Old Master Ren did not waste words.
He rarely did.
He stood beneath the massive tree with the same gentle patience he had shown since Kael first entered this pocket world, but there was something different in his gaze now. Not coldness. Not cruelty. Something older.
Expectation.
Ren looked down at the stump where Kael's right hand should have been.
Then he looked at Kael's face.
"Your first task," Ren said softly, "is simple."
Kael's throat tightened.
Ren pointed toward the weapon resting in the grass nearby—not the axe as a legend, not the axe as a treasure, simply… an axe placed on the ground like a piece of firewood waiting to be carried.
"You will pick it up," Ren said.
Kael's eyes flicked to the handle.
Then to his right arm.
Ren's tone remained gentle, almost grandfatherly.
"With your right hand."
Kael didn't move.
For half a breath, his mind tried to reject the statement on instinct alone.
His right hand was gone.
That was a fact.
It had been a fact for years.
It was the kind of fact Smoke City used to define people permanently. The kind of fact that decided how often you were kicked, how often you were ignored, and how quickly you learned to stop asking for things that would never happen.
Kael swallowed.
"Master…" he began carefully, because even with all the memories now sitting inside him, he was still a boy who had lived three years as a beggar.
Ren raised one finger.
Not to threaten.
To stop.
"Your hand is not gone," Ren said. "It is there."
Kael's chest tightened.
Ren continued calmly, "It is simply not acknowledged."
The words landed like a stone dropped into a still pond.
Kael's mind—now crowded with years he had not lived—reacted in two directions at once.
One part of him wanted to accept it blindly because Ren had fed him, sheltered him, and looked at him like he mattered.
Another part of him—the part that remembered steel, concrete, and a world where structures failed when assumptions were wrong—wanted proof.
Ren's expression did not change.
"You are an anomaly," he said gently. "Not because you are special in a flattering way. Special is a word used to sell nonsense to children."
Kael's lips twitched faintly despite himself.
Ren's eyes softened, as if he noticed.
"You are an anomaly," Ren repeated, "because you do not sit properly inside the world."
He tapped the ground lightly with his toe.
"This world sorts existence," Ren said. "It recognizes. It categorizes. It assigns weight."
His gaze returned to Kael.
"You fall through those categories. That is why you were not found. That is why you were not noticed. That is why you could starve in the city while cultivators walked past you."
Kael's fingers tightened unconsciously on his sleeve.
Ren's voice remained mild.
"It is good," he said. "Because it hides you."
Then he added, still gentle, "It is bad… because it makes even your own body forget itself."
Kael stared.
Ren pointed again at Kael's arm.
"That hand is there," Ren said. "But it is blurred—even to you."
Kael's mouth went dry.
Ren's next words were soft, but absolute.
"Pick up the axe," he said. "With the hand that is not there."
Kael stood very still.
The forest was quiet.
The light was constant.
The birds sounded far away.
All of it felt gentle, but Kael understood something the merged memories made impossible to ignore:
Gentleness was the setting.
It was not the lesson.
Kael looked at the axe again.
It looked ordinary.
Like metal and wood.
Like weight and leverage.
Like something gravity should claim without debate.
That thought made his mind itch, because in the other life gravity had been honest. It killed you, but it killed you consistently. It did not pretend.
This world did.
This world had pressure. Spirit. Laws. Things that could decide whether an object wanted to be lifted.
Kael exhaled.
"Master," Kael asked carefully, "is this… a test of strength?"
Ren smiled faintly.
"No," he said. "It is a test of existence."
Kael's stomach sank.
Ren turned away.
"Do not ask me how," he said gently. "If I tell you, you will mimic. If you mimic, you will borrow understanding. Borrowed understanding collapses when pressure increases."
Kael remembered that.
Temporary works.
False confidence.
A structure standing until the day it didn't.
Ren's robe brushed the grass as he began to walk back toward the cabin.
Then he paused.
He did not look back.
"If you succeed," Ren said, "you will have completed the first half of the first task."
Kael's throat tightened.
"And if I fail?" he asked, voice small despite everything inside him.
Ren's answer was calm.
"Then you will keep trying."
He walked away.
No punishment.
No praise.
No timeline.
No comforting lie.
Kael watched him disappear between the trees until the forest swallowed him the same way Smoke City used to swallow beggars.
Only this time Kael knew the difference.
Smoke City swallowed people because it did not care.
Ren swallowed him into silence because he did.
Kael lowered his gaze to the axe.
He stepped closer.
The weapon was larger than his torso, the head broad and imposing, the reverse blade smaller but sharp. The handle was wrapped in worn leather that looked almost human in its familiarity—an object designed for hands.
Kael stared at it for a long time.
Then he extended his left hand and wrapped his fingers around the grip.
The leather felt cool.
Real.
He lifted.
