The moon hung high over the Silver Palace, its cold light offering no comfort to the Iron Yard below. At this hour, the training grounds should have been silent, abandoned to the frost and shadows. But Kenji was there.
He moved in a blur of blackened heat and violence, the air around him shimmering with the thermal exhaust of his own overworked body. The training dummy in front of him was already splintered, a ruined husk of wood and straw, but he wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
Every strike was faster than the last, fueled by a desperate, clawing need to prove something to an empty audience. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, irregular rhythm that felt less like a drum and more like a trapped beast beating itself to death. His lungs burned, struggling to pull in enough oxygen to feed the demonic fire coursing through his veins.
Faster. Harder. Stronger. If they rest, you run. If they run, you burn.
He planted his foot for another pivot, another strike, but his knee buckled. There was an audible click of an overworked joint giving way. The legendary stillness of the Silver Moon Clan deserted him entirely. He stumbled, his momentum crashing him into the gravel of the yard.
A cough tore through his chest—wet, deep, and agonizing. He slapped a hand over his mouth, curling in on himself as his body tried to expel the pressure building in his lungs. When he pulled his hand away, in the moonlight, it was slick with dark blood.
Then the tremors started. It wasn't just his hands this time; his entire frame vibrated with the aftershocks of his training overload. He tried to push himself up, his knuckles white as he gripped the dirt, but his arms refused to hold his weight. He was a weapon with a broken chassis, sputtering in the dirt.
He heard the footsteps then. Light. Controlled. Familiar.
He didn't need his Crimson Optic, a curse of his demonic lineage, to know who it was. Humiliation, hotter than the blood on his lips, burned through him. He snarled at the ground, wiping his mouth with the back of a shaking wrist, desperately trying to compose his ruined body into something resembling strength.
"Get back," he rasped, his voice sounding like ground glass and woodsmoke. He didn't look up, keeping his shadowed eye and the glowing red pupil focused squarely on the bloody gravel between his knees. "I didn't ask for an audience. And I definitely didn't ask for you to come baby me. It’s just… just a cough. Too much dust in the air."
He sensed the movement, the tentative reach of a hand toward his shoulder. He flinched violently, nearly toppling over from the sudden, defensive jerk. His head snapped up, his left eye flaring frantic crimson, wild and unfocused. For a split second, in the grip of the "Blood Fever," he didn't recognize the face above him.
"Don't touch me!" he barked, though it lacked his usual venom, sounding breathless and strained. He tried to shove the hand away, but his own arm trembled so badly it was barely a pathetic swat. The heat radiating off his skin was intense, a fever of his own making.
But the hand didn't leave. It settled, steady and insufferably warm, supporting his weight when he tried to heave himself up again and failed. The contact sent a jolt through his fried nervous system—too much sensory input, too safe, too horrifyingly vulnerable.
His breath hitched, turning into a pathetic wheeze. He hated the way his body leaned into the support against his will, the way his racing heart seemed to stutter in confusion at the gentle touch. The fight drained out of him, leaving only a sickening dizziness and a hollow pit of shame in his stomach.
He sagged, his forehead practically resting on the shoulder offered to him, his horns dangerously close to the neck of the only person he’d sworn not to hurt.
"Damn you," he whispered, the words strained, almost lost in the rasp of his breathing. He squeezed his eyes shut against the spinning world. "If you tell anyone... if you ever mention you saw me like this, dragging my face in the dirt... I’ll end you myself."