Date: May 20, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
"Three weeks later, at the Agrim estate"
The lower terrace of the Agrim estate resembled the gaping maw of a granite giant. Here, among sharp rock outcroppings and the tenacious roots of ancient pines, the Silver Fang plunged downwards—a narrow but incredibly powerful waterfall fed by the icy veins of mountain glaciers. The water crashed from a height of twenty meters, shattering against flat black stones with a roar so fierce that any other sound drowned in its endless, furious thunder. A heavy veil of water spray hung in the air, a thick shroud that transformed everything around into a ghostly world of shadows and dampness.
Dur stood at the edge of the waterfall's churning basin, feeling the fine spray instantly soak his clothes, making them heavy and sticky. The cold seeped under his skin, forcing his muscles to contract involuntarily. He glanced at Maël. He was ten paces away, on a flat platform enclosed by a low stone parapet. Beside him stood Master Koh, gripping his heavy, iron-shod staff.
"Get in," Koh barked curtly, not even glancing at Dur. "And remember: water has no will, but it has weight. If you fight the weight—you lose. You must become part of the stone you stand on."
Dur took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the damp, cold air, and stepped under the torrent.
The impact was so powerful it knocked the breath from him. The icy mass crashed down on his shoulders and head, trying to press him into the slippery stone, bend him double, hurl him from the basin. His old, childhood fear of water—that paralyzing terror of the bottomless deep—flared hotly in his chest for a moment. But Dur clenched his teeth until his jaws ached. He was no longer that helpless orphan boy. He was a hunter who had killed to survive. He was the one who had sworn to change this world.
"Root yourself!" Koh's voice reached him through the roar.
Dur closed his eyes, completely shutting out the visual world. Only the cold, the weight, and the pulse of his own heart remained. He began to search within himself for that very Energy the master spoke of. Before, it had felt like chaotic flashes of warmth during fights or training, but now he had to tame it.
He focused on his feet, imagining invisible threads extending from them into the thickness of the black granite. At first, nothing worked. The energy darted in his chest, got stuck in his tense shoulders, dissipated through his trembling hands. The waterfall mercilessly tossed his body from side to side, his feet slid, and Dur felt that in another second he'd be washed out from under the torrent like debris.
"Quiet... freeze... listen," he commanded himself, recalling Thorm's lessons. A hunter in the forest doesn't fight the wind; he becomes its shadow.
Dur relaxed his shoulders, letting the water flow down his back, and directed all his attention to his lower abdomen. There, in the very depths, he sensed a barely perceptible stirring—a dense, thick clot of power. Slowly, inch by inch, he began to push this clot downwards, through his hips, into his knees, into his calves. It was excruciatingly difficult, like trying to force thick resin through narrow tubes. His muscles burned, despite the icy water.
At some point, he felt a faint click. The weight of the waterfall didn't disappear, but it suddenly ceased to be hostile. The energy reached his feet and seemed to "stick" to the stone. His body acquired a strange, leaden heaviness. The water continued to pound, but Dur no longer swayed. He was frozen, having become a living extension of the rock. This was "Rooting"—the first step towards consciously wielding his own strength.
Meanwhile, on the platform, a different action was unfolding for Maël. Koh slowly circled the young man, and each of his steps resonated in Maël's ears like the toll of a funeral bell.
"Hold the Form, Maël," Koh said insinuatingly. "If you let your energy scatter, I'll beat the spirit out of you, literally."
Maël stood in a low stance, his face a deathly pale, and sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold. Around his forearms and chest, the air trembled finely, distorting space—his Spirit of Adaptability was trying to create a protective layer. But the shimmer was unstable; it would flare up brighter one moment, then almost disappear the next as Maël's breathing faltered.
Without warning, Koh struck with his staff. The heavy wood slammed into Maël's shoulder with a dull thud. The air at the impact point thickened momentarily, flashing with a gray light, and the staff rebounded as if it had struck a piece of hardened hide. Maël gasped, staggered, but held his ground.
"Weak!" Koh roared. "Your Spirit is hungry, Maël! You're trying to build a wall out of mist because you're afraid to commit your energy completely. Your power must feed the Form continuously!"
The next blow struck his torso. This time, the "Form" wavered. The shimmer burst with a soft pop, and the staff slammed into the young man's ribs. Maël cried out and was thrown back several meters, painfully striking the stone parapet.
"Get up," Koh's voice didn't change; there wasn't a drop of sympathy in it. "The Alvostian legionaries won't wait for you to catch your breath. Their Spirits eat people like you for breakfast. Again!"
Maël, wheezing and clutching his side, got to his feet. A fury flashed in his eyes—not the blind rage that clouds the mind, but a cold, calculating stubbornness he'd learned from Dur. He resumed his stance, and the air around him began to boil with renewed force. This time, the shimmer grew denser, acquiring a barely noticeable metallic sheen.
Dur, watching this through the veil of the waterfall, felt his own Energy within his feet begin to pulse in time with the strikes of Koh's staff. His bond with Maël over these months had become something more than just friendship. They were two parts of one mechanism, which Koh was now mercilessly breaking in, shearing off everything superfluous.
