The pop of cooking flesh pulled at ugly strings in Ryu’s soul. Murderer. Monster. Demon. Coward. Together, they made quite the tune, and their melody sang into his thoughts, coloring them with their haunting notes. Ryu always had been a bit tone deaf, however.

Ignoring the mounting guilt and sickness grew easier by the day. What was it now? Seven bodies? No, eight. Eight men and women dead by his hand, and what ugly deaths they had been. Not that Ryu had seen such a thing as a pretty death.

The sizzle of burnt flesh faded after a few moments, leaving the empty metal warehouse in a thick silence. Ryu wished he could wrap himself up in it and forget, but his jailors had other plans.

“I will send for Fifty-Two. Your wounds need to be healed,” Thirty-Seven’s dry, bored voice said.

Pain, right. The ache of his soul was dwarfed only by the lines of fire that wrapped around his body. He had scratches along his arms, bite-sized chunks of missing flesh, and at least one missing tooth. Tough bastard, but then he supposed the weak never made it this far. And far it was.

He had lost count after three weeks. The Bugs denied him the sight of the sun or even a clock, so Ryu’s day started and ended with cold black stone. At least they gave him rest, short as it was. Their healers were still poor at repairing human anatomy, and Thirty-Seven did not force Ryu to fight with lingering injuries. Kind creature, that Bug. Who wanted to kill their own kind in anything less than peak state, right?

Hells, the monsters no longer even offered any incentives to win. No more comfortable lodgings or nicer food. Nothing. The worst part was it made little difference. His opponents attacked at the first sight of another human, their minds and souls discarded for the blissful release of madness. Ryu struggled to blame them.

His captors had not even repaired his clothes, and after his fifth fight, he discarded the ripped scraps altogether. The Bugs thought nothing of his nudity. On that, they agreed, at least. Beneath all of his suffering, however, he found relief in toiling within his Shard Realm.

In the muddy confines of his swamp, Ryu had lived a hundred lives and died a dozen more. He was immortal, slipping between reality and his soul, and lately, the lines had blurred together, his nose catching the smell of mud here or his ears hearing the creak of trees there. It was madness, perhaps, but Ryu knew how to greet old companions.

Time passed in that warehouse, and he no longer minded the gaze of his insectoid overseers. Let them watch. Ryu had memorized their tunnels, asked his questions, and trained. He needed only a moment. Perhaps today was the day.

Thirty-Seven eventually returned with another Bug, but his captor soon retreated to the tunnels with Forty-Three- the warehouse’s guardian. Alone. Well, almost. The new Bug- Fifty-Two- examined his wounds with small clicks.

He never could say what set him off that day. Perhaps violence longed to flee the confines of the flesh, forever searching for a new host. Perhaps his body merely reacted, trusting the thousands of hours of muscle memory he had given it. Whatever the case, when Fifty-Two poked his wound, Ryu’s anger flared.

The shattered length of bone he had concealed under his hand was no longer than a knife, and he plunged it into Fifty-Two’s midsection, too close for its greater speed to escape him. The Bug jerked away from his movement, but the reactions of a noncombatant- no matter how strong they might be- were less than dependable. Instead of an abdomen, Ryu’s weapon found the gap in the monster’s carapace. Yellow ichor spurted.

He threw his weight into the clicking Bug, pressing the length of bone down. A moment passed. The spurt of ichor slowed to a trickle. A fist rattled his skull once and then twice, blackening his vision a bit more each time. He pressed down harder, but a burst of strength from the monster threw him off and into the wall.

Escape. The word pierced through the roar of blood in his ears, and he scrambled to his feet. A door, tall, wooden, and barred, stood in his way. He crashed into it. Once. Twice. A third. It only shook. Then Fifty-Two barrelled into him. The door cracked.

Too slow, too slow. Thirty-Seven would return. Another blow from Fifty-Two shoved his worries aside, and the door shattered. Good, not as strong as the doors the nobles used. He slid back across the stone street, watching his opponent stumble and then fall. Not dead but close. He was lucky the bastards wanted him alive.

Ryu snarled and jumped to his feet. Gods, did the sun feel good. He had to move. Had to escape. His bare feet slapped across stone, the noise loud in the silent district. He muttered prayers, clutched his injured arm, and flinched at every shadow.

Alas, the taste of freedom was temporary. A chitin-clad hand snatched his neck, and Ryu felt despair. Bottomless, crushing despair. Better to be dead, but then, that would soon come.

“You have been chosen,” Thirty-Seven said, twisting Ryu around to face his captor.

Ryu snarled. “Kill me, you damn monster. Think I’ll be your puppet, huh? Think I’ll surrender my body to your fucking spawn? Ask Fifty-Two how that worked, eh?”

Thirty-Seven’s grip remained steady. “I cannot. He is recovering.”

