The black, dreamless void that followed the exhaustion of Arrion's failed training was not empty. It was a pressure, a gathering storm in the theatre of his mind. Then, light fractured the darkness—not the gentle green of the Weald or the harsh blue of his scar, but the stark, clean white of a lightning flash frozen in time.
He stood on the same grey, misty plain from his vision after the Delver, the sky above a churning canvas of silent, interwoven lightning. Before him were the two figures: his father, Bunnor, a giant of quiet, sorrowful strength with onyx eyes that held the weary peace of a finished duty, and the Lightning Giant, a being of pure, coruscating energy whose form hummed with barely-contained potential.
"Son," Bunnor's voice was as Arrion remembered from the deepest, oldest memories—a bedrock rumble, but now layered with a grief that was centuries old. "We see you struggling. We feel the strain in the blood we share. We… apologize."
The words were a shock. An apology, from these titans of his lineage?
The Lightning Giant took a step forward, the ground cracking with static where he stood. "WE PUSHED THE LEGACY INTO YOU LIKE A SWORD INTO A SCABBARD TOO SMALL. THE ASCENSION, THE RANK—IT WAS MEANT TO BE EARNED OVER YEARS OF DISCIPLINE, OF STUDY. WE GAVE IT TO YOU IN A MOMENT OF SURVIVAL. YOUR BODY ACCEPTED THE PROMOTION. YOUR SPIRIT ENDURED THE BOND. BUT YOUR MIND… YOUR MIND WAS LEFT BEHIND."
Bunnor nodded, his onyx eyes full of a father's profound regret. "The knowledge you should have had—the principles of flow, the maps of the thresholds, the Warden's catechism of restraint—it was meant to be passed from my hand to yours, over a forge, on long walks through the Weald. I left you a sword and a set of armor, Arrion. I left your mother a heart full of love and earth-lore. But I left you no wisdom. I thought I had more time. And then the crack… demanded my all."
He looked into the middle distance, as if seeing the memory etched on the mist. "The Glutton-From-Below is not some ancient, eldritch god from the dawn of time. It is a consequence. A minor… inconvenience, left in the wake of my war." The admission was heavy, shameful. "The final enemy I faced as Warden was not of this plane. Its death-throes tore a tiny, almost insignificant leak in the fabric of the Drakespine Marches. A seepage. I contained the breach, or so I thought, but I did not have the strength left to fully mend it. I assumed it would heal on its own, or that the land's own vitality would reject the foreign residue. I was weary. I was dying. I came home to you and your mother, and I let that unfinished business lie." His voice broke. "That neglect is the poison now infecting the King's forest. That is the blight starving your home. I failed to clean up my own battlefield, and now you must fight in its toxic mud."
The weight of it crashed onto Arrion. His father's great, shadowy war hadn't ended with a clean victory. It had ended with a festering wound on the world, a time-bomb he had passed on unknowingly.
"DO NOT CARRY HIS GUILT," the Lightning Giant boomed, drawing Arrion's attention. "CARRY HIS LEGACY. AND NOW, CARRY OUR AID. THE OLD ONE IN THE MARSH TEACHES YOU THE THEORY OF THE RIVER. BUT THEORY IS FOR LIBRARIES. YOU NEED A PRACTICUM. YOU NEED TO FEEL THE CURRENT BEFORE YOU DROWN IN IT."
The Giant raised a hand, and the lightning in the sky responded, coalescing into a single, arcing bolt that struck the ground between them without sound, leaving a perfect, shimmering replica of Nightshade, carved from solidified lightning. Next to it, a small, still pool of water appeared.
"BEGINNING NOW, THIS SPACE—THE COUNTRY OF YOUR THOUGHT—WILL BE YOUR TRAINING GROUND. HERE, YOU CAN FAIL WITHOUT SCARRING THE WORLD. HERE, YOU CAN BREAK WITHOUT SHATTERING YOUR BONES."
The Lightning Giant's energy-form seemed to sharpen, its gaze terrifyingly intense. "LISTEN CLOSELY, HEIR OF HAELEND. AS YOU STRUGGLE BY DAY, I WILL OCCUPY THIS SPACE BY NIGHT. I WILL DRILL YOU. I WILL FORGE YOUR AWARENESS. I WILL TEACH YOUR INSTINCTS TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF POWER. BUT KNOW THIS: IF YOU PROVE TOO BRITTLE, TOO STUBBORN, TOO FEARFUL TO LEARN… IF I SEE THE WARDEN'S LEGACY BEING TAINTED BY IGNORANCE AND HASTE INTO A WEAPON OF CHAOS…"
The Giant leaned in, its face a mask of celestial fury and terrible resolve. "I WOULD RATHER OCCUPY THE HOUSE OF YOUR FLESH MYSELF. I WOULD MANIFEST THROUGH YOUR BODY, USE IT AS A TEMPORARY VESSEL TO MEND THE CRACK AND SILENCE THE GLUTTON, EVEN IF THE EFFORT BURNS YOUR MORTAL SHELL TO ASHES. IT WOULD MEAN YOUR DEMISE. BUT IT WOULD PRESERVE THE DUTY. IT WOULD UPHOLD THE WALL. THE LEGACY WOULD BE FULFILLED, EVEN IF THE HEIR IS CONSUMED."
