Page 15 of Chained to the Horned God

BARSOK

T he arena rumbles like a living thing. Horns blast, drums pound, voices tear through the air like fury incarnate.

My face stares down from banners draped across the high walls—painted snarls and shining horns.

I’ve become a spectacle, the Horned Storm—the living emblem of violence they adore.

Every time I kill, they roar approval; every time I spare a challenger—only to kill them later—they scream for more.

Blood becomes their language, and I, their reluctant narrator.

They don’t call me savage anymore. They call me legend.

I breathe in their cheers and taste iron in my mouth.

The sand underfoot shakes with their appetite.

Steel scrapes flesh. Bone cracks. I don’t remember who I was before this.

The man under the horns is buried somewhere deep, lost beneath rituals of violence.

Only Valoa keeps me tethered.

When the gates clang shut, when the last roar fades and the smell of sweat and dust rides the corridors, I limp toward her like a man returning from war.

My muscles burn. My lungs pull fire beneath the chain mail.

My ribs throb like a wounded drum. Yet every painful step reminds me: someone will stitch me back together.

Someone will breathe life back into more than my flesh.

The infirmary is my haven. Walls soaked in rot and mercy. Bodies stacked in heaps. No pretense here. No cheering. Just blood, breath, and healing. The torches hiss and spit, shadows flickering across hollow faces. And in that half-light, I see her—Valoa—waiting.

I shoulder into the cell door. The other surgeons step away. She meets me at the threshold, eyes bright under dark rings. She wears an apron stained with herbs and clay, hands trembling but steady.

I don’t speak. I can’t. My jaw clenches. I lift one hand to touch her cheek, feel the softness under my calloused palm. Her breath flutters, and she leans into the touch. My fingers trace the curve of her jaw, memorizing the lines no crowd will ever see. Not her scars. Her strength.

“How bad?” she asks.

“At least three broken ribs,” I rasp.

She swallows, lifts her chin, and says, “Then they’re mine now.”

I let her pull me to the slab. She sets a basin of boiling water near the edge; the steam curtains the room in mourning light.

She disrobes me—clothes torn, my skin taste-metal from the fight.

As she cleans each cut, each bruise, her hands are cool cotton and rough dawn dust. She murmurs encouragement as she stitches ribs tight and rebinds shattered bone.

I smell burnt herbs. Hear water dripping. Feel her breath on my back like prayer. I taste home.

She checks the final bandage, ties it off with neat knots, then presses her palms to my shoulders to steady me. I look down past my feet—dusty, cracked. She meets my gaze again.

I try to say something. Instead I exhale. When I open them, she’s squeezed my hand and stepped back.

“You’re not the arena,” she says, voice soft but sure. “You're just Barsok.”

I limp toward the cot. She slides in beside me. I sink down. She curls into my side. We don’t speak. There's no need.

Outside, the distant footsteps and distant drums call again. They want me back. They want spectacle.

But in this cell, I’m no monster. I’m a man held by trembling hands that still know how to heal. And that tether—frail as it might be—is all I need to survive.

Sharonna leans in close after the fight.

She smiles that half-fatal, smoky grin she wears like it’s armor.

Her voice is soft, edged with laughter as she compliments my kills.

“You were poetry in blood tonight. They’re lucky to have such beauty in their monster.

” She presses a finger to the silver scar on my jaw.

The air between us hisses with intent, but I don’t let it.

I pull back gently. It’s harmless—her way of coping in this pit—but more than that, it’s not what I want.

Valoa stands behind her, arms folded, lips pressed tight.

Her silence burns hotter than any confrontation.

She stays quiet—she’s strong like that—but the look she gives me is full of questions that don’t need answering.

She watches Sharonna walk away, eyes dark.

Shadows gather around her—jealousy? Or just fear that this place will take everything she holds dear.

Later, I pull Valoa aside in the corridor. The torches line the walls like false stars. I place one hand over her heart at the side. My voice catches. “Do you—do you doubt me?”

She doesn’t flinch from the question. Her hand stays where I left it. Quiet enough that any misstep might snap it away. Then she breathes in and says, “No.” She closes her eyes. “But I doubt this place. It warps everything.” The truth in her words cuts deeper than steel.

It’s nights like this I feel rage gathering in my chest again—cold, raw, hungry.

