Richard woke expecting pain.

  He lay still for a moment, eyes closed, waiting for his back to throb, his ribs to complain, his legs to protest every breath. Yesterday's arena still replayed behind his eyelids—the crack of sticks, the weightless moment before impact, the taste of stone in his mouth.

  Nothing hurt.

  He blinked his eyes open. The nursery cave glowed with its usual dim moss-light. Pups snored and muttered in their sleep all around him. The stale smell of bodies and stone was the same as always.

  Richard pushed himself up slowly, bracing for a jolt of agony.

  Still nothing.

  He twisted his torso, rolled his shoulders, arched his back. There were faint twinges, but compared to what he'd braced for, they barely qualified as discomfort.

  Frowning, he reached back and prodded the spot where the guardian's stick had smashed into him. The skin felt tender—nothing more than an old bruise fading over newly healed muscle.

  "That should hurt like hell," he thought. "And I should be on bed rest."

  Richard hugged his arms around himself, suddenly cold.

  "Humans don't bounce back like this," he thought. "A hit like that back home and I'd be in a hospital. Here it's… a bad night's sleep."

  It wasn't just the beating.

  He'd gone to sleep with his belly full of thick stew, warmth humming through his limbs. Now, less than a day later, that warmth had settled into something else—an underlying steadiness in his muscles, a coiled readiness in his legs. He felt… charged.

  Not rested. Charged.

  He forced his breathing to slow and even out.

  "If they can break us and we still bounce back in a night, it means they can push harder," he thought. "And they will."

  As if summoned by the thought, the workers appeared, shuffling in with the same gourds they always brought for feeding.

  This time, Richard noticed the difference immediately.

  The pups who had eaten stew yesterday surged to their feet first. They crowded the workers, eyes bright, voices loud, shoving and snapping to get fed, instead of waiting for their turn. Their movements were sharper, their posture less slumped. Their skin even looked a little less sallow, their eyes a touch clearer.

  The ones who had failed yesterday moved slower. Some stayed lying down until a worker fed them. Others staggered to their feet, eyes dull.

  They all swallowed the thin porridge when it was poured into their mouths, but the ones who'd eaten well the day before had more fight in them as they elbowed for position. The others just… endured it.

  Richard let the lukewarm goop slide down his throat and licked the last drops from his lips automatically. Then he sat back against the wall, watching.

  "Same cave, same food," he thought. "Different bodies."

  He flexed his fingers, feeling the simmering energy in his limbs.

  "This won't last. I need to spend it on something that matters."

  For the rest of the day, the pups filled the cave with their usual chaos.

  Once feeding was over and the workers shuffled away, the bolder pups started roughhousing—darting in to tackle whoever wasn't paying attention, rolling them over, then sprinting off while the others chased them, trying to catch and pin the offender. Some formed loose rings where the rules dissolved into grappling: shoves, trips, sudden throws, and bodies slamming into the dirt. The rest watched from the edges, too exhausted or cautious to enter the tangle.

  Until now, Richard had mostly been in that second group. Watching had been safer. Conserved energy. Let him observe.

  Today, his legs twitched where he sat.

  "If I don't use this, it just leaks away," he thought. "Next time they'll throw something new at us, and I'll be the same weakling with a slightly better Status line."

  He pushed himself upright.

  A nearby pack of pups was playing their version of tag—one pup with a bitten ear charged after the others, trying to drive them to the ground or hold them long enough to count a pin. The rules were vague, but the rhythm was obvious.

  Richard walked toward them.

  A few heads turned. Some pups looked him over, saw nothing remarkable, and dismissed him. Fine by him.

  He stepped into the bitten-ear pup's path just as he lunged for another target.

  They collided.

  Richard twisted with the hit, let the momentum spill them both to the ground, and wrapped an arm around the other pup's neck. The pup snarled and bucked, hands scrabbling for a grip to roll Richard under. Richard tightened his hold, feeling the give and coil of his own limbs as he shifted his weight to stay on top.

  The stalemate didn't last—he was still weaker—but it lasted long enough to feel how this new body wanted to move: how his arms pulled, how his legs drove, how those long, wiry limbs let him stay glued close and still slip a hand out to hook a wrist or jam a shoulder before the other pup could twist free.

  They rolled. The ring around them whooped and shrieked, voices spiking whenever someone nearly forced a pin or twisted into a throw that almost stuck.

  The bitten-ear pup finally heaved him off and sprang back, panting, eyes bright with challenge. Richard let the shove carry him, rolled with it, came up on all fours, and lunged after him—testing his speed, one long arm already sweeping low for a leg to drag the pup down again.

