Chapter Thirteen: Echoes in the Cage
"You don't win because you're better... you win because you suffer more."
Blaze stood at the edge of the alley, the broken streetlamp above casting jagged shadows across his face. Damien was a step behind, silent, as Kane leaned against the wall like he had all the time in the world. A sunflower seed shell snapped between his teeth. He didn't look up.
"We need answers," Blaze said, voice hoarse.
Kane didn't move. He flicked another shell to the ground and finally glanced up, looking through Blaze like he were a ghost that had already faded.
"You lost," he said flatly. "Losers don't get to ask questions."
Damien took a step forward, tension pulsing through him. "You knew about the Witness. You saw it. Just tell us what it wants."
"What it wants?" Kane scoffed. "It wants nothing. It watches. You either interest it, or you don't."
"What does that even mean?" Blaze snapped. "It hasn't shown up. Not once. Not since—"
"That's because it left," Kane cut in, eyes tired. "Like all ghosts do."
"Then why did it come in the first place? Why me?"
Kane stood slowly and tossed his empty seed bag to the side. He walked a few steps toward the alley's deeper shadows.
"Go home," he muttered. "I don't talk to losers."
And then he disappeared, swallowed by the dark.
Damien put a hand on Blaze's shoulder.
"Let it go. He won't say more."
But Blaze didn't move. His jaw was clenched, his eyes glazed with something between fury and fear.
The Witness did not appear that night.
Nor the night after.
And Blaze felt it. Not just its absence. Its rejection.
He started seeing flickers of it in impossible places—the corner of his eye during training, his own reflection blinking out of sync, voices that whispered but never said a word.
He stopped sleeping. Started pacing. Mumbled answers to questions no one asked.
"You see it too, right?"
Damien watched him quietly. The trauma of the fight, the loss, the silence—it was unraveling Blaze.
"You need time to reset," Damien told him. "It's not the end."
"What if it is? What if that was all I was ever going to be? Just a moment the Witness mistook for meaning."
They returned home in silence. The city welcomed them with noise and neon, but Blaze couldn't feel anything anymore. He walked through his apartment like a stranger. Sat on his own bed like a guest.
One night, late, Dutch came over.
He found Blaze on the balcony, shirtless, covered in old blood and new bruises, muttering to the stars.
"You're spiraling," Dutch said.
Blaze turned, eyes wild.
"I know how this ends. I've seen it in the dreams."
"Dreams aren't prophecies. They're echoes."
"They're warnings."
Blaze shoved past him and went back into the living room. Damien followed a few minutes later, worried.
"We can still fix this," Damien offered. "We can find a new angle. Maybe even find someone else who saw the Witness."
"You don't fix being forgotten," Blaze snapped. "You bury it."
Dutch stepped between them.
"Enough. Both of you. We didn't come this far to lose each other over a shadow."
But Blaze didn't hear that.
Because when he looked at Dutch—
He didn't see Dutch.
He saw it.
That flicker. That blur. The shape.
A reset trigger.
And without thinking, Blaze struck.
One punch. Then two.
Dutch went down hard, blood trailing.
"STOP! Blaze—it's me! It's Dutch!"
Blaze froze.
Breathing heavy. Knuckles red.
Dutch lay still.
Damien rushed in, shouting his name.
Blaze stumbled back like he was waking from a nightmare mid-swing.
"No... no... I didn't mean..."
He dropped to his knees. Cradled Dutch.
The room held its breath.
And then...
The Witness appeared.
Clear.
Still.
Watching.
Then gone.
Blaze whispered into the silence:
"Why now...? Why not before...?"
No answer came.
Just the weight of what couldn't be undone.