The training room was silent, save for the faint creaking of taut ropes. Allie knew this wasn't an impromptu punishment, but a carefully calculated lesson.
Axl took the first step forward. His presence was firm, his gaze unwavering. Bane positioned himself on the opposite side, completing the circle. There was no uncontrolled rage in them, but a cold, strategic determination. They had trained together for years; they knew how to move as if they shared a single mind.
"Absence is not an option," Axl said in a low but firm voice.
A sharp tug on her hair forced Allie to keep her head upright, to face the consequence of her absence. Bane advanced in perfect synchronization, delivering a firm punch to her stomach. He wasn't trying to inflict serious injury, but to remind her. The impact made her abdomen tense; the air escaped her lungs in a controlled gasp.
They moved around her like strategists in the heat of battle, calculating angles, varying their intensity. Every action had a purpose: to remind her of discipline, consistency, commitment. Allie gritted her teeth. Pain was part of the language everyone there understood.
In that place, dominance wasn't unrestrained brutality. It was control. Synchronization. And the unbreakable rule that training is never abandoned.