Wrists chained in cold steel that compress every artery to the point your fingers feel numb.

The overwhelming emptiness in the darkness that echoes every sound like thunder as the shadows cast nightmarish visions crafted only to taunt your very soul.

Trembling with fear at the thought of footsteps, not because you fear the demon that makes them but because you fear the moment you’ll welcome the sound with open arms.

You see, evil doesn’t corrupt good because it’s easy. It’s easy to make someone teetering on the edge fall into darkness. No, the truly evil target the good souls because getting them to willingly leap into the abyss is the biggest challenge of their lives.

Because corrupting you Michaela will be Klaus Way’s magnum opus, just like erasing a young dumb kid’s hope was theirs.

I can close my eyes and I’m still there, broken and tired, drenched in absolute fear as I begged for anyone to tear me away from this waking nightmare. Every day slipping further down into the void as the black stripped away my humanity, tore shreds into my soul and left nothing but anger driven by a blackened heart.

And the worst thing of all, the bastard who did all that snuck his way into my heart and stayed there.

The sad fact is Michaela, no matter how you try to hide it, no matter how much you hate him for what he did to Damien and Ajax, no matter how terrified you are of what he may do to, part of you will always love him.

And he revels in that fact.

To him, it doesn’t matter what happens at Ring King. He wins, he brutalizes his daughters only savior and becomes a champion. He loses, he turns his daughters only savior into a villain as I go too far and become the monster in your story.

Either way according to Klaus Way,  you becoming exactly what he wants is inevitable.

But we both know he’s wrong.

I’m not fighting at Ring King to end an evil bastard, I’m not here to swoop in and be the hero of your story. All I am going to do at Ring King is break the chains he has bound you to, rip open that cell door and let you decide what happens next.

You can choose the easy path, stick with the devil you know. You can spit in my face, call me a bastard and help Klaus rip me apart piece by piece.

But there’s a reason he hides you away. There’s a reason he beat me to within an inch of my life just for talking to you and there’s a reason you’re locked away in the darkness with the light a mere blip in the distance.

So it doesn’t matter what Klaus does to me, I’ll take every blow, every suplex, every slam. The pain, the misery, and the steel. Even if I go the same way your brothers did.

Because James Jackson is a man ready to die doing the right thing. Giving you what he fears most, what you deserve.

The chance to be free.