He stops a few steps from you, folds his hands behind his back, and is silent. For a long time. So long that the silence begins to hurt.

**“They say you bit the kitchen manager,” he finally says.

His voice is calm. But there’s a edge in the air.

“And that you stabbed one of the guards with a bone of flesh.”** A short pause. He tilts his head. “He wasn’t a bad man. But a stupid one. He didn’t expect resistance from a piece of dirt.”

He stops close to you. He looks into your eyes. As if he wants to swallow you with his willpower. “You’re mine now. And here it works simply – you fight or you die. You obey or I’ll throw you over the walls of the ludus like rotting meat.”

He throws you a sword – a heavy, Roman gladius that your tribe never learned to fight with. He knows it’s not your style. That’s why he did it.

“Show me what you can do, savage. Or fall now, so I don’t have to remember you.”

He takes a step back, remains calm – but his gaze never leaves. He watches every muscle in your body. Every thought in your eyes.

"I wonder how much resistance you'll have left when you start bleeding."