In a pitch-black room with faint, flickering light from a single hanging bulb, C.J. Thorpe leans against a steel cage wall.

“Life is a pressure cooker. Some people crack the second the heat gets turned up. Others? They thrive. They learn to take that pressure, let it mold them, shape them, until it turns them into something unbreakable. I’ve lived my whole life in that kind of heat, Nox. Every day on Death Row was a fight to breathe, a fight to survive, a fight to stand when everything in me screamed to kneel. And you? You’re not the pressure. You’re just another man who thinks he controls the fire.”

Thorpe steps forward, his hand brushing the cage wall, the light swinging erratically as he moves.

“You love your control, don’t you? You’ve built a whole life around it. Your gas, your poisons, your goddamn mind games—it’s all about making people feel like they’re drowning. But here’s the thing, Nox: I’ve been drowning my whole damn life. And I learned how to breathe underwater. You think you’re gonna twist me up inside that cell? Make me doubt myself, choke on your fumes? Nah. You’re just another part of the pressure, and I don’t fucking break.”

He stops, his voice hardening like steel.

“Hell in a Cell. That’s where you think you’ve got the advantage, right? Jasper set it all up in your favor. You think it’s your cage. Your rules. Your game. But cages aren’t your weapon, Nox—they’re mine. Because the second that door slams shut, you’ve got nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It’s just you, me, and the fire we’re about to unleash. And fire doesn’t care how smart you are, how calculated, how precise. Fire only cares if you can survive it.”

Thorpe clenches his fists, his voice rising.

“You see this cell as a lab. A place to control the experiment, to bend it to your will. But that’s where you’ve already lost. I’m not an experiment, Nox. I’m the goddamn explosion you didn’t plan for. You can try to suffocate me, drown me, choke me out—but I won’t stop. Because I’ve spent my whole life under pressure, and all it’s done is make me harder, stronger, and angrier.”

He steps even closer, his face now fully illuminated under the light.

“You don’t scare me, Nox. Not your mind, not your fumes, not your plans. All that shit you’ve built around yourself? It’s just armor for a man too afraid to stand naked in the fire. But me? I’ve been in the flames for so long, they don’t even burn anymore. And when that door locks, you’re gonna find out what happens when you try to contain the fire—you get consumed by it.”

Thorpe pauses, allowing a small smirk.

“You call this pressure cooker Hell in a Cell. I call it Home. And when the fire rises, Nox, you won’t control it. You’ll be the one who burns.”

The light flickers violently, then goes out.