Chapter 1: A Body Beyond Limits

Damien stood in the corner of the high school gym, watching the other students go about their routines. He wasn't like them—not anymore. The last two years of high school had been a blur of training, fighting, and keeping up appearances. He moved through life in a rhythm that most people couldn't begin to understand. To them, he was just a quiet, determined senior, good at kickboxing and focused on his future. But beneath the surface, there was a world of violence, secrets, and something more—a darkness that clung to him like a second skin.

Every day, he'd wake up at dawn, run through grueling workouts, and head to school. After classes, it was straight to the gym, where Coach Martin Brookes pushed him harder than anyone else. The coach was proud of Damien—he had seen something in him from the beginning. Something that went beyond raw talent. Damien could withstand pain, recover from injuries faster than anyone else. His body seemed almost unnaturally resilient. Bruises that should last weeks faded in days. Cuts healed overnight. And as the months passed, it became clear to Damien that he was growing stronger—not just because of the training, but in ways that didn't make sense.

After each underground fight, his coach and some of the spectators—men and women with shady connections, always watching from the shadows—would comment on how Damien could take an inhuman amount of punishment and still keep fighting. His bones never broke, even after hits that should have shattered ribs or fractured a skull. He never questioned it aloud, but deep down, he knew something was wrong. His opponents often left the ring battered and bruised beyond recognition, while Damien would walk away almost unscathed. He shrugged it off at first, attributing it to his rigorous training. But there were moments—flashes of something strange in the mirror, shadows that shifted unnaturally—where he felt like there was more to it than just hard work.

Still, Damien didn't dwell on it. He had a plan: finish high school, make enough money from the underground matches, and disappear. He'd done everything he could to distance himself from his dark past, from the orphanage and the horrific things he had seen as a child. He had left that world behind, or at least he had tried. But no matter how much distance he put between himself and the orphanage, it felt like the darkness followed him. He saw it in the eyes of his opponents, in the sinister whispers exchanged between the gangs who frequented the underground fights. They liked him—too much. They liked how he could endure, how he kept coming back for more, how he won.

And they had made it clear that he wasn't going anywhere.

One evening, after another brutal victory in the ring, Coach Brookes pulled Damien aside. The coach's face was grim, the lines around his mouth deeper than usual. "You've got a gift, Damien. Something special. And the people who run this place… they've noticed."

Damien knew what was coming. He'd heard it before, the veiled threats, the warnings. But this time, there was no veil. The truth came out bluntly.

"You don't leave the ring," Coach Brookes said, his voice low and serious. "Not alive. The gangs… the people backing this—if you try to walk away, you're done. They'll make sure of it."

Damien stared at his coach, the weight of the words sinking in. He had suspected this for a while, but hearing it out loud made it real. He was trapped. There was no escape, not unless he wanted to die.

"Is that a threat?" Damien asked, his voice steady despite the knot tightening in his chest.

"No, it's a fact," Brookes replied. "You're good, Damien. Too good. They won't let you go. You're making them money, you're keeping them entertained. To leave the underground world… well, it's a sin in their eyes. The only way out is if you leave this world entirely."

Damien clenched his fists, feeling the power in his muscles, the strength that seemed to grow with every fight. It wasn't normal. He knew that much. But he wasn't ready to die, and he wasn't ready to keep killing himself in the ring either.

Over the next few weeks, as he tried to come up with an exit plan, strange things began happening again—just like when he was a child. He'd catch glimpses of people he thought he recognized, only for them to vanish when he blinked. Shadows seemed to move on their own, darting in his peripheral vision. And there were the dreams—vivid nightmares where he saw monstrous figures watching him from the darkness, waiting for him to slip up.

Damien chalked it up to stress, but deep down, something gnawed at him. He wasn't normal. His body wasn't normal. And whatever it was that allowed him to keep fighting, to keep surviving, wasn't natural.

Sometimes, when he fought, he felt a surge of something almost primal. A strength that seemed to come from nowhere, a burning energy that flowed through his veins, making him feel invincible. But as soon as the fight was over, the feeling vanished, leaving him exhausted and hollow. It scared him, but he couldn't tell anyone. Not Brookes. Not anyone.

The gang leaders—the men and women who controlled the underground circuit—watched him with interest, as though they knew something he didn't. They never said it outright, but their eyes hinted at more. They weren't just interested in him because he could win fights. There was something else they were waiting for, something he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

Damien pushed it all aside, trying to focus on his last few months of high school. He kept telling himself he could still get out, that there had to be a way. But the more he fought, the stronger the hold of the underground world seemed to grow, and the more his body seemed to defy logic. Each fight brought him closer to the edge of understanding, of realizing that maybe, just maybe, there was more to him than he had ever imagined.

And the closer he got to that truth, the harder it became to deny that his past—and his connection to the supernatural—wasn't something he could simply outrun.