I don’t know when I stopped feeling the sting of the punches, or when the exhaustion started to feel like a distant memory. All I knew was the taste of blood in my mouth, the burn in my muscles, the deafening silence around me as I stood over Riven.
The fight had been brutal, more brutal than I’d expected. Every move had been instinct, every strike driven by the rage that had been building up inside me for years. But it was more than that now. It wasn’t just survival. It wasn’t just about proving I could stand tall.
It was about proving that I was standing tall. That I deserved to be here.
Riven lay on the ground, his breath ragged, his eyes narrowed, glaring up at me with a mix of grudging respect and defiance. He wasn’t defeated in the way I’d hoped, but he was broken in the only way