The water continued to roar, Koh continued to strike, and the world around them narrowed to pain, cold, and this strange, new feeling—the realization that they were finally beginning to find the channel of their true power. But Dur knew: this was only the beginning. There, to the east, beyond the mountains, the fires of war were already stoking, and their flames were far hotter than the cold of the Silver Fang.
Maël spat out thick, blood-salt saliva and straightened up again. Each breath resonated in his chest with a prickly heat—Koh aimed precisely, testing not only the strength of his "Form" but the very strength of the young man's spirit. The air around the Agrim heir vibrated. The gray mist, born of the Spirit of Adaptability, no longer just enveloped his body; it pulsed erratically, trying to anticipate the master's next strike.
"You think your defense is a wall," Koh's voice seemed to come from beneath the earth, cutting through the waterfall's roar. "But your defense is water. It should not meet the blow. It should absorb it, redistribute it, change it. You are Agrim! Your blood is a whirlwind, not a stagnant swamp!"
Koh suddenly changed his rhythm. His movements, previously sparse and measured, became lightning-fast. The staff turned into a blurred shadow. Maël screamed with exertion, and at that moment, his Form made a strange leap. The air distortion around his left shoulder suddenly condensed so much it seemed like a solid crystal. When the staff struck it, there was no dull thud, but a ringing scrape, as if steel scraped against stone. The energy of the blow didn't transfer into Maël's body; it slid off to the side, sparking against the stone floor slabs.
"There it is!" Koh exhaled curtly, stopping. "Did you feel that? You didn't resist. You changed the very essence of the point of contact. That is the work of your spirit at the limit of your current power. But look at yourself."
Maël swayed. His face took on an earthy pallor, and his hands trembled finely. His inner reservoir, his stores of energy, were drained to the very bottom. Fueling his Spirit with such intensity required the level of a Pillar, a goal that was still months, if not years, of grueling work away for Maël. His channels burned as if molten tin had been poured through them.
Meanwhile, under the icy weight of the Silver Fang, Dur had entered a state the mentors called "deep vessel trance." He no longer felt the cold. He no longer felt the weight. His consciousness had completely shifted to his feet, where concentrated Energy was fusing his flesh with the granite.
Koh approached the very edge of the waterfall's basin and looked down at Dur's frozen figure. "Enough! Get out!"
Dur didn't move. It took several seconds for his mind to return to reality. Slowly, with difficulty, he shifted his right foot, and a distinct sound was heard—like a suction cup pulling away from a smooth surface. He emerged from under the torrent, staggering, his skin deathly pale and his lips blue, but his eyes shone with a strange, steady light.
"You lasted longer than any Spirit-bearer your age," Koh said, and for the first time that morning, a shadow of something akin to pensiveness slipped into his voice. "Your lack of a Spirit... it makes you an anomaly. An ordinary person spends energy to fuel an external power. You spend it only on yourself."
Koh gestured for both of them to sit right on the damp stones. Servants brought a hot herbal brew, smelling of bitter root and honey. Dur took the cup with stiff fingers, feeling the warmth slowly return life to his extremities.
"Listen carefully," Koh knelt on one knee before them, his face under the shadow of his hood seeming carved from stone. "What you've touched on today is but a shadow of true power. The world is vast, and Ligra is but a grain of sand in it. There are races whose connection to energy makes our methods seem like child's play. In the south, among the Vineyard Cedars, the Sylvans grow their homes and weapons from life itself, using the alchemy that flows in their veins instead of blood. In the east, in forests humans fear to name, the Orcs whisper to the bones of the earth, and the earth answers them, tearing apart legions."
Dur raised his eyes. He remembered his map, his dreams. The world was getting bigger, and more dangerous.
"And the Dwarves..." Koh continued, looking at Maël. "They don't just forge steel. They weave Spirits into the gears of their machines. Raphael is one of the few who understands that steel and spirit are two wings of the same bird. You must become like them. Balanced. Unbreakable."
Koh rose, his enormous shadow falling over the exhausted youths. "Today you learned where your Channel is. Tomorrow we will begin to widen it. Rest. If you can."
The sun finally rose above the cliffs, illuminating the terrace. For a moment, a bright rainbow flashed in the waterfall's spray, but Dur wasn't looking at it. He was looking at his hands. They were still trembling, but inside, somewhere deep beneath his ribs, he would now always feel this quiet, persistent current of power.
Maël leaned heavily on Dur's shoulder, helping himself up. "You know," he whispered, looking at the departing Koh. "I think I'm beginning to understand why my father values this man so much. He's not just teaching us to fight. He's reshaping our souls."
Dur nodded, gazing into the distance, towards where the lands of Alvost lay hidden beyond the horizon. "The main thing, Maël, is that after this reshaping, something of ourselves remains."
They slowly trudged up the stairs, two young fighters whose path was just beginning. Ligra breathed beneath them, full of sounds and life, not yet knowing that the world she was accustomed to had already begun to crumble, and that only these two, tempered by the ice of the waterfall and the blows of an iron staff, would be the ones to try and keep it from falling into the abyss.