The training chamber felt older than the world, a place where runes ringed the circular floor like patient teeth, each one humming at a frequency the bones knew before the ears.

  Stale incense made the air taste of memory. Shadows pooled in the carved reliefs, as if they were tired of holding the world up.

  Daeryon did not break the quiet. He moved to the center and planted his foot; the stone answered with a low thrum. He folded his hands behind his cloak and looked at me.

  “Normally,” he said, “to help someone move their Chi you need physical connection, skin, breath, a touch that anchors them to your rhythm. Right now, that is practically impossible.” He sounded flat, but his eyes were honest.

  I swallowed. “So what do we do?”

  “There is a way,” he replied. “The same way I used in the council chamber to speak with you without anyone knowing. The link is subtle and strong. Do not break it like last time. You must focus.”

  “What do you mean, destroy?” I snapped, sharper than I intended. “I did not destroy anything.”

  He watched me, a small trace of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “You broke it the moment you started screaming in my ear. And that told me something important: no one can interact with you at all, not even through sound. When we spoke before, we were either alone or your voice was low. When you screamed, I prepared to quiet the room so they would ignore you, yet they did not acknowledge your existence. It was as if only I could hear you.”

  The truth landed like a stone. My chest tightened. I realized, with a hollow certainty, that this was because I was only tethered to him.

  I let the thought hang, then shrugged it off with a laugh that sounded small in the chamber. “Well, fine. Good to know. I can scream all I want. So let’s start.”

  Daeryon did not laugh. The air thickened around him, as if the room had drawn a breath. He set his palms out and the runes gave a worried chime. “Daniel, listen. What we are about to attempt is dangerous. You could die. Do you understand? Your death is something I refuse to countenance. This is a risk I will not take lightly.”

  There was confession in his voice, the kind that sinks slow and lingers. He wrenched at something in that sentence, the part of him that would rather shoulder the burden himself than let me carry it.

  But I was confused. “What do you mean? Aren’t these techniques common? Don’t disciples learn this?”

  He exhaled, small, patient. “Not like this. Not really. This method is rare: used only between family or the closest of friends, and even then it is uncommon. It demands absolute mastery over Chi. But mastery is not the problem here. You are.”

  His eyes found mine. “The first problem is I must reach you through your upper dantian, because I cannot touch you physically. The second problem,” his voice dropped, almost regretful, “is that you will have to go through something far worse than your first awakening. The upper dantian is not meant to be forced open. Normally it rises only after years of mastery and disciplined control. Forcing it could unbalance you entirely. It could kill you.”

  He stopped, letting the words settle like dust. The chamber seemed to listen. The runes pulsed underfoot, as if counting heartbeats with us.

  “Tell me honestly, Daniel,” he asked, voice thin with worry. “Are you ready for this?”

  The question hit like cold iron, cutting through the haze that had settled over me.

  That crimson bastard never said I could die.

  Still, I straightened, jaw tight. “I have to try,” I said quietly. “Even if it kills me.”

  Daeryon’s expression faltered, something slipping through him for a heartbeat. Then he looked away. “Okay, Daniel. Let’s start.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He drew a slow breath. “First: clear your mind. Nothing else matters, no thought, no fear. Only your Chi.”

  I steadied myself and breathed deep, though breath felt like an illusion. “Okay, Daeryon. I’m ready.”

  The moment I said it, the air convulsed. The inscriptions flared, their light crawling up the walls like veins of molten glass.

  I felt Daeryon’s Chi thread into my mind, heavy, relentless. Then the pain began.

  It wasn’t sharp or sudden; it was a slow, impossible tearing, as if something deep inside me was being pulled out by invisible threads. My mind screamed before my voice.

  Every nerve ignited. The agony was worse than my first awakening, worse than any memory my body could hold.

  I couldn’t tell if I was still hovering, or if I’d already fallen. The world folded in on itself, light had weight, sound had teeth.

  Damn it.

  Daeryon told me not to think.

  I tried to focus again, but thought clawed its way in regardless.

  I felt like I was dying.

  No one had warned me that pain could think. That it could whisper, bargain, promising peace if I just stop fighting.

