# Chapter 3: The Cage

The cell was small and windowless, barely large enough for two narrow cots. A single lantern flickered on the floor, casting long shadows across the damp stone walls. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, blood, and sex—a cloying odor that clung to everything, including Mei herself.

She lay on her cot, legs slightly apart, trying not to move. Every muscle ached. Every breath sent a fresh pulse of pain through her bruised ribs. But the worst was the wetness between her thighs—the slow, steady trickle of cum that had been leaking from her since the bandits had finished with her hours ago.

It was still warm. Sticky. She could feel it pooling beneath her, soaking into the thin mattress. She tried to clench her thighs together, but the motion only pushed more of it out, a thick glob of milky fluid that ran down her inner thigh and dripped onto the cot with a soft plop.

Mei closed her eyes. She had lost count of how many men had taken her. Five? Six? The first one had been rough, eager, finishing inside her within minutes. The second had been worse—he had made her beg, made her say things she would never repeat. By the third, her body had stopped resisting. By the fifth, she had simply lain there, staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing but the dull rhythm of his thrusts.

And now this. The evidence of what she had become.

She turned her head to look at the cot beside her.

Sister Yang lay motionless, her massive frame curled into a loose fetal position. She was a mountain of a woman—or she had been. The sect's enforcer. The woman who could snap a man's neck with her thighs, who could bench-press three disciples without breaking a sweat. Her muscles were legendary, sculpted from years of the most punishing training regimens. Mei had seen her shatter stone with her bare fists.

Now she looked like a broken doll.

Yang's body was covered in a patchwork of bruises and bite marks. Her limbs were splayed at awkward angles, her shoulders slumped as if all the strength had been drained from them. Her face was turned away, hidden in the shadows. But her lower body was fully exposed—her robes had been torn away, leaving her naked from the waist down. Her powerful thighs, …