The ultimatum was even more horrifying than Lo's. This wasn't failure leading to death by beast or cosmic execution. This was failure leading to his own body being usurped, his consciousness extinguished, used as fuel in a last, desperate act by the very power that was supposed to be his inheritance.
Bunnor looked pained, but did not contradict the Giant. "He speaks the hard truth of our charge, son. The Warden is a function. The wall must stand. If the appointed guardian cannot hold… the role must be fulfilled by another, by any means. Even this."
"NOW," the Lightning Giant said, its voice shifting to that of a relentless drill-master. "PICK UP THE SWORD. NOT WITH YOUR HANDS. WITH YOUR INTENT. FEEL THE ENERGY THAT MAKES THIS DREAM. GUIDE IT TO THE HILT. LIFT IT."
Arrion, reeling, tried to focus. He looked at the lightning-sword. He reached for it not physically, but with his will, imagining a current of his own energy, gentle as a breeze, wrapping around the hilt. In the waking world, it would have sparked and exploded. Here, in this crafted mental space, the feedback was instant and instructive. He felt his will slip, become a push. The sword flickered wildly. A jolt of psychic feedback, like a snapped tendon in his mind, made him gasp.
"WRONG. YOU PUSHED. YOU SHOVED. A RIVER DOES NOT SHOVE ITS BANKS. IT FLOWS ALONG THEM. AGAIN."
And so it began. A night of relentless, grueling repetition within the prison of his own skull. While his body lay exhausted in the marsh hut, his mind was put through a forge. He learned to differentiate between the feeling of force and the feeling of flow. He learned to sense the internal "banks" of his own spirit—the limits and channels that could guide power without resisting it. The Lightning Giant was a harsh, unforgiving teacher, but a brilliant one. Each failure was dissected, each micro-success was amplified.
Bunnor watched from the sidelines, a silent, sorrowful guardian. Occasionally, he would speak, not of technique, but of purpose. "Remember the feel of the soil in Hearthstone, son. The way water seeps into it, nourishing without violence. That is the principle. Your power is the water. You are the soil. You must learn to be porous, to accept and direct, not to dam and release."
As the dream-training stretched on, a sliver of understanding began to dawn. It wasn't about making the power do something. It was about becoming a shape that the power naturally wanted to fill. It was the difference between wrestling a bull and becoming the matador's cape.
Just before the dream dissolved, the Lightning Giant fixed him with a final, searing gaze. "THE BEAST IN THE MARSH IS A KNOT OF CORRUPTED ENERGY. TO CUT IT, YOU MUST UNTIE THE KNOT. YOU CANNOT BLAST IT. YOU MUST FIND THE LOOSE THREAD OF ITS EXISTENCE AND PULL. YOU HAVE SIX NIGHTS LEFT HERE. SIX DAYS LEFT THERE. MAKE EACH ONE COUNT. OR I WILL MAKE THE CHOICE FOR YOU."
Arrion woke with a jolt, just before dawn. His body was stiff, but his mind was… different. Not rested, but altered. The ghost-sensation of holding the lightning-sword, of feeling energy move at his will's gentle suggestion, lingered. The theoretical "river" Lo spoke of was no longer just a metaphor. He had, in the deepest part of himself, felt its current.
He looked over at Kestrel, who was already awake, watching him with concerned eyes. He sat up, the lightning scar on his chest pulsing with a dull ache that now felt like a roadmap, not just a wound.
"What is it?" Kestrel asked.
Arrion took a deep breath, the words of his father and the Lightning Giant echoing in his skull—the apology, the confession of guilt, the terrifying ultimatum. "The training," he said, his voice rough. "It just became a lot more… immediate."
He rose. The marsh outside was still dark, the deep sinkhole waiting, the beast festering. But for the first time since his Ascension, Arrion Haelend didn't just feel the storm inside him as a terrifying, alien force. He felt its shape. He had, in the country of his thoughts, touched the banks of the river. Now he had to learn to navigate its rapids before they drowned him, or before the ferryman decided to sink the boat to save the river itself. The clock was ticking in two worlds now, and the price of failure in either was absolute.