The heavy wood of the door was the only thing holding me up. My breath sawed in and out of my lungs, not from exertion my body had already smoothed that away but from raw, primal shock. The silence of the lodging was a stark contrast to the wet, tearing sounds still echoing in my mind. I pushed myself away from the door, my back sliding against it until I sat on the cool stone floor, knees drawn up.
I replayed it. The shadow blade at my temple. The eleven figures. And then… her.
Not a savior. A reaper. Her efficiency wasn't heroic; it was horrific. It was cleanup. She had erased those shadows with less emotion than someone wiping dust from a shelf. And then she had looked at me. That gaze wasn't an offer of alliance. It was an assessment. A curiosity.
"You are back early. And you look like you have seen a ghost. A concept I thought you were unfamiliar with."
Yoclesh's voice was calm, coming from the doorway to the inner chamber. She leaned against the frame, her amber eyes taking in my posture, the slight tremble in my hands I couldn't quite quell.
Before I could formulate a lie, Numi's larger form shouldered past her. "What's wrong with you? You smell like fear and alley filth." She sniffed the air, her brow furrowing. "And… ozone? Burnt shadow?"
There was no point hiding it. They would know.
"I was followed," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "From the pub. Eleven of them. Shadowy things. Assassins, I think."
Numi's playful demeanor vanished, replaced by the cold focus of a warlord. "Where are they?"
"Gone."
"You killed eleven shadow stalkers? In the city? Without raising an alarm?" Yoclesh asked, a note of genuine surprise cutting through her usual detachment.
"I didn't." I met her gaze. "Someone else did. She killed them all. In about five seconds."
The silence in the room thickened. Numi and Yoclesh exchanged a look, a whole conversation passing between them in an instant.
"Describe the person," Yoclesh commanded, her voice low.
"Tall. Lean. One wing, a bat's wing, on her left side. The right is gone. Her hands… they're iron claws. And she used threads. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They came from her claws. Thin as light, strong as… I don't know. They glowed. A rose purple color." I swallowed. "She cut them apart like they were paper."
The name left Yoclesh's lips on a breath, so quiet it was almost inaudible. "Camila."
Numi let out a low, sharp hiss, like steam escaping a valve. "The Severing Hand. What in the burning depths is she doing here? And why would she intervene for him?"
"You know her?" I asked, standing up.
"Every demon in the upper echelons knows of her," Yoclesh said, walking to a small table and pouring a glass of dark liquid. She didn't drink it; she just stared into it. "She is a freelance operative. A ghost. She takes contracts from no one and everyone. She has no allegiance, only her own inscrutable code. She is called the Severing Hand because of those threads. They are not mere weapons. They are filaments of her own will, solidified mana sharper than spatial edges. They can cut through dimensions, sever spells, disassemble fortifications. And demons."
"Why would she save me?" The question hung in the air.
"She did not save you," Yoclesh corrected, finally looking at me. "She removed a complication. Or she was sending a message. Or she was… curious. With her, it is impossible to know. The fact she revealed herself to you is the most disconcerting part. She prefers to be a rumor."
Numi cracked her knuckles, a sound like breaking stones. "This changes nothing. Actually, it changes everything. It means you have drawn attention beyond the arena. The kind of attention that gets you killed between heartbeats." She pointed a thick finger at me. "Your 'rest' is over. Dawn is in four hours. You will be in the training yard. You have power, Astro. But you have the finesse of a collapsing star. You need control. You need technique. Or the next shadow that comes for you will be holding one of her threads."
They left me with my thoughts, which were a swirling storm. Camila. The Severing Hand. Her face, pale and sharp, floated in my memory. Not a protector. An observer. A force of nature that had briefly altered its path to intersect with mine.
The clang of a heavy bell jarred me from a sleep haunted by rose purple threads and silent, assessing eyes. The memory of Yoclesh's effortless throws and the phantom scent of burnt shadow still clung to me. There would be no lazy morning. I pulled on the simple, durable training gear left for me and made my way to the yard.
They were already there, waiting. But they were not as I'd seen them before.
