The morning fog clung to the Bastion of Blades like a burial shroud. Silence ruled the compound—not the silence of peace, but of waiting steel and unshed blood.
Aden stood in the center of a cracked stone arena, breath misting in the cold air. Around him, elite warriors circled like wolves, each one honed by fire and cruelty. Rudeus's voice cut through the silence like a blade.
"You don't leave this ground until every one of them falls."
No explanations. No encouragement. Just a command—and a dozen trained killers narrowing their eyes.
The first attack came without warning. A blur of iron and muscle slammed into Aden, knocking the wind from his lungs. Then another. And another. By the third fall, blood smeared his lip and his arms trembled just trying to lift his sword.
He fought anyway.
Instinct carried him at first—sloppy slashes, half-remembered forms, desperate parries. But instincts weren't enough. These warriors were precise. Merciless. They didn't just fight to win. They fought to dominate.
By nightfall of the first day, Aden was crawling to the mess hall, too exhausted to speak. His food tasted like ash and iron.
The next day, the same.
And the next.
On the fourth morning, something changed.
It was during a flurry of blows—three warriors attacking in perfect sequence—that his vision sharpened. Every movement, every shift of stance, became clear. Their feet. Their balance. Their intent.
He saw it.
But he couldn't yet react to it. His body was still too slow. Too human.
Yet that glimpse—fleeting and fragile—was enough. Enough to give him purpose. Enough to keep him on his feet even after a cracked rib and bruised shoulder. He began falling differently. Guarding smarter. Bleeding less.
Whispers stirred among the warriors. The whelp was changing. Learning.
Rudeus stood on the upper terrace, arms crossed, watching the boy rise again with that same unyielding glare. He never gave praise. Never offered a nod. Only stepped down when a fighter's form needed correcting—or when a lesson required breaking bone.
By the end of the fourth day, two warriors lay unconscious, and Aden remained standing—barely.
The silence returned.
But now, it felt different.
It no longer belonged to the warriors.
It belonged to Aden.
On the fifth day, the rules changed.
Rudeus stepped into the circle.
Gone were the elite warriors. Gone was the noise of armor and shouted commands. Now, it was just Aden.
Rudeus didn't speak. He simply drew his sword, the air around it hissing as if the steel burned reality itself. Then he moved.
Aden barely saw the slash—only felt the shock of impact as his blade was wrenched from his hand and his body hurled backward like a ragdoll. He crashed against the stone wall, vision flickering, pain blooming like fire through his ribs.
"Again," Rudeus said coldly.
And so it began.
That day, Rudeus didn't hold back. Every strike was meant to kill, every movement an execution. Aden's survival hinged not on skill, but on sheer desperation. He learned to roll before thinking, to breathe between impacts, to live in the cracks between death.
When dusk fell and Aden collapsed, Rudeus didn't offer a hand.
Instead, he led him to a sealed chamber carved deep into the mountain's belly—lit by red torches and etched in ash-black runes.
"This is where we start for real," Rudeus said. "The Way of Fire begins here."
He unsheathed his sword again—not to attack, but to demonstrate. Movements burned into the air, fierce and fluid, like flame given form. Fourteen stances, each one folding into the next with deadly grace. A breathing rhythm that set the heart pounding in sync with the blade. It was less a sword style, more a living wildfire.
Aden could only watch, breathless. Then Rudeus tossed a training sword to him.
"You'll master this," he said. "Or the flames will eat you."
Six days passed.
Six days of sword strikes that shattered bone. Of bloodied palms gripping the hilt until they blistered. Rudeus sparred with him without mercy, breaking his technique over and over—until the pattern clicked.
And then, it happened.
On the sixth night, during a heated exchange, Aden ducked a wide horizontal slash. Time slowed. He didn't think. Didn't plan.
He simply moved.
His sword surged forward, glowing crimson as his aura burst to life for the first time.
The Way of Fire responded.
A full moon-shaped arc of blazing energy followed his blade, draping him in light like firecloth. The air cracked, the room flashed—and for a heartbeat, he was not Aden Vasco.
He was something else entirely.
Rudeus stepped aside at the last second, the aura grazing past him and carving a deep gouge in the chamber wall behind.
Silence reigned.
Then a short laugh escaped Rudeus's lips. "Took you long enough."
Aden stood there, gasping, the fire in his blood still cooling. "You still dodged it."
Rudeus smirked. "That was the ultimate technique of the Way of Fire. And you executed it clean."
"Then… why didn't it land?"
"Because," Rudeus said, sheathing his blade, "while you learned the Way of Fire… I mastered the Steps of Wind God—a footwork technique that makes distance meaningless."
Aden clenched his fists. "Teach me."
Rudeus studied him for a moment, gaze unreadable. Then, with a faint nod, he turned away. "Fine. But if you want to move like fire, you better forget what walking feels like."
The next two days were hell.
Aden didn't sleep. He didn't eat much. He ran across burning stones. Balanced atop thin beams while dodging thrown knives. Fell more times than he could count.
But slowly, he felt it—his body learning, adjusting. The world began to slow again. He could feel the shift of weight before a foot touched ground. The tremble of air before a strike.
By the end of the second night, he collapsed on the training floor, chest heaving, body shaking.
Rudeus watched from above, arms folded. And for the first time, something flickered in his eyes.
Not approval.
Curiosity.
"Interesting," he murmured. "Even I didn't learn it that fast."
He didn't say it aloud, but the thought lingered in his mind:
Just what are you becoming, Aden Vasco?