The axe rose easily.
Not because it was light—Kael could feel it had weight—but because his left arm was still his.
He held it for a moment.
Then he lowered it back to the grass.
He didn't need to prove he could lift it.
That wasn't the task.
He turned his attention to his right arm.
To the stump.
He closed his eyes.
In the other life, he had learned that you could not fix a collapse by staring at the rubble.
You had to understand why it fell.
So Kael tried to understand.
Ren claimed the hand was there, but not acknowledged.
That meant the hand existed in some layer of reality that the world refused to register.
A hidden variable.
A structural element omitted from the model.
And in engineering, missing elements did not become visible by wishing.
They became visible by forcing the model to account for them.
Kael inhaled.
Held.
Exhaled.
He focused on the sensation he hated most.
The phantom itch.
The phantom curl.
The feeling, at night, that fingers were still there—closing around nothing.
He pushed his awareness into that sensation.
Not imagining a hand.
Not picturing fingers.
Just acknowledging the space where sensation insisted something still existed.
Kael extended his right arm toward the axe.
It looked ridiculous.
An eight-year-old boy reaching with air.
If a guard saw him doing this in Smoke City, they would laugh first, then kick him for entertainment.
Kael's breath steadied.
He tried to feel contact.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
Minutes passed.
Then longer.
The forest did not change.
The light did not shift.
Kael tried different approaches, because he was not only a starving child anymore—he was also the kind of person who had spent nights solving problems that did not want to be solved.
He altered angle.
He adjusted stance.
He tried to brace with the stump against the handle, as if the missing hand could "catch" the grip through friction.
Nothing.
He tried to treat it like a nerve response—concentrate on phantom sensation until the brain accepted it as real.
Still nothing.
The axe did not move.
Not even a tremble.
Kael opened his eyes and stared at the weapon.
A bitter laugh rose in his throat.
Not because it was funny.
Because the absurdity of the task reminded him of the stories he used to read.
Those protagonists who were told to carry mountains or run until their legs bled.
Back then, he had admired them.
Now he understood the truth.
The cruelty was never the weight.
The cruelty was that no one explained whether success was even possible.
Kael's shoulders tightened.
He exhaled slowly.
Then he did something different.
He stopped trying to "lift."
He tried to "exist."
He stared at the axe handle and told himself one simple thing, over and over:
My hand is there.
Not as hope.
As a statement.
As a new assumption forced into the model.
He extended his right arm again.
He focused on the phantom fingers.
He forced his mind to treat them as real, not because he believed, but because the alternative was to accept permanent helplessness.
And Kael had already lived that.
He refused to live it again.
A faint shiver passed through the grass.
Kael froze.
He hadn't moved.
The axe hadn't moved.
But the grass—right where the handle rested—had bent slightly, as if something invisible had brushed it.
Kael's heart slammed into his ribs.
He tried again, slower.
The same awareness.
The same insistence.
The grass bent again.
This time the axe slid—just a fraction, no more than a fingernail's width.
Kael's breath caught.
Then the sensation vanished.
The connection snapped.
The axe settled back into stillness like it had never moved at all.
Kael stood there trembling.
Not from exhaustion.
From proof.
It could respond.
Which meant the hand could touch.
Which meant Ren had not lied.
Kael swallowed hard and wiped at his eyes with his left sleeve, angry at himself for almost crying.
He wasn't crying because he was weak.
He was crying because for three years he had been treated as if parts of him did not exist.
And now, in this forest, a piece of the world had finally agreed—even if only for a heartbeat—that he was real.
Kael looked toward the direction Ren had left.
The trees stood still.
The cabin was out of sight.
The old man had truly left him alone.
Kael understood the message.
If he wanted this…
He would have to claim it.
Not with anger.
Not with begging.
With repetition.
With persistence.
With the same stubbornness that had once kept him alive on scraps.
Kael lowered his stance again.
He extended the arm.
He closed his eyes.
And he began.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The axe twitched once more.
Then nothing.
Then the grass bent.
Then nothing.
Then a tiny slide.
Then nothing.
Hours passed without the sun moving.
Kael lost track of time.
His shoulders ached.
His stump throbbed.
His head felt hot.
But each time he failed, he did not collapse into despair the way the beggar Kael would have.
Because now he carried a memory heavier than hunger:
A high-rise collapsing.
A moment of wrongness.
A failure caused by one element nobody accounted for.
Kael refused to be that missing element again.
When his legs finally gave out and he dropped to his knees, he did not look at the axe with hatred.
He looked at it like a problem.
A brutal, unfair problem.
But a solvable one.
Kael whispered, hoarse and stubborn, "Again."
The forest did not answer.
And somewhere beyond the trees, Old Master Ren did not return.
Not because he had forgotten.
But because this was the kind of lesson that could not be taught.
It had to be taken.