CHAPTER 82: Father vs Son - 5

CHAPTER 82: Father vs Son - 5

In the hotel, the TV screen dimly lit the room. Enid, her hair still damp from the shower, was sitting on the bed with a towel half-wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes were fixed on the broadcast, which showed, albeit blurred by interference and the distance of the cameras, the brutal fight between Phoenix and Azazael.

Enid's face remained serious, but in her mind, a storm of thoughts raged:

"I knew it… sooner or later, this was going to happen. He always runs from that shadow, always denies what runs in his blood… but today he's facing it. Facing the truth. How am I supposed to stop him, if not even he can?"

She dug her fingers into the sheet, holding back a mix of rage and fear.

"I don't like seeing him like this… he's not the same Phoenix who smiles sideways when he returns from a mission, nor the one who holds my hand as if there were no tomorrow. That's not the man I share my nights with. That is a son facing his father, and a warrior fighting against himself."

For a moment, she swallowed and felt a knot in her chest.

"If he wins… I might lose him. If he loses… I'll lose him too. Because this fight isn't about survival, but about what kind of man he'll be after it's over."

The metallic sound of blows coming through the broadcast signal echoed in her head. Enid took a deep breath and, in a barely audible voice, murmured:

"Don't break, Phoenix… not in front of him. Show him who you are."

With that silent plea, her eyes didn't leave the screen for a second, as if by just looking she could give him strength.

Azazael kept his gaze fixed on Phoenix like someone observing a test about to conclude. The rain beaded on his face without him barely moving; there was a calm in his smile that chilled more than any scream.

"This has been fun," he said, quietly, as if recounting the end of a fable. "But now comes what matters. This will define everything. If you endure… you will prove you are of my blood. If not… well, we'll know."

He didn't wait for a response. In a movement so fast that many felt it without having seen it, he appeared beside his son, wrapping an arm around him that seemed forged of iron and stone. It was an embrace, at first: close, almost intimate. Phoenix, panting and wet with blood and rain, thought for a second it was a truce.

Azazael squeezed. At first, the pressure was controlled, dictated by the intention to measure. Phoenix felt the air being forced from his lungs, how his rib cage yielded in a rhythmic pattern, as if the world were compressing in layers. The people around them stopped murmuring; the collective heartbeat of the square became a dull drum.

"It's not just strength," Azazael murmured very close to Phoenix's ear. "It's the lesson of how to dominate someone from the inside. Not everything is done with a blow. Sometimes you nullify the will by suffocating the body. And you... will learn as I want you to learn."

The pressure increased little by little, without fanfare, calculated. Phoenix tried to take a breath, but Azazael's hand closed the spaces between his ribs as if molding clay. First, a few ribs cracked with a sharp, dry sound that distorted the rhythm of his breathing more than it broke it. Then came more cracks—small fractures spreading like a branch giving way under weight. Each interruption of air was a small death and a test at the same time.

The embrace stopped being an embrace and became a press. Azazael didn't squeeze all at once; he squeezed in layers: collarbones yielding with a snap different from the ribs, the back arching, vertebrae twisting under the torsion and weight. Phoenix felt—more than heard—the ecosystem of his own skeleton being disordered: cracks, displacements, slivers of pain traveling from his throat to his hips.

"You will feel them give way, one by one," said Azazael, his voice offering no comfort. "The ribs will bend, they will hurt you first so you learn not to rely on crying. The collarbone can fracture and dig in as a warning. The spine... pay attention to the spine: if it yields under torsion, it will diminish both body and mind. This is how limitations are taught, and this is how endurance is measured."

Phoenix began to scream, a sound tearing from his throat. Air no longer entered; his face turned reddish, then purple. The pressure attacked his rib cage and, by reflex, his heart beat with impossible violence. Azazael increased the compression slightly, and Phoenix's scream became a howl that tore through the night.

"Do you feel it?" Azazael asked with a certain clinical satisfaction. "Every bone that yields is a lesson that hardens you. I don't seek to kill you now. I seek to mold you. Let every fracture remind you who tolerates and who is tolerated."

The ribs would continue to fracture in sequence if Azazael continued: small fissures that would end in compression fractures, segments of the sternum subjected to pressure until they split, collarbones bending like old branches. The spine, exposed to torsion and compression, risked vertebral displacements—injuries capable of affecting breathing, mobility, even neurological control. That was the precision of the attack: focused pain that punishes the structure, not immediate life, to impose a lesson both physical and psychological at the same time.

Phoenix, his face contorted by the inhuman effort to fight for every gasp, tried to grab the wrist that was strangling him, tried to push, tried to bite. His vision filled with white flashes. The square had become an amphitheater of terrifying silence; no one intervened.

Azazael, noticing the wavering, loosened his grip for an instant and let gravity do the rest: Phoenix fell forward, coughing, his ribs hurting as if fire burned within them. He breathed with difficulty, his voice broken into gasps.

Azazael felt the side of his own hand, letting the blood and rain slide off without hurry. He looked at Phoenix with a mix of boredom and satisfaction.
"This has been fun," he said, his voice low, like someone ending a lesson. "But that's enough for today. You can't keep fighting in that state."