My side crashes into the dirt, and my lungs start to seize up. Breathing is like drowning, but still, I move forward. I roll left, get on my hands and knees. I spit blood, then gasp.

I'm surrounded.

Hundreds of men like me—some armored, some half-naked, most completely bare. All of their skin is slick with sweat, their eyes wide with terror. All of them just as lost.

I look pathetic; back hunched, knees buckling, sweat dripping into dry earth, instantly consumed by the dust. I can't even lift my head properly.

But then they start running. Men, women. All red in blood, all charging toward something. Some run with purpose, others panic blindly. They are a wall of bodies moving as one.

I lift my gaze and see walls towering, endless walls. They are circling us completely. This is no prison. It's a colosseum.

The roars confirm it. Continuous shouts, whistles, and cheers. The sound comes not from us, but from above. Spectators.

Creatures with bark for skin. Giants and monsters, towering shadows looking down from their thrones, then I look closer.

Not at the people, but at the colors; tree trunk skin, dry moss-colored eyes. Their laughter spills like boiling oil.

Then—a voice. It cuts through everything, through the screams, through the madness of agony.

"Damian!" My head snaps toward it.

A man, tall, strong, blonde, though his hair is more stubble than strands. Not a giant. Not a beast. Just... bigger human. At least a head taller than me.

"Frank!" This—my voice trembles. My legs move. Not by choice, but because they must, because this body recognizes him.

"Where's Paula?!" I shout across the distance, ten feet, maybe more.

He doesn't answer. Not yet. My feet ache, and the ground cuts into me, corns of sand grind into open flesh, and I stagger.

Then—a roar. Not human, not anything like a human.

The air vibrates, and small stones lift off the ground, hovering in mid-air as the tremor grows. This body freezes entirely.

From the monstrous spectators... to the sky above. The ceiling of this place is absurdly high, hundreds of meters. Light pours from crystalline structures—green, blue, orange, violet. Every color you could imagine.

But one light flickers. Moreover darkens. Something blots it out; a shadow, no, a creature. It leaps from the far end of the colosseum. It isn't shaped like a human, not even like another blood color.

It's a beast.

It lands with a quake. Its body is feline—too feline. All muscles and murder; claws like sabers and teeth like stakes. It roars again.

"Damian!" Frank calls out to me, his presence is like an anchor on the shore.

He grips my shoulders—hands larger than my head—trembling with something between fury and despair. "Damian!" he shouts, voice cracking halfway through the name as he jerks me back and forth, like a puppet. As if I'm not there, and suddenly I snap out of it, like I've been pulled from a trance.

"Where's Paula!?" he demands now, though I had asked the same damn thing just seconds ago.

"I don't know!" I scream, louder than I mean to.

He doesn't respond immediately. His face is still. But then the tears pour from his eyes, as if the weight of it finally crashes down on him. Yet his grip on me doesn't loosen. Not one bit.

"Get your ass out of here. Wait in the back!" he growls—not harsh, not cruel—just tired. Just worn. I see it in his face, the way it cracks. He loves her. Paula, whoever she is. No I know her. Do I?

But none of this feels real to me. None of this is mine. This emotion, this moment. It's like I've been dumped into a body that moves according to his barked orders, and now I walk, legs obeying while my mind reels. My eyes drift across the flood of humans packed into a loose line, panicked, disorganized, barely holding themselves together as they suppress something primal.

I step backward. My vision fixed ahead, even as Frank yells at someone else. And then it catches my eye. At first, it looks like a massive cat—too big to be true—but no, this isn't just a cat. It's something else. A lion, but not even that.

A beast with a mane the color of dried dirt, paws the size of heads, claws thicker than fingers—four of them, each curved like butcher's blades. And its mouth... it drips with red blood. It hisses, low and sharp. The sound sends a shiver down my spine, and in the end, my hair stands on end. I—no, he pisses himself, but I feel the pain coming from it.