Damn me and my decisions.
Kyle slapped himself once, hard. Not this time. No giving up.
The bells rang before dawn. They always did.
Kyle learned quickly they were not a call to prayer.
They were a warning. The stone chapel was cold enough to steal heat from bone. He knelt barefoot on consecrated marble—spine straight, hands resting on his thighs—while iron bands lay lightly across his ribs and throat. They were not restraints.
They were reminders.Of breath.Of posture.Of failure.
Malcolm stood behind him in silence, watching his breathing the way a man watched a fuse burn—patient, calculating, waiting for the moment it went wrong.
"Breathe until the room disappears," Malcolm said.
Kyle inhaled."Yeah, yeah… that's what she said—"
Wrong.
Pain arrived instantly. A sharp, corrective strike to the sternum drove the air from his lungs and folded him forward.
"Again."
Breath was not comfort.It was not calm.
Damn… I'm sure this guy never had a girl.
Breath was pressure control.
He learned the hard way.
Inhale to anchor the body.Hold to stabilize the frame.Exhale to move force through muscle and bone without tearing either apart.
Every mistake earned pain—knuckles to ribs, fingers buried into the diaphragm, a precise tap to the throat that stole air just long enough to teach respect.
Never enough to injure. Always enough to remember.
Meditation followed pain. Not peace.
Stillness under exhaustion.
Candles burned low while Kyle sat unmoving for hours, muscles screaming, breath steady only because it had learned to be. Healing relics lined the chapel walls—ancient things wrapped in gold and scripture, humming softly as they repaired torn fibers and micro-fractures.
They accelerated recovery. They did not touch fatigue.
Pain stayed. Damage did not.
By the sixth month, his breath no longer shook. By the twelfth, his heart no longer spiked in fear.
They broke his body next.
Not creatively.Not kindly. Relentlessly.
They didn't care that he was small. They cared that he moved.Every day was the same.
Push until collapse. Heal. Push again. Run until his legs failed. Crawl across stone corridors with chains dragging behind him, iron biting into hips and spine. Sink into cold water afterward, lungs burning as heat was stripped from muscle.
No magic.No shortcuts.
Healing artifacts repaired micro-tears so the workload could increase. When his body failed, they healed it—and doubled the work.
He vomited daily.Collapsed weekly.Stopped crying entirely.
Once, he tried to run.
Malcolm was waiting outside.
"So," Malcolm said calmly, "you're giving up?"
Kyle said nothing.
"In the end," Malcolm continued, voice flat, "you're nothing but a useless prick. Why should a child's life matter to you? What was the use of saving that girl? You should've stayed out of it."
Something snapped.
"Give up?" Kyle shouted, fists shaking. "There was a time in my life when I might have—but that's behind me. I'll fight."
Malcolm studied him for a long moment.
"Good," he said. "Remember that resolve."
Kyle huffed weakly. "You're… one hell of a motivator."
By winter, his body stopped asking permission.
At night, when the church slept, Kyle practiced something else.
Alone in storage rooms and forgotten chapels, he inhaled—and felt the pressure inside him answer.
Not magic.Not wind.
Presence.
When he moved, the air moved with him.
A chair scraped half an inch across the stone floor.
Kyle froze, breath caught mid-cycle.
Then he smiled—and stopped.
He never told anyone.
After that day, the training changed.
Not in schedule.
In intent.
Malcolm stopped correcting mistakes. He started engineering failure.
Kyle was given herbs before dawn—ground roots, bitter leaves, tinctures burned down to sludge. Some sharpened focus. Some dulled pain. Some disrupted balance, slowed reaction, or twisted perception just enough to force adaptation.
No labels. No warnings.
"Your enemy won't tell you what you're poisoned with," Malcolm said.
Kyle learned to fight through nausea. Through blurred vision. Through hands that shook no matter how steady his breath became. He learned which herbs slowed blood loss and which masked it. Which kept him conscious. Which only delayed collapse.
Weapons followed—all of them.
Blades of every length and balance. Axes. Hammers. Broken glass. Improvised shivs carved from scrap wood and bone. Staffs that bruised instead of cut. Chains weighted unevenly to throw timing off.
"Form is optional," the instructor said. "Function isn't."
Kyle learned systematic combat—stance, distance, leverage. How to dismantle joints cleanly. How to break balance without striking. How to end fights efficiently.
Then they erased the system.
Street fights.
No rules. No openings announced. Attacks from behind. From blind angles. Multiple opponents at once. Dirty tactics encouraged.
Eye rakes. Throat grabs. Fingers snapped mid-grapple. Knees shattered under full body weight.
"If you hesitate," Malcolm said once, "you deserve the pain."
Kyle bled more often now. Healing artifacts worked constantly, sealing damage while leaving exhaustion untouched. Bruises layered over scars. Muscle memory replaced thought.
They trained him exhausted.
They trained him injured.
They trained him afraid.
Sometimes Malcolm ordered him bound—hands partially restrained, vision obscured, breath disrupted—then released attackers without warning.
Kyle learned to fight by sound. By pressure shifts in the air. By instinct sharpened through repetition.
He learned to fall without losing breath.To rise without hesitation.To strike without commitment.
Honor was stripped out early.
"Fair fights are a luxury," Malcolm said. "Survival isn't."
Firearms returned—this time mixed with chaos. Weapon transitions under pressure. Losing a gun mid-fight and finishing with bare hands. Reloading with blood-slick fingers. Clearing jams while someone tried to cave his skull in.
Herbs returned at night—recovery blends, nerve stabilizers, compounds that accelerated reflex learning at the cost of sleep. Kyle went days without rest. Meditation replaced it.
Stillness under damage.
Breath under collapse.
At night, alone, the other training deepened.
Kyle inhaled—and the pressure inside him answered faster now. He didn't force it. Didn't shape it. He let it follow him.
When he moved, resistance formed.
Not visible.Not magical.
Real.
Once, during a chain drill, an opponent overcommitted.
Kyle shifted.
The man flew backward—not struck, not thrown—rejected by the space between them.
Kyle froze.
He released the breath.
The world settled.
He said nothing.
By the end of the second year, Malcolm stopped intervening.
He watched.
By the third, he stopped explaining.
Kyle was tested daily.
Ambushes during meals. Attacks mid-meditation. Combat immediately after healing, when pain was sharpest and muscles weakest.
Failure no longer meant correction.
It meant consequences.
When Kyle collapsed unconscious, healing artifacts revived him.
Training resumed.
"Growth," Malcolm said once, almost conversationally, "only happens past the point you think is possible."
Kyle stopped thinking in limits.
Missions filled the gaps—real ones. Hauntings. Possessions. Places that screamed when you entered and bled when you left.
No backup unless fatal.
Fear dulled.Resolve hardened.Breath remained.
Three years after the bells first rang, Kyle stood alone in the chapel.
The marble no longer felt cold.
Malcolm studied him—no approval, no pride.
"You're ready," he said.
Kyle nodded.
Inside him, the pressure waited.
Not magic.Not faith.
Something older.
Something that moved when he breathed.
And deep within—
The Drum no longer beat to guide him.
It waited for release.