  He didn't win every exchange. In fact, he lost more often than not. Sometimes they slammed him flat and nearly held him long enough to count a win before he slipped sideways, scrambling free with flailing limbs. But he paid attention. Each time someone dumped him on his back, he noted where his feet had been. Each time he wriggled out of a hold or managed to flip someone heavier than himself, he marked which muscles had fired and how he'd shifted his hips.

  Soon the game tilted into something harsher—two pups fighting with real malice in their eyes.

  That was when Richard bowed out, retreating from the melee.

  As the moss-light dimmed, he withdrew to a quieter corner and began his own exercises.

  Squats until his legs burned and his breath rasped.

  Push-ups, careful to keep his hands under his shoulders, feeling the strain along arms and chest.

  Short sprints from one side of the cave to the other, counting heartbeats.

  He stopped long before he hit the wall of exhaustion, forcing himself to leave a reservoir of energy.

  "I don't know when they'll decide it's showtime again," he thought, chest heaving. "And I can't assume another bowl of stew before that."

  The next day passed much the same.

  He joined more games, picking opponents and situations that pushed him without breaking him. He let bigger pups throw him, then analyzed how they'd done it. He experimented with how to fall—turning a full-body slam into a roll, twisting so strikes slid along his back instead of crashing straight in.

  Between bouts, he rested, forcing himself to be still even when his nerves buzzed.

  By the third morning, the pattern broke.

  The workers came earlier than usual, without buckets.

  Instead, they brought ropes.

  Richard's stomach clenched. Around him, the pups quieted, staring as one of the workers began looping ropes around necks and waists, tying them in familiar chains.

  Arena day.

  He let the loop settle around his own neck, feeling the rough fibers bite against skin. He flexed his hands once, then went limp enough that the worker stopped paying him any extra attention.

  As before, the march through the tunnels felt endlessly long and far too short at the same time.

  The roar of the crowd hit them even before they stepped into the arena. The smell hit a heartbeat later—smoke, sweat, and, under it all, rich cooking meat.

  This time, Richard didn't flinch when they were herded into the center. He kept his chin level and his eyes up, scanning.

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  The big goblin was there again, club in hand, playing to the crowd. The same line of warriors, relaxed, sticks resting casually on their shoulders. The stone piles at their feet gleamed blue.

  "Same layout," Richard thought. "Same pieces on the board."

  He found the lazy guardian from last time almost immediately. Same crooked grin. Same slouched stance.

  The big goblin ranted and postured, swinging his club and getting the crowd riled up. Finally, he slammed his club down and barked the same words as before.

  "Enough. Watch. Pups."

  The meaning was the same as last time, but Richard's reaction wasn't.

  He didn't freeze.

  He stepped back a little, putting a few bodies between himself and the nearest guardian, and watched.

  The first wave of pups moved even faster than they had last time. Now they knew what was at stake. Mid-sized two-beads and small, desperate one-beads alike hurled themselves toward the stones, screaming.

  Guards laughed and swung.

  Blue stones flashed and vanished.

  Richard folded his arms, heart steady.

  He could try the same trick as last time. Lurk. Grab several stones in the chaos. Hide one. Play the beaten loser and slip through the wall with a secret win.

  It was tempting.

  But even goblin pups, stupid as they were, had a nasty, sharp-edged cunning about them. They watched. They remembered who got lucky too often. If he pulled the same stunt again, they wouldn't just rush past him next time he went down—they'd pile on and search. Claws in his mouth, hands on his body, teeth in his arms until they were sure he didn't have anything hidden.

  And once a trick was common knowledge, it stopped being a trick.

  "I need aces I can use," he thought. "Not habits they can plan for."

  He let the idea go.

  He could also do what the big bruisers did: let some smaller fool take the risk, then put a fist in their face and steal their prize.

  Richard watched one such exchange play out—a wiry pup snatching a stone only to have it punched out of his hands by a hulking three-bead. The smaller one hit the floor and didn't get up right away.

  Something in Richard twisted.

  "No," he thought. "I'm not doing that. I'm not going to bow to their rules, their way of life."

  He exhaled slowly.

  "I want to win all the rounds," he told himself. "So I need a way to win that doesn't depend on one gimmick or someone else's spine."

  He watched.

  This time, not to learn the rules—they were already burned into him—but to see the parts he'd missed.

  He watched the fast pups.

  They didn't just sprint blindly. They watched the sticks, not the stones. They darted in when a swing had just spent itself, when a guardian's weight was shifting the wrong way. When they took hits, they twisted, turning a full-force blow into a glancing strike that knocked them aside instead of smashing them flat.

  He watched the big bruisers.

