Chương 214: Chapter 211 - Second Ascent (XV)

"You gonna drop that, or should I start digging your grave now?" Imani doesn't answer immediately. He just grunts, lifting the massive boulder clean off the ground. His muscles tense, every fiber in his arms and legs bulging with strain, but his expression doesn't change. He hoists the thing like this is just another day. I dig my fingers into my own boulder and push up. The weight crushes down on me instantly. My arms burn, my back screams, but I keep going, knees locking as I drive through the motion.

"Heavier than last time?" I bite out, adjusting my grip.

"Yeah. More weight, more shock, more power." His voice is steady. Controlled. Like he's not even struggling. Unfair bastard.

"It's easy for you to say," I huff, shifting my stance to stop the weight from crushing me. Imani exhales through his nose.

"You're the one who said we train until we break, then train some more." I smirk through the burn in my muscles.

"Yeah, but that was before I had to lift boulders the size of a fucking car."

"You still talking?"

"Just trying to make sure you don't get bored." I force the boulder higher, every muscle screaming, but I don't stop. I lower it controlled—not dropping it, not giving in. The ground trembles beneath us. Imani sets his down next to mine, barely making a sound. Not fair. I roll my shoulders, sucking in air.

"You feeling the improvement?" He stretches one arm out before nodding.

"Yeah. My charge capacity is slightly increasing, but my release speed is still too slow. I need to store more energy, let it out faster." I shake out my arms.

"I saw you blast that rock the other day. Five meters of solid concrete, gone. That was pretty insane for a 'not enough.'""Not if I have to stand still like a cannon to do it. If I don't refine it, it's just brute force. I need control and flexibility. And for 'not enough,' are you one to speak? Is deflecting more than a hundred spikes in half a second not enough?"

"Fair, fair. I guess the limit is the sky, as they say." I straighten up, cracking my neck.

"Ayu told me Lukas is making you a big shield? You gonna use it with the hammer?" He nods.

"Yeah. Half-body size. Mostly for boss fights. I'll hold the line, keep the pressure off you guys." I let out a low whistle.

"Half-body size for you? That thing's gonna be taller than Ayu." Imani smirks.

"It's refreshing to see a couple like you in a place like this."

"Well… guess it happened. And what about you? You got someone special out there?" He's quiet for a moment, adjusting his grip on the next boulder.

"My wife. Four kids." I blink.

"Wait, what?" He exhales through his nose, shifting his stance.

"Married twelve years. Two sons, two daughters. All back in Nigeria." I stare at him, the weight of that statement hitting harder than the boulder in my hands.

"I didn't know that. You never mentioned them." He shrugs.

"Nothing to mention. I came here. They didn't." His voice is steady, but there's something in his eyes—something heavy, buried deep. I set my boulder down, still processing.

"Shit. That must be… rough." Imani doesn't answer right away. He grips his boulder, knuckles tightening slightly.

"Every day." I don't know what to say to that. How the hell do you respond to something like that? I stand there, silent, trying to process what he's said. Imani lets out a slow breath, his eyes fixed on the horizon as if he's somewhere far away.

"Before that… I wasn't exactly someone worth mentioning." He lifts another boulder, the movement easy, controlled, like he's talking about the weather.

"I did things. Bad things. Worked for people who did worse." I grip the edge of my own boulder, muscles burning, but the pain seems distant now.

"A weapon. A mercenary. Worked in places where blood was cheaper than water." His voice is calm, but it's a calm that makes the air feel heavy. I keep my mouth shut. No words feel right, and Imani doesn't seem like he's looking for a response anyway. He just keeps lifting, his movements slow, controlled, like he's carrying something far heavier than just the boulder in his hands.

"Back then, survival was simple," Imani says.

"You do the job. You don't ask questions. You don't hesitate." His fingers tighten around the stone, his knuckles whitening from the pressure.

"Hesitation got you killed."

"I was young. Barely a man. They found me in Lagos, took me in because I was big. They trained me to kill before I could even grow a beard." He exhales sharply.

"I did my first job at fifteen." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. He doesn't stop.

"Executed a man in front of his wife and kids. It was supposed to make a point." He pauses. I don't move, just keep my grip firm, letting him speak.

"The woman screamed so loud it hurt my ears. The kid… he didn't cry at first. Just stared. Like he didn't understand yet." A deep breath.

"Then the screaming stopped. Not because she accepted it, but because one of the others put a bullet in her too. Loose ends. That's what they called them." I grip the boulder tighter.

"I didn't think about it," he continues.

"You don't think. You just do." The weight in his voice isn't something that fades. It lingers, thick, heavy.

"We went from village to village, enforcing whatever rule the warlord we worked for wanted." He rolls his shoulders, the tension in his body barely contained.

"Sometimes we burned everything down. Sometimes we took what we needed. Sometimes we left bodies stacked on the roads to send a message." His voice is steady, detached, like he's telling someone else's story.

"One night, we stormed a place outside Kano. A small town. Just a few families, farmers mostly. They were supposed to be hiding supplies. Weapons. We were ordered to kill every man old enough to hold a gun." I feel my stomach tighten.

"They lined them up," he continues, "one by one. Some fought. Some begged. Some just stood there, waiting for it." He exhales.

"I was told to make an example of them. I remember looking at them and realizing something." He grips the boulder like he's squeezing the past itself.