  A strange calm slipped over me. Maybe dying would be easier than this. Maybe then I could see them again…

  Faces surfaced: my father’s rough hands, my mother’s laugh, my sister’s bright, fleeting smile. For a heartbeat they felt close enough to touch.

  No.

  No.

  I will not abandon my family again.

  Nor my creations.

  William is waiting for me.

  The thought was fierce and defiant, a roar tearing through my pain.

  And something inside me shifted.

  A faint pulse of blue light rippled through the haze, cold and clean.

  [Endurance of the Broken — Has Been Activated]

  That blue light did not save me; it only steadied the blade.

  The pain remained, raw, gnawing, but dulled enough for thought to slip between the cracks. The world pulsed in fragments: black and blue fighting for room inside my skull.

  Daeryon’s Chi roared through me, vast, relentless. It was not gentle. It was the sea in a storm, pulling everything toward it.

  I clung to that pull. Again and again I forced my focus.

  First try, I lost it. Pain surged back, white and wild, biting at every memory I owned.

  Second try, lost it again; vision fractured into streaks of light and sound.

  Third try, I forced a breath that did not exist and rooted myself in the echo of Daeryon’s voice.

  Focus.

  Focus.

  Focus.

  Each attempt carved something from me, but each failure hurt less than the one before. Endurance of the Broken did not remove the pain, it let me meet it.

  I felt Daeryon’s Chi like thunder crawling through bone, shaping, pressing, demanding.

  My own energy trembled in response, thin at first, then thickening, pushing back and trying to follow his rhythm. It was a dance of agony, a desperate mimicry of control.

  I felt my vision slipping.

  The air grew heavier. The runes flickering from pale silver to deep crimson.

  His Chi lashed out again, wild and unpredictable. I felt the clash, his will clawing against the gate I struggled to pry open.

  He was still there.

  Faint, but there.

  “Focus, Daniel. Follow my rhythm,” he murmured. My own energy was being pulled, I'd never imagined his body would require this much chi to fill.

  But I couldn’t stop now. “Daniel, just hold on.”

  His Chi flickered in and out; the pain that rolled through was enough to tear any spirit apart, yet he endured.

  But I can see it in the tremors of his Chi: the rhythm shifting from chaos to a steady, stubborn pulse.

  “Good,” I whispered. “You will not die by my hand. Not today.”

  The air burned; our Chi signatures twisted like dragons mid-flight. One slip and I could crush him by mistake.

  Still, he kept pushing on.

  The world steadied. The pain remained, clawing at me, but its teeth were dulled.

  Every heartbeat carried Daeryon’s presence, anchoring, guiding, demanding more. I matched it beat for beat until the rhythm stopped feeling foreign.

  For the first time I was not drowning in his Chi; I was moving with it.

  The chamber blurred into haze, sound and light braided together. My awareness sharpened as pain and focus threaded into a single thing.

  I could feel my Chi, how it bent, coiled, resisted. It was no longer abstract. It was real, alive, mine.

  Beneath it all, Daeryon’s voice threaded through, distant but steady, cutting through the storm.

  “Now… hold that focus.”

  When I opened my eyes, the world was new.

  Light spilled from the runes like dawn breaking underwater, soft, slow, unhurried. The air no longer burned; it shimmered. Threads of energy drifted through it, faint and silver-blue.

  For a moment I thought I was dreaming. But, no dream had ever felt this heavy, this real.

  The chamber walls no longer looked carved, they breathed. Stone pulsed gently, alive with memory. Every mark Daeryon had placed glowed with quiet purpose.

  And through it all, I saw it.

  My Chi.

  It moved around me like mist touched by starlight, uncertain but alive, curling around me in recognition. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t whole. But It was mine.

  I let out a laugh, shaky, half-broken, but real. The sound carried through the chamber and returned softer, as if the mountain itself had answered.

  Daeryon stood across from me, still, his eyes faintly shining in the glow. For a long time neither of us spoke. The silence was no longer empty; it felt earned.

  The pain was gone, but its echo remained, steady, insistent. Proof that I had survived once more.

  But this time I will not waste it.