  They didn't just charge the stone-carrying pups head-on. They fanned out, forming loose semicircles. They hung back just enough that the smaller pup with the stone had to commit to a direction, then crashed in from the sides, cutting off escape.

  Sometimes the smaller pup slipped through anyway, using the scramble as cover.

  Sometimes they didn't.

  He watched the guardians.

  He noticed which ones were already sweating, which ones still looked fresh. Which ones grinned as they swung and which ones wore bored scowls. He watched where their eyes went—stones, faces, feet.

  "All right," he thought, as another pup went down screaming. "Speed. Angles. Space. And timing."

  Richard waited.

  His hunger urged him to move, but he forced himself to stay still. One wave of attacks crashed and broke. Then a second. Each time, more of the biggest or fastest three-beads managed to grab stones and vanish through the warrior wall to feast.

  He counted the bruisers that were left in the arena.

  Each one who left to eat was one less heavy body to run him down when he finally made his move. Only when most of the largest brutes were already crouched over their stew did he finally shift his weight forward, picking his target.

  His eyes flicked to the lazy guardian.

  The goblin's swings were getting sloppier. He still hit hard, but his follow-through left wider and wider gaps. The stone pile at his feet was one of the smallest now, but not empty.

  More importantly, the biggest thieves near his section had already eaten and retreated. What remained was a mix of mid-sized bruisers and smaller one-beads.

  "Time," Richard thought.

  He eased closer, keeping other pups between himself and the guardian until he was just at the edge of the chaos.

  Three pups launched themselves at the lazy guardian's stones in quick succession. He bellowed a laugh and swung, overcommitting to smash the first two aside.

  Richard moved.

  He sprinted toward the pile, not directly but at an angle that would carry him past the guardian if he missed. His feet slapped stone. His heart hammered.

  The stick started to come around.

  Last time, he'd tried to dodge and failed.

  This time, he went into the swing.

  At the last instant, he twisted his body, presenting his shoulder and back instead of his ribs or head. He bent his knees, ready to roll with the impact.

  The blow landed with a teeth-rattling thud. Pain flared, bright and sharp. The force spun him, but he let it, riding the momentum instead of fighting it. His long arms shot out as he staggered past the guardian's side, fingers closing around one of the few remaining stones.

  He didn't stop to check his grip.

  Behind him, he heard the guardian's stick slam into the floor where he should have fallen.

  Richard planted his feet and pushed off, forcing his legs to obey.

  Shouts went up around him. Not from the stands. From behind.

  Bruisers.

  He didn't look back, but he'd seen this dance enough by now to predict it. The mid-sized bruisers near the lazy guardian's section would already be veering to intercept, forming a loose net in front of him.

  "Fine," he thought. "Let's see if you can keep up."

  He ran straight at them.

  At the last moment, just before they committed, he stumbled.

  It wasn't a real stumble. He let his foot drag, let his shoulders hitch, eyes flicking toward the right as if he were about to bolt that way.

  The thieves took the bait.

  They surged to cut him off—on the right.

  Richard planted his foot, spun left, and drove his aching legs harder.

  For a heartbeat, there was open space. No thief close enough to tackle him without losing balance.

  He took it.

  His lungs burned. His shoulder howled. His hands clenched to a death grip around the stone. But his feet kept moving, each heartbeat hammering him closer to victory.

  One thief lunged from the side, fingers grazing Richard's arm and slipping off. Another tried to clip his ankle with a wild kick and missed by inches.

  The wall of warriors loomed.

  Richard didn't slow.

  At the last possible moment, he shoved the stone out in front of him with both hands, like an offering.

  "Here!" he croaked in Goblinish.

  The wall opened and Richard stumbled through.

  On the other side of the warrior wall, the smells hit him like a wave.

  Smoke. Boiling fat. Rich broth.

  His knees buckled.

  A worker appeared in front of him, bowl in hand, expression bored.

  This time, Richard didn't waste a heartbeat staring.

  He dropped to his knees and ate.

  The stew burned going down, too hot and too salty, the spices scraping along his throat like sand. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat. His back felt like one huge bruise.

  He didn't care.

  Warmth spread through him with each gulp, shoving pain back into the corners of his awareness. He scraped the bowl clean, then licked it for good measure, ignoring the way his hands shook.

  Only when the last smear of grease was gone did he sit back, panting.

  His gaze drifted toward the stands.

  The goblins up there lounged, laughed, and pointed, clapping when a pup took a particularly hard hit, leaning forward eagerly when a brawl over a stone turned bloody. Some munched on their own food as they watched, as if this were nothing more than a play put on for their amusement.

  Heat rose in Richard's chest, different from the stew.

  "How dare they," he thought, fingers tightening around the empty bowl. "How dare they turn my pain into entertainment."