Gone were Yoclesh's elegant robes and Numi's casual leathers. Both wore form fitting, ash grey training suits that left no room for grandeur, only function. Yoclesh stood with a calm, grounded poise, a massive wooden claymore a blunt, terrifying replica of a monster slaying sword resting point down in the dirt beside her. In her other hand, she held a wooden kanabo, a spiked war club that looked capable of pulverizing stone.
Numi was stretching, her movements fluid and predatory. Coiled at her feet was not her signature whip sword, but a long, multi tailed bullwhip of darkened leather. She cracked it once, not as a threat, but as a test. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet yard, the tips snapping with enough force to chip the hard earth.
"Good. You are awake," Yoclesh said, her voice devoid of its usual detached amusement. It was a commander's voice. "Your theoretical training is over. For the next months, you will not fight simulations or practice dummies. You will fight us."
Numi grinned, a sharp flash of teeth. "Surprised? You're going to train against two high elite demons. In case your thick human skull hasn't figured it out yet… that's us."
"The goal is not to win," Yoclesh continued. "It is to survive. To adapt. To learn. You will train endurance, strength, pain tolerance, and combat technique. All of it. We will break you down to your absolute foundation, and then we will rebuild you. Begin with the run."
It wasn't a run. It was a gauntlet. The "track" was the perimeter of the blasted training grounds, laden with obstacles: walls of jagged, volcanic rock to scale, pits of sucking, tar like mud to wade through, and fields of loose, ankle breaking scree. Numi ran behind me, the whip in her hand an ever present threat.
"Slower than a three legged Gloomtoad!" she'd bark, and the whip would lash out, not to cut, but to sting a searing line of fire across my shoulders or the backs of my thighs. The pain was immediate and sharp, a brilliant counterpoint to the burning in my lungs. "Move! Your blood is soup! Make it boil!"
After what felt like hours, when my legs were lead and my breath was a ragged sob, Yoclesh stood in my path. "Stop. Now, lift."
There were no barbells. There were stones. Irregular, dense blocks of obsidian, their edges sharp enough to slice skin. She pointed to the smallest, a chunk the size of a large trunk. "Overhead. One hundred times."
My muscles screamed in protest. The first lift was agony, the sharp edges biting into my palms and shoulders. The Blood Surge energy within me simmered, itching to flare and make it easy, but Yoclesh's eyes were on me. "Only muscle. Only will. The power is a crutch you cannot lean on yet."
By the fiftieth lift, my vision swam with black spots. My palms were raw, slick with blood that made the obsidian harder to grip. Numi's whip snapped near my ear. "The pain is a lie! Your body is lying to you! Tell it to shut up and LIFT!"
I reached one hundred. I dropped the stone, my arms hanging numb at my sides.
"Good," Yoclesh said, no praise in the word, merely acknowledgment. "Now, bare hand striking."
She led me to a towering monolith of the same black obsidian. "Form is everything. Power is nothing without structure. Strike here." She pointed to a specific point.
My first punch was a testament to my exhaustion. It connected with a thud, skin splitting on the glass like surface. Pain rocketed up my arm.
"Again. Wrist straight. Align the knuckles. Channel the force through the target, not into your own joints."
Over and over. Thud. Crack. Splatter of blood. Thud. Crack. The pain in my fist became a constant, throbbing world. I felt small bones fracture, the delicate metacarpals. A searing, sickening ache. But as I pulled my hand back for another blow, I felt the weird, warm flutter of the Blood Surge energy, not erupting, but seeping. A focused trickle to the injury. The fractures knitted, the torn skin sealed over. Not instantly, but within a few breaths. The pain remained, a vicious teacher, but the damage was undone.
"Fascinating," Yoclesh murmured, watching the process. "Your body learns to heal specific traumas. Now you can truly begin."
The next phase was combat. They came at me separately at first.
Fighting Yoclesh with the wooden claymore was like fighting a landslide. There was no flash, only inevitable, crushing geometry. She would move, and the huge sword would already be there, a blunt force of nature. Blocking it directly shattered my guard and sent splinters of agony through my forearms. She taught me to redirect, to slip the force, to use her own momentum. A glancing blow from the kanabo across my ribs exploded my world into white hot pain. I felt ribs go, a wet, internal crunch. I stumbled back, gasping, and felt that internal warmth rush to the site, fusing bone and mending tissue as I struggled to stay upright.