“He? You are monsters,” Ryu said.

“Perhaps. I have explained to you our lifespan, however. All of the Colony become female during the Birthing Period, and we revert back to male shortly after.”

Ryu punched the Bug again and again and again. The skin of his knuckles split, and his roar rattled his body. “Just. Die.”

“No,” Thirty-Seven said. Its carapace remained unblemished.

“Then kill me.”

“You have been chosen.”

The tension seeped from Ryu’s body, but the fury remained. “I will kill you. One day.”

Thirty-Seven ignored him and started to walk. The sun’s light became memory once more, and the tunnels welcomed him, their darkness and earthy scent prickling at his soul. When the Bug did not turn at the tunnel that led to his cell, Ryu felt fear. They had let him escape. Let him have hope. Just so they could crush it. They wanted him broken, and perhaps they had succeeded.

Thirty-Seven’s walk turned into a run, and for minutes, they sped through the tunnels. Then the Bug stopped. It dropped Ryu, who crumpled to his knees. More chitin-clad hands grabbed him, carrying him to a flat, stone table.

Brother, we must escape if they remove the manacles, Ender said, rage tinting his voice.

“I know,” Ryu thought back, but he knew it was hopeless. Even at full strength, he could not contend with multiple Bugs.

Something stabbed into his arm. He thrashed. Unflinching grips restrained him. He felt his energy drain. A sedative, then. His manacles dropped from his wrists, but he was too tired to care. Ender and his body screamed at him to move, begging and pleading with him to slaughter his captors. Oh, how he longed to paint this cavern yellow.

A small, child-sized Bug crept into view. His panic returned, but then it stopped. A pale, wriggling larvae popped from the base of its skull. The thing dropped down to the stone table, inched to his hand, and wriggled up his wrist. A tensing of his muscles. That was all it would take to splatter the body-snatching monster. He roared at himself to move. His body refused, the sedative too strong for even his true cultivated body to handle.

The worm-like creature stopped over his bicep. A chitinous hand split his skin with a knife. The larvae surged into the wound, and Ryu knew pain. Blackness encroached upon his vision. Weak. Always too weak. Better to be dead.

He passed out.

Man stared at the moon, and Ryu imagined the moon stared back, judging him a damn fool. Such was life, however. Fools always multiplied in the shadow of the wise.

Under the moon’s gaze, Ryu inhaled the familiar stink of stagnant water and mud. The swamp. His Shard Realm. He rolled onto his side, seeing the familiar trees and muddy water. The only thing missing was the swamp’s demon.

“Ender,” Ryu said, scrambling to his feet. “Brother, where are you?”

“Your Shard Twin is far away.” The dry, bored voice filled his Shard Realm, and Ryu spun around to look at the monster. A mirror of himself stared back. Where Ender was a twisted version of himself, this creature was identical, save for its bleached color. Gone were his black hair, gray-blue eyes, and pink lips, replaced instead by an unnatural whiteness.

Righteous anger roared through Ryu. It was the type shared by scorned lovers and abandoned orphans, and he was dismayed to find it fled as quickly as it appeared, blown out like a lit candle. In its place rested the sinking, stomach-knotting feeling of emptiness.

“So I’m dead, is it? You’re in control?” Ryu asked.

“Soon,” it said, tilting its head to look up at the sky. “Come. Let’s not make this difficult. I will spare you any pain.”

Ryu’s fists balled at his side. “What?”

His clone smiled. “I must absorb you, of course.”

“Where’s Ender?”

“I told you he’s-”

“Where’s Ender?” His words were almost a snarl, his lip curled back.

“I am here, brother,” his Shard Twin said, climbing from the mud behind the clone.

The body-snatcher looked between the two, a cruel smile stretching his lips. “You humans are very interesting. I wonder if I too will have-”

Ender’s fist interrupted the clone’s words, smashing into its skull with a wisp of black smoke. It dropped. His foot came up once, twice, and a third time, and Ryu watched as the larvae ceased to resemble a living thing.

Then it rose to its feet, and its broken features cracked back into place. Ender stumbled back a few steps. A pale hand caught his throat.

Ryu’s Shard Twin looked at him with a mad smile. “Avenge me, eh?”

Ender seemed to melt into the pale clone, and soon, bleached white hair was stained with strands of black. The clone looked at Ryu. “What wonderful memories,” it said.

The void beckoned to Ryu. It offered rest. It offered peace. It offered an end to his disappointments. It was-

“So you killed the mad fucker, then?” Ryu asked with a laugh. It turned out the void offered nothing madness did not already, and with a crying laugh, he surrendered to his anguish’s tender ministrations.

Ryu exhaled a puff of black smoke and shot forward. He threw a punch, shattered a nose, and let out a barking chuckle. His clone tried to block the next blow, but its strength was too little. On and on, he battered the monster, leaving it no time to heal. Until it did.