  They had the power. They had the food. They could have just… fed them if they wanted, but Richard didn't believe in fairy tales.

  Images from his old life flickered up—men in suits watching numbers climb and fall on screens, sipping expensive drinks while other people's lives crumbled. Different world. Same detachment.

  "You were either prey or predator."

  "I won't just survive; I'll pay them back."

  On the other side, the chaos continued. Pups still screamed and scrambled. Stones still flashed and vanished. The pattern hadn't changed.

  Small ones risked everything to grab a chance at food.

  Big ones took it from them.

  The crowd roared.

  Time blurred.

  The second arena day ended much like the first—stones gone, cauldrons emptied, workers packing up while two-thirds of the pups sagged with full bellies and the rest clutched at hollow stomachs.

  Then it all happened again.

  Every two or three days, the routine repeated.

  Ropes in the morning instead of buckets.

  The long, echoing walk.

  The roar of the crowd.

  The performance.

  The stones.

  The sticks.

  The stew.

  Between arena days, Richard trained.

  He played the pups' games, not to win, but to learn—testing how far he could push without burning himself out. He drilled the things that worked in the arena: angling into blows, rolling with impacts, keeping his feet moving even when his lungs screamed.

  He experimented with how to break grabs, how to twist out from under a heavier body, how to use the cave floor and walls as allies instead of obstacles.

  He found that if he went all-out one day, his body still recovered overnight… mostly. The bruises faded faster than they had any right to. The aching dullness in his muscles lingered a little longer each time, but never enough to cripple him.

  He also found a limit—a point where another sprint, another set of push-ups, made his vision tunnel and his limbs heavy in a way that didn't feel like the good burn of training; more like the burn that hissed, "Push once more and something snaps."

  He knew to stop before that.

  On arena days, his new skills paid off.

  Most of the time, he could secure a stone on his first attempt — timing his rushes for moments when guardians overextended, using feints to send would-be thieves in the wrong direction, letting less important hits glance off so he could keep moving.

  He wasn't invincible. Some days, his timing was off. A stick caught him wrong and left him dazed on the floor, fingers empty as other pups swarmed over the scattered stones. Some days, the thieves guessed right and boxed him in too well.

  On those days, when he staggered back with his head ringing and his hands bare, he used the one trick he kept as an ace.

  He didn't use it often. Just when the pain screamed that he couldn't take another full-force hit and was going to stay hungry.

  Snatch several stones in the chaos instead of one.

  Hide one.

  Play the beaten loser.

  Spit victory into his palm at the last moment.

  If any of the warriors noticed, they didn't show it. Maybe they thought it was funny. Maybe they simply didn't care how the stone got into his hand, only that it was there.

  The pups didn't catch on either.

  They were too busy scrambling for their own chances.

  Days blurred into a rough pattern of hunger and brief, blazing fullness.

  Richard didn't know exactly how much time passed before he realized the cave had grown… thinner.

  It hit him one morning in the nursery as the moss-light brightened and the workers hadn't come yet.

  He sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and frowned.

  The cluster of pups he usually woke up among looked sparser. The noisy one with the broken tooth wasn't there. Neither was the quiet one who used to curl up near the wall and chew his bead-string.

  He turned his head, scanning.

  Empty spaces.

  Not many. But enough.

  Richard's thoughts went back, unspooling days and scenes, matching vague impressions with sharp details. Pups who hadn't gotten up for feeding. Workers dragging limp bodies away after arena days. Little shapes hunched over and not moving.

  "Twenty percent?" he guessed. "More?"

  Most of the missing ones had been small.

  He stared at the hollow spots where they should have been.

  Winning the game had kept him alive, put warmth in his belly and strength in his limbs. But it hadn't changed what the game was.

  He thought of the stands. The laughter. The casual, almost bored way the big goblin had called them weak.

  "One day."

  The thought settled in his chest like a stone dropped into deep water.

  His gaze fell to the floor beside him.

  Over the past days, he'd developed a habit of picking up the small, smooth stones that sometimes worked loose from the cave walls and pocketing them. At first, it had just been something to do with his hands.

  Richard stood up.

  A few nearby pups glanced his way, then looked back down, uninterested.

  He walked toward the center of the cave, where the ground was flattest, and began to lay the stones out in a small, careful pile.

  He didn't hide what he was doing. If anything, he exaggerated his movements, letting each clack of stone on stone echo a little.

  When the pile was big enough to be obvious, he straightened, filled his lungs, and let out a sharp, rising howl.

  Sound ricocheted off the stone walls, cutting through the low murmur of the waking cave.

  Heads turned.

  Eyes fixed on him.