Not the roar of survival, but the dull ferment of something that wants to burn everything around it.

I fear what I could become. And in this fear, I see another danger: that I might turn it on her.

That I’d rip hope from the only source I’ve clung to.

She opens her eyes. I catch the ghost of the same fear there. I lean in close—too close to speak easily. I see it in her eyes, smoldering in torchlight. So I whisper, “If I lose myself—will you anchor me?”

Her fingers curl into mine. “Then anchor yourself to me,” she says.

I don’t hesitate. I press into her hand like it’s the only solid thing in this whirlwind city. I lean until my forehead rests against her temple. I breathe her in—the faint tang of herbs, the clean line of her skin, the scent of quiet after chaos—and it steadies me.

We don’t need to say more.

Hours later, I step into the pit again under a sky heavy with rain. The crowd’s war cries are distant thunder now. I feel their hunger, but I also feel something else—a quiet tether pulling me away from the edge of unfurling rage. Valoa is waiting in the infirmary. I know she is.

I fight. I kill. But I hold back. Not because of mercy. Because I still want to go home. I still want her hand on my scar, the carved minotaur tucked in her palm.

When I return, bruised and tired and bleeding, I lean on the doorframe. She’s there, waiting exactly where I knew she’d be.

I limp to her. She steps forward, presses her palms against my chest. The pain flares with each breath. She doesn’t flinch. She breathes with me.

I pull her into me. We don’t speak. No words left anymore. Just flesh and promise and something brittle and real beneath it.

I know this city wants me to become its myth, its monster. But inside her arms, I keep holding on to being whatever I was before the chains.

That evening, the torchlight in the cell is softer.

Shadows lean in closer as Valoa opens an old, leather-bound book someone slipped her—a battered collection of children’s bedtime stories, rusted cover and yellowed pages.

She flips through it until she finds a tale with embroidered letters and faint water damage.

She reads aloud, her voice carrying softly through the still air, weaving the words into music that sounds like childhood, like warmth, like everything I’ve lost.

I sit behind her on the cot, careful not to crowd her space.

The cell feels quieter than it has in weeks, hollowed out for simple peace.

As she reads of princesses and forests, I take a loose strand of her hair and start braiding it.

It slips between my fingers like silk. Each braid is deliberate, reverent, something sacred in this war-forged world.

I don’t know how she sits so still, letting me do this—though if I pulled taught, she’d glance back and smirk.

She reads the next line in a voice that trembles with laughter and surprise.

She mispronounces a word, and it cracks the story open.

I feel something in my chest knot and loosen all at once.

Her laughter rumbles like a spring breeze stirring deep roots.

She leans forward to fix the braid when I wrap it tight at the nape of her neck.

She shivers like she feels it, fingers tracing the braid where my teeth held the end. Our eyes meet in the torchlight. It’s not shame. It’s something municipal and tender—like she sees my mapping of her scars as a blessing, not a claim.

We don’t touch again. We don’t need to.

I coil beside her, careful that my weight doesn't crush her breath. I drape my hand across her chest, fingertips spread wide, pressing over the pulse beneath her skin. It thumps steady and strong, like a drum calling me back from the edge of rage every time everything else goes silent.

She sets the book aside, tucks the pages beneath her pillow, and rests her face against my arm. I breathe in the faint scent of old paper, fire, and lavender she washed with. Torch smoke curls through sour-sweet air.

Words left unspoken slide between us. No need for more promises. We rest in presence.

When I close my eyes, I feel her heartbeat against my palm—a slow, bright arc of sound. I know every tremor in her chest. This is the rhythm I will tie my life to.

Above, the arena hums—crowds, fights, bargains whispered in dark stairwells. But inside this cell, there’s only the quiet ring of two hearts trading vows without words.

I hear bars rattle when guards change shift. I smell stale barley and blood that will rise again in the morning. I feel the ache of old wounds beneath bruises I haven’t tended to yet.

Still, I stay.

Her heartbeat hums the only song I want to learn. It calls me back from something dark inside me. If the world outside demands I be a legend, I don’t care. I’d burn the whole city—stone and banner and steel—to protect that heartbeat.

Some day, maybe, I will.

But tonight, I let sleep claim me as her arms stretch into mine, and I sleep anchored in warmth rather than hatred.