"They weren't fighters. They weren't soldiers. They were just… men. Some younger than me. Some with the same look in their eyes that I had when they first put a gun in my hands." Silence. Then, "I hesitated." That word lingers in the air longer than anything else he's said.

"I looked at the one in front of me. He had his hands up. Didn't say a word, just stared. I knew that look. He knew he was dead. But I—" He stops himself. He grips the boulder so tightly I hear the rock crack under his fingers.

"The hesitation cost them everything. The ones behind me didn't wait. They gunned them all down. For them… it was just another job." He looks at me, eyes unreadable.

"For years, I stayed. Did more jobs. Killed more people. I told myself it was survival. But it wasn't. It was just… easy." I don't say anything.

"The last job," he says after a moment, "was supposed to be simple. A rival faction. Assassination, clean. But there were kids in that house. A whole family." His eyes darken.

"I knew then that if I didn't leave, I never would. So I ran. Had to kill two of my own just to make it out. I spent two years looking over my shoulder, waiting for the past to catch up to me." He straightens up, lifting the boulder again, as if pushing away the memory.

"But it never did."

"Not for lack of trying, though," Imani adds, rolling his shoulders before gripping the boulder again.

"They hunted me. Of course they did. Nobody just walks away from that life."

"First thing I did was shave my head, my beard. Took a knife, cut a line across my scalp so the tattoo wouldn't be recognizable." He exhales.

"Then I ran. Didn't know how far. Didn't know where. Just ran."

"For weeks, I stayed in the bush. Ate whatever I could find, slept wherever I wouldn't be seen. Moved at night, kept to the edges of towns." He shakes his head.

"Didn't matter. They were everywhere. Every face looked like it might know me. Every car might have someone inside who wanted me dead."

"First job I took was loading crates in a shipping yard. Kept my head down, worked until my hands bled. But it was never long before someone started asking questions." His jaw tightens.

"Who are you? Where are you from? Why do you have scars like that?"

"Didn't matter how careful I was. A ghost only stays a ghost for so long."

"I moved. Again. Took another job. Farmhand. Then construction. Then driving trucks. Never stayed anywhere more than a few months. Didn't talk to anyone. Didn't trust anyone. Kept moving." He exhales, adjusting his grip on the stone.

"I thought maybe if I kept going, I'd disappear. That I could outrun it. But you don't outrun something like that. The blood's still there. You still wake up in the middle of the night, reaching for a gun that isn't there." He pauses.

"And then… I found her." His fingers flex around the rock, but this time, there's no tension. Just something else.

"She ran a small clinic. Middle of nowhere, dirt roads and nothing but fields. I got sick—malaria, probably. I was half out of my mind when I stumbled in."

"She treated me. Didn't ask questions. Just let me stay. When I got better, I tried to leave. Figured it was safer that way. But she—" He chuckles, shaking his head.

"She just looked at me and said, 'Where will you go next?'" His expression shifts, something softer, something distant.

"No one had ever asked me that before. And for the first time, I didn't have an answer."

"I told her I had to go. That it was better for her if I did. She told me I could stay. No past, no questions. Just stay." He sets the boulder down, dust rising around his feet.

"By then… I was tired. Very, very tired. So… I did." Imani pauses for a moment, his hands resting on his knees as he exhales. Then he straightens up and continues.

"At first, I told myself it was temporary. Just a place to lay low, just until I figured out the next move. I didn't trust it. Didn't trust her. Didn't trust anything that felt… good. Good things didn't happen to men like me." He shakes his head slightly.

"I started working around the clinic. Lifting things, fixing what I could. People came in hurt, and I helped how I could. Carrying them in. Cleaning wounds. It was nothing, really. But every time, she looked at me like I had done something… I don't know. Worthwhile." His fingers flex slightly.

"One night, I asked her why she let me stay. Why she wasn't afraid. She just smiled and said, 'Because you don't scare me, Imani.'" A short chuckle, but there's no humor in it.

"And for the first time, I thought… maybe I didn't have to be something to be feared." He shifts his weight slightly, staring at his hands.

"Months passed. Then a year. And I was still there. Still alive. No one came looking. Maybe they figured I was already dead. Maybe I had finally run far enough." He exhales, shaking his head again.

"She never asked for my past. Never tried to make me say things I wasn't ready to. She just let me be. And little by little, I started to feel like maybe I could be… someone else." Another silence.

"One day, I looked at her, and I just knew. Maybe I had already found the place I was supposed to be." His voice is quieter now.

"So I asked her to marry me. And she said yes." He looks up, meeting my eyes, and I see something I haven't seen before in Imani—something deeper than just regret or survival. Peace. I roll my shoulders, forcing a slow breath. Why tell me all this? Imani isn't the type to talk for the sake of it. He doesn't spill words carelessly. But here, between the weight of stone and silence, he's told me everything—his past, his regrets, his reasons for moving forward. I glance at him.

He doesn't look away, doesn't try to take back what he's said. He just stands there, shoulders squared, breathing steady, as if he's already made peace with everything behind him. Maybe this was never about confession. Maybe it was just… saying it aloud. I wipe the sweat from my brow and flex my fingers, the strain still pulsing through my arms. Maybe what he needed was to let it all out. In that case… Without thinking too much about it, I look at him and say—"Do you want to have a spar?"