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Time had become a meaningless thing down in the pit.
The only things marking the passing of it was the drip, drip, drip of blood and the weight of Toji’s eyelids, begging to close. In his head, the sound of the heavy metal doors opening with a groan played over and over, reminding him why he was still fighting. But the face behind the doors would remind him whose hands his fate was in, and how easily those fingers could crush his hope.
“This is where you belong,” the memory of the cruel voice played in his head. “Down here, with the other monsters. Not in our family, amongst proper Zenin’s.”
The boys knees came up to his chest, his kimono splattered in the thick, dark blood of the things down here. The ends of the fabric were drenched. His arms came up to wrap round his knees, the limbs shaking slightly from the adrenaline that rose and fell like the current but never went away completely. If it were to, his eyes would close and then the things were sure to get him, and when they came down to open the door they wouldn’t find his body in one piece.
No, he couldn’t have that. He had to show them, all of them, that he’d survive. He was strong enough to withstand this, strong enough to impress them, and strong enough to stand next to his family as a Zenin. A proper one.
The shadows down here were alive, seeming to spread and then withdraw, clinging to the stone pillars laid out methodically through the room. If Toji looked at them too long, they’d begin to reach out, claiming the room as their own and the small boy cowering against the wall an invader in their domain. The columns gave the illusion that the room carried on into the distance as far as Toji’s eyes, adjusted to the darkness, could see. Maybe it did, and maybe the further into the shadows you went the worse things you’d find. The Zenin could’ve put all sorts of things down here over the years, amassing them slowly until they had turned the disciplinary pit into a place of hell, perfect for an eight-year old not worthy of their name and yet bearing it.
His head snapped up from where it had slowly sunk into his knee when he heard a squelching footstep, flesh against the bloody floor. His eyes narrowed onto the space where it was, seeing the shimmer of its presence, the air parting to let its form through, the sounds coming from it. The uncomfortable weight of sorrow settled onto his chest, squeezing his lungs painfully. He could see nothing of it. None of the grotesque, miserable appearance that he’d heard others say lower-grade curses had. He knew little about curses and cursed energy and exorcism, and what he did know came from overhearing things and eavesdropping on conversations he was not privy to, but the fact that he couldn’t even see the things made him certain of his place down here. He was the bottom of the barrel, and he’d fight to scamper his way to the top and see the sunlight.
His fists slammed forward as soon as the thing had slivered close enough, hitting soft flesh. It was nothing new to him. He’d done it hundreds of times before, and he was sure he’d do it plenty more. It had become painfully mundane. However, the dread of uncertainty always sat there in his stomach, the anxiety of fighting something he could not see the proper form of. He never let the feeling manifest as hesitation, because that would mean defeat. So his fists hit whatever they hit, and when he felt where the thing's eyeball was, he dug his hand in, clawing at its eye socket. With a pop sound the eyeball was gone, more fluids splattered onto the floor and Toji, his hand hovering for a split second in the suddenly empty space of its eye socket. Then it let out a screech, bounding back on legs Toji couldn’t see. The shadows reclaimed it, swallowing it up, and Toji let it. The trembling in his frame was almost violent in the aftermath of the attack, and he sat there, waiting for it to recede and for his heart to stop pounding in his ears. The next attack came too soon for that to happen.
The more time Toji spent up here, the greater the length of the stairs leading up seemed to become. The space between him and his family seemed to spread out, widen, until he could hardly see them. They were bright dots in the distance, dazzling others in their light, blinding and driving back the shadow-loving creatures. Maybe Toji was blinded too, for he was the most shadow-loving of all. Up the steps, on the Zenin Estate, the light did nothing but humiliate and mock and hurt him. He’d stick to the shadows like tar, and they’d widen their arms and embrace him, keep him company when no one else would, which was often. And when he was with his own family, he didn’t even have to try to be in the shadows because they acted like he was regardless. He was not acknowledged, hardly seen and rarely spoken to unless it was to give a command.
He wondered if, in everyone’s eyes, he’d become the same as the things that lurked down here. Had he become so meaningless that the distinction between him and these mindlessly violent creatures had swirled and bled together until it was no longer there? Was he just as pathetic to them, just as claimed by the shadows?
He refused to be. He knew the doors would groan open, because they always did, and he knew they would be there to send him back up the stairs, back to his family, back to his place in the Zenin Clan, because they would not let him go. They could act how they wanted, but when the eternal darkness of the disciplinary pit was broken through by their lantern, he would always be there to stand up on shaky feet and walk his way back up. His body was stupidly tough and would not die, so neither would his mind.
The clanking and groaning came as he thought it would. He stood on his own two feet, not missing the way the servant grimaced at his state and his blood-soaked kimono. He walked up the steps next to them, refusing to show how tired and weak he felt, how shakes threatened to travel through his body. He knew his own worth; he would not have it measured for him. It shone through in the fact that he was still standing here, in the way he still sent glares towards the people that looked down on him, in the way he met them head on and didn’t falter.
That had nothing to do with his last name; it was all his own.
And he clung to that knowledge the same way he clung to the shadows.