Astreya

ANYA

The gym didn't have a name.

Just a rusted sign and a faded portrait of the King near the entrance, the glass cracked from some long-forgotten punch. Heat soaked into the walls like rot. Liniment oil clung to the air. The ring was never white, not from the beginning. Sweat and blood had long since stained the canvas a permanent brown.

Anya had been there for years. No one remembered exactly when she showed up. One of the older fighters said she'd wandered in with a broken sandal and a busted lip and refused to leave. Another claimed she'd been dropped off by some European backpacker who never came back.

It didn't matter. She was eleven when they let her stay.

Not because anyone wanted her. But because she didn't cry.

She mopped sweat, scrubbed the floors, fetched water, held pads. Took kicks when the older boys got bored. Learned quickly that complaining meant more bruises, not fewer. She learned to keep her hands up, chin tucked, mouth shut.

And she trained.

Not because she had talent. Not because she was fast. But because she stayed.

Her first fight came at thirteen.

The venue was a parking lot masquerading as a festival ring. Tarps for shade, ropes for boundaries, no mat, just canvas over concrete. The crowd was half locals, half tourists holding sticky drinks and betting change. Some came to watch the pros. Others just liked watching kids bleed.

They called her opponent Dao. A year older, leaner, sharper. A girl with fire tattoos on her calves and a fight record longer than her height. Dao had a corner team. Matching shorts. A real coach.

Anya had none of that.

Just her trainers taping her fists in the shade behind a fried chicken stand. She didn't ask why. Didn't ask how many rounds. She just nodded, rolled her shoulders, and stepped into the heat.

The crowd barely noticed.

The bell cracked the air.

Dao came in fast. Too fast.

A right hook whistled past Anya's cheek.

Focus. Eyes open.

Another swing. A low kick. It stung. She bit down and answered with a teep that Dao sidestepped easily.

The first minute wasn't a fight, it was a lesson. Dao moved like she knew the rhythm of the match before it started. Every strike had flow. Every dodge had purpose.

Anya just… survived.

Clumsy guard. Stiff counters. No footwork.

But she didn't back up.

Each hit landed. Each one should have dropped her. But she stayed upright. She tasted blood and didn't spit. Her arms trembled with every block. Her ribs screamed. She adjusted.

Dao frowned. The crowd started to notice.

Second round. Bell again.

 Anya's left eye had swollen to a slit. Her leg buckled slightly on the first step, that shin-to-shin collision still echoing in the bone. The body shot had left her breathing shallow.

It hurts. Okay, so what. 

Dao came in behind a knee strike. Anya grabbed for the clinch, reaching too high, fingers slipping on sweat. 

Dao twisted free and drove her elbow into Anya's temple. The world tilted. Anya's palms slapped the canvas. Not quite a fall, but close enough that the ref stepped forward. 

Close enough that Dao's corner started shouting. She pushed back to her feet before the count could start. 

Dao circled left, grinning now. Hunting. 

Don't fall. Not until the bell. But as Dao moved in for the finish, something shifted. The way Dao carried her weight forward. The rhythm of her combinations. Anya had felt this before. In the gym, holding pads while the older fighters got cocky. She knew what came next. 

Dao loaded up on a big elbow, the same one that had just rocked her. 

Anya saw every kick she'd taken just for existing. Every time the trainers said she wasn't ready. Every hour holding pads until her shoulders went numb.

Let it land. Make it cost.

Dao's elbow came high again.

Anya leaned under it. Close. Too close.

Then Anya threw her first real hit.

A straight elbow. Ugly. Direct. Bone on cheek.

Dao reeled.

The crowd reacted. Louder now. They smelled blood.

The rest of the round was a blur, half scrapping, half surviving. Anya didn't win. But when the final bell rang, both girls were still standing.

And only one of them looked afraid.

Dao didn't shake her hand.

-

In the back alley behind the ring, Anya sat on a crate with ice on her neck, cotton in one nostril, and the biggest smile she'd ever worn.

She hadn't won. But no one could tell her she'd lost.

She'd stayed.

And that was enough, for now.

-

ASTREYA

[Anya]

Race: Human

Status: Uncontracted

› Active Effect: [Spiral Endurance] — Terminated

› Merged Trait Unlocked: [Steel Endurance] (Passive)

You do not move because you are unbroken.

You move because nothing will stop you, even if you are.

Forged in bruises, tempered in sweat—your body remembers what it means to stay standing.

Astreya tilted her head slightly.

She hadn't meant to grant permanence. Spiral Endurance was a temporary flourish, an echo of what she herself had survived.

But something in the girl had clung to it. Changed it. Claimed it.

She let the interface flicker out. Her gaze drifted lower. Past names and traits and system language, toward the battlefield Earth had become.

Smoke curled through alleys. The cracks still shimmered. Faint warping in the world's skin.

But it wasn't the rift that held her attention.

It was the corpse.

The one Anya had killed.

It had been a goblin. Once.

Now, the shape was… wrong.

Too long in the limbs.

Too much stretch behind the spine.

Eyes that weren't just empty, but hollow, as if something had scooped out what was supposed to be inside.

She narrowed her eyes.

"That's not mutation," she murmured. "That's design."

A different kind of bloom. One she knew too well.

Twisted monstrosities weren't rare in the Spiral.

But they weren't born from logic or hunger.

They were made.

Bent.

Curated like parodies of belief, sculpted by Fallen Constellations who no longer cared for form or meaning. Who wanted only chaos, worship, and ruin.

This one…

Its body twitched even after death.

The way its limbs had coiled to strike. The strange, rhythmic pulse beneath its skin.

Too clean. Too deliberate.

She'd seen that kind of shape before.

Floor 437.

The Halls of Wire-Eyed Mercy.

A chapel of stitched light and bone-deep whispers.

Everything had hummed there. Walls. Flesh. Thought.

And the creatures, once mortal, once real, had been remade in his name.

Twisted into things that no longer feared death. Only silence.

"He Who Plucks the Sinews."

A Fallen Constellation who had once healed the wounded by touching their soul.

Then tore them open to see why they broke.

His minions had looked just like this one—

Too-long limbs. Too-smooth joints. Eyes emptied of presence, but not hunger.

He was gone now. Slain.

Her glaive had carved through his final hymn.

But something of his design remained.

This thing, this goblin, should never have looked like that.

Astreya's reflection shimmered faintly in the curved surface of the disc. A thread of silver light spun along its edge, steady and slow, mirroring her pulse. Her hands rested on her lap, but her eyes, sharp, bright, unblinking, remained fixed on the corpse.

No movement. No resurrection. Just stillness.

But the wrong kind.

Too deliberate. Too curated.

A thing built to mimic life, not carry it.

Not mutation.

The thought settled heavy and cold, like oil over water.

Mutation was messy. Clumsy. Ugly in its own chaotic way. Natural creatures, twisted by ambient mana or broken gates, gained horns in the wrong places, bloated muscles, extra teeth where there shouldn't be teeth.

But this?

This was clean. Efficient.

Built to kill, not to survive.

Her gaze lingered on the gouges left in the asphalt. The shape of the spine. The unnatural angles. That specific tension before it struck, like a sermon waiting for its final verse.

It echoed a logic she had buried in blood and silence.

"…He Who Plucks the Sinews is gone," she said softly.

Her glaive had made certain of that. She remembered the floor, the chapel, the screams beneath the choir. She remembered the minions that came crawling from beneath bone altars, flayed of memory and restructured into symbols. He was dead.

But something on this world was echoing his work.