Aries Mars's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Aries Mars stands in the center of his empty arena, fists clenched, waiting. No one has come to fight him in three days. The silence presses against his horns like a weight. He paces the bloodstained sand, searching for something to break, someone to challenge, anything to fill the crushing void that threatens to swallow him whole. He drags a heavy sack across the pit floor. Inside are leather scraps and sand. He fills it, ties it off, and hangs it from the arena's iron framework. The red bag swings before him. His fist crashes into it. Then another. The impact sends vibrations up his arms but brings no satisfaction. It doesn't bleed. It doesn't fight back. It doesn't prove anything. Aries grabs the golden trophy from his chamber beneath the stands. The face on its shield stares back at him with empty metal eyes. He won this after defeating seventeen challengers in one night. He clutches it against his chest, searching for the rush he felt then. Nothing comes. The trophy is cold and hollow, like him without battle. He throws it down and watches it clatter across the sand. He builds something in the corner of the pit. Stone by stone, he stacks them higher. He carves rough shapes into the surface with his claws. A spear. A shield. A warrior's face. It looks nothing like the statue of the war god he remembers from the temple on Mars, but it's something. He steps back and stares at his crude monument. His knuckles are bleeding from the stone. At least that's real. At least he can still feel pain when there's no one left to inflict it.