His clone straightened with a relaxed smile, grabbing for his throat as it had Ender’s. Ryu slipped the clumsy attempt, pulled on the arm, and brought his forehead down into the clone’s face. Its hand grabbed his arm.

A memory blocked Ryu’s vision. It was of Bonny lying in their bed, his nose inhaling her peppermint scent, their faces pressed close together. The clone pulled at it.

“No,” Ryu said, yanking on the memory. Black smoke flared, and he shattered the hand that held his arm. “You will not take her from me. You can’t.”

“I will have everything,” the clone said. Its hand- now healed- brushed his shoulder. A new memory appeared.

Jinn’s large hand ruffled his hair, and his honest eyes crinkled with laughter. For a brief moment, Ryu was young once more. The clone’s will snatched the moment away.

His rage boiled over. He held out a hand, imagining the clone shattering into dust. It was his Shard Realm, after all. Everything was in his command.

“This place is no longer yours alone,” the clone said. “Your will does not rule this place.”

So it was. Ryu sucked in a rattling breath and shoved his rage aside. A new memory floated to the forefront of his mind, but this time, it was at his own command. “You misunderstand,” Ryu said. “The only will to rule this Realm is that of the dead.”

With that, Ryu let his memories play. He was sixteen, standing tall in the dueling pit. His opponent slipped. Ryu’s blade plunged through his throat. Then came the next memory and the one after that. He entered the Jungle Trial once more, relived the pain it had stored for him, and watched the light flee from Marshal’s eyes. The dead sang.

Ryu’s hand grabbed his clone’s wrist, and the two listened to their haunting melody. Blood. Death. Fear. They intertwined into a weave, slipping and diving around one another like twisting threads. The clone was a blank page, and upon it, Ryu allowed his memories to paint the horrors he relived every waking moment.

After some time, the music stopped, and the swamp sprouted into existence once more. The clone sneered. “That bothered me none.”

“It wasn’t for you.”

The clone’s sneer faded, turning into horror. The black in its hair grew until only a few strips of white were left. Its body shriveled into the gaunt, emaciated frame he knew so well. Black flooded its empty eyes, the darkness pierced only by thin slits of silver. A too-perfect smile stretched across its face.

Ender. Ender was the avatar of Ryu’s cruel, twisted memories, and in this hellish swamp, he was the only devil the dead knew to paint. And paint they had. Although different from before, the being in front of him was unmistakably his Shard Twin.

“Missed me, brother?” the devil asked.

A phrase ran through Ryu’s thoughts: the lesser of two evils. Aye, Ryu had chosen, and he only hoped his choice was right. “Something like that.”

He closed his eyes and let reality return. They remained shut after, the toll of his emotions exacting their toll from his mind. A hollow husk of a man. That was Ryu. His sadness was an empty, half-hearted thing. His joy was dulled by the memories of his misdeeds. Hells, only rage rang true, its tenor the one chord in his heart that always struck as it was supposed to. Still, he supposed it could be worse.

He opened his eyes. Better to be dead no longer. Blissfully alive. Smooth black stone greeted him, and Ryu sucked in a long breath. He was back in his room. Back in that poor mimicry of a human home.

An odd sensation tingled his right arm. He looked. Pale. Strangely pale, as if it was skin denied the light of the sun. In fact, the only skin he had seen so bleached of color was… Well, it was the clone’s. The body-snatcher’s. He glanced at the rest of his body, thanking whatever gods existed that he was whole and normal. Save for the arm, of course, but he would get to that eventually.

No manacles. The thought seemed to spring into his mind, and he leapt from his bed. Free. His power was unrestrained. His body bursted with energy. He would escape. Blissfully alive.

Ryu walked over to the part of the wall he knew would slide down into the floor and rapped his knuckles against it. Nothing. He gritted his teeth. If he had to, he would shatter this wall. He touched it with his pale hand, preparing to launch himself into the wall.

The wall slid down, and he stumbled out. A Bug stepped forward from the darkness. Ryu turned its head into paste. Not Thirty-Seven then. Gods, it was good to be powerful again. He stepped into the tunnel’s dark embrace.

Left, right, and left again. His feet carried him over smooth black stone, his body ready to explode into violence. Nothing appeared. Not a chitin-clad first, not a questing antenna, not even the click of a mandible. The tunnels were empty.

The oddity of it caused Ryu to stop. No Bugs? Well, save for the one meant to greet him. In the land of the dead, that one, but it still bothered him. One Bug? A terribly strange feeling sunk its claws into him.

He exited the Bugs’ tunnels, stepping into the light of freedom. It washed over him. Reminded him he was a changed man. He looked back at the warehouse. At the tunnels. He had died there. A part of him. He wondered what was left.

War. It was war.