"Pain is data," Yoclesh stated as I wheezed. "Do not scream at it. Listen to it. It tells you where you failed."
Numi was different. She was lightning and misdirection. The whip was an extension of her will. It didn't aim to bruise; it sought to ensnare and punish. It would wrap around my ankle and yank me off my feet, sending me crashing to the dirt. It would snap against my knuckles as I tried to block, breaking my form. She taught me rhythm, how to move between the cracks of sound the whip made, to dart in close where her weapon was useless. Getting inside her reach meant eating a knee to the gut or an elbow to the jaw that snapped my head back and filled my mouth with the copper taste of blood.
Days blurred into weeks. The routine was torture, refined to a science. Run. Lift. Break my hands on the obsidian. Heal. Fight. Get broken. Heal. Sleep for a few hours in a cot that felt like a slab of stone, then do it again.
But changes began, millimeter by millimeter.
Month One: I completed the run without the whip touching me. I learned the rhythm of the obstacles. I lifted the obsidian block until my muscles didn't scream, they sang with a fierce, hot burn. My strikes against the monolith stopped splitting my skin. The knuckles thickened, forming permanent, rough calluses over bone that had been reforged denser.
Month Two: I could parry Yoclesh's claymore, not just deflect it. I learned to read the tiny shift in her shoulders before the kanabo swung. I took a full blow on a crossed arm guard and, though I was driven to my knees, my arms held. They bruised deep purple, but the bones didn't crack. Against Numi, I started catching the whip. The first time I snatched the tip from the air, the leather sliced deep into my palm, but I held on, yanking her off balance for a half second before she effortlessly reclaimed it and gave me a lash across the back for my audacity. But I had done it.
Month Three: The pain was no longer a master; it was a tool. I could compartmentalize it, set it aside in a corner of my mind while the rest of me fought. My healing accelerated. A broken rib from a morning spar would be fully set and fused by the afternoon session. I began to land hits. Not on Yoclesh she was an immovable fortress but I could press her, make her use a second motion to counter me. Against Numi, I spent a full five minute round inside her reach, a frantic, brutal exchange of blows where I took three to give one. My one was a solid hook to her armored midsection that made her grunt. She smiled, a true, pleased smile, and then threw me across the yard.
Month Four: The transformation was no longer incremental; it was fundamental.
I ran the obstacle course as a meditation, my body a efficient machine. I lifted the largest obsidian block not one hundred, but two hundred times, the muscles in my back and shoulders moving in seamless, powerful concert. My fists, when they struck the monolith, did not crack. They thudded with a deep, resonant impact, and hairline fractures would spiderweb out from the point of contact on the stone.
In the final spar of the cycle, they came at me together.
It was chaos perfected. Yoclesh's crushing, linear power and Numi's chaotic, whip fast pressure. But I was no longer the flood. I was the canal. I flowed between Yoclesh's downward smash, using the displaced air to propel myself into a spin that avoided Numi's lashing coil. I caught her whip on my forearm, letting the leather wrap, and used it as a pivot to swing a kick at Yoclesh's side. She blocked with the kanabo, but it was a block, not a dismissal.
For three full minutes, I survived. I didn't win. I wouldn't for a long time. But I adapted, countered, and pressed. I took a glancing blow from the claymore that would have shattered me months ago and rolled with it, coming up to duck under Numi's follow up strike.
Finally, Yoclesh stepped back. Numi recalled her whip, coiling it with a satisfied flick.
I stood in the center, chest heaving, sweat and dirt mixing on skin criss crossed with faint silver lines the ghosts of a thousand healed wounds. My hands were scarred, powerful tools. My body hummed not with exhaustion, but with a ready, controlled power.
Yoclesh gave a single, slow nod. "The foundation is laid. You are no longer a weapon waiting to be used. You are a weapon being sharpened."