Date: May 23, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
If Orwen's library was a world of silence and abstract schemes, then Master Koh's morning training ground remained a world of flesh, bone, and merciless physics. The morning dew had not yet evaporated from the stone slabs when Maël stood in the center of a circle chalked on the ground. His breathing was steady, but his heart beat in an accelerated rhythm—not from fear, but from anticipation of the pain necessary for growth.
Dur sat on the edge of the balustrade, watching. His own "Rooting" training for the day was over, and now he was a spectator, studying how a different kind of power was born.
"Energy is not just a shield, Maël," Koh slowly circled the young man, clutching a fresh staff made of heavy "ironwood." "It is your will, having gained density. If your will is loose, like a spring snowdrift, no amount of energy will help you."
Koh stopped abruptly. His spirit, "Lead Shackles," manifested for a moment—the air around the master grew heavy, dust on the slabs pressed flat against the stone.
"Summon it."
Maël closed his eyes. Inside him, where previously only a slight chill was felt, something living now pulsed. His Spirit of Adaptability. It wasn't like Kaedan's stone armor or the sharp fangs of wild spirits. It was a changeable, fluid mist, seeking to fill voids and reflect external pressure.
Maël exhaled, directing his energy into this mist. The air around him trembled. Gray streaks of ghostly matter began to entwine around his forearms, chest, and thighs. Before, it had been just a shimmer, a barely noticeable distortion. But today, Maël felt something had changed. After realizing the enemy would not wait, his spirit had become... angrier.
"Don't just hold it near you," Koh growled. "Compress it! Make it dense!"
Koh struck the first blow. The staff whistled through the air and slammed into Maël's shoulder. Instead of just passing through the mist, the wood met resistance. The gray smoke at the impact point instantly thickened, becoming scale-like. A dull thud sounded, and the staff rebounded.
Maël staggered, his face contorted with strain. Maintaining such density consumed his energy at a frightening speed. He felt his reserves dwindling, giving everything, down to the last drop, to this new, solid shell.
"Again!" Koh gave no respite.
The blows rained down like hail. From the right, left, above. Maël spun in the center of the circle, his spirit pulsing, flashing with gray sparks each time the staff touched him. It was no longer chaotic mist. It were fragments of armor, appearing exactly where they were needed.
"Firmer!" Koh wound up for a powerful vertical strike. "You are Agrim! You don't adapt to the world; you make the world break against your essence!"
The staff descended with incredible force from above. Maël didn't dodge. He threw both hands up, crossing them. At that moment, Dur, watching from the side, saw it clearly: the gray mist around Maël's hands became completely opaque and smooth for a fraction of a second, like polished obsidian.
A crunch.
The heavy staff of ironwood, capable of piercing a stone wall, shattered into splinters upon meeting this ghostly barrier. Maël collapsed to his knees, his breath escaping his chest in ragged gasps. His energy crumbled like gray ash and vanished.
Koh looked at the fragment of staff in his hand, then at the heavily breathing young man.
"The First Firmament," the master uttered, and for the first time, his voice lacked its usual harshness. "You have cemented the lesson, Maël. You've ceased being just a bearer. You've become the smith of your spirit."
Dur jumped down from the balustrade and approached his friend, handing him a flask of water. Maël took it with trembling hands; his eyes still shone with that strange, steely gleam that appeared during spirit activation.
"I saw it..." Maël whispered, gulping the water greedily. "For a moment... it became tangible. As if I myself became stone."
"That is Energy," Koh came up to them, throwing aside the wood fragments. "But the price is high. Look at your channels."
Maël listened to himself. His inner Energy was so depleted he felt physically nauseous. His "Stream" had become barely noticeable moisture at the bottom of a dried-up well.
"You achieved this power before your body learned to fuel it," Koh continued. "This is dangerous. If you summon such power in a real fight, you might deflect one, maybe two blows. And then your heart will simply stop, trying to squeeze energy from emptiness."
Koh turned to Dur.
"And you, hunter, did you see? That's the difference. He needs a spirit to become powerful. You need to become just as powerful yourself, without any spirits. Your 'Rooting' must provide the same protection to your bones and skin."
"Rest," Koh headed for the exit from the training ground. "Tomorrow we'll see how long your Firmament holds against something more serious than wood. The city is quieting down, boys. Alvost is no longer just whispering. It's breathing down our necks."
Dur helped Maël up. Ligra's spring sun was already blazing hot, but their hearts were cold. They had become stronger, yes. But the splintered staff in Koh's hands reminded them of the power soon to descend upon these walls. And their current strength would not be enough to stop the approaching avalanche.
Maël sat on the sun-baked slabs, his back against the cool stone base of the balustrade. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and the veins at his temples pulsed in time with the fading rhythm of his exhausted heart. Dur handed him a second flask—this time with a bitter restorative brew Archivist Orwen called "earth's blood."
"Did you see it, Dur?" Maël's voice was a barely audible whisper, but there was no weakness in it. Only shock. "At the moment the staff struck... I didn't just block it. I felt my Spirit demand my will. It wasn't automatic adaptation like before. It was a pact."
Dur nodded silently, sitting down beside him. He looked at his own palms—rough, calloused, smelling of metal and sweat. "Your Spirit has gained boundaries, Maël. Before, it was like mist in a forest—everywhere and nowhere. And now it has become... a tool. Or a cage, if you can't feed it."
Master Koh, gathering the splinters of the broken staff, turned to them. His heavy gaze swept over the exhausted Agrim heir and lingered on Dur.
"Firmament is not just defense," Koh said, approaching. His steps were silent, despite his massive build. "It is the manifestation of your essence in the physical world. For Maël, it's the Form of his Spirit. For you, Dur, it must be the Firmament of your muscles and bones. You are a 'Vessel without a Spirit.' Your energy channels have no outlet into an external entity, so all the pressure remains inside."
Koh squatted down, looking Dur straight in the eye. "If you don't learn to condense your energy into a monolith, your own body will tear you apart from within when you reach Level 2—Warrior. Maël can release excess pressure into his Spirit. You don't have that luxury. You must become your own armor."
In the air of the Agrim estate, usually smelling of incense and archive dust, a different scent was now distinctly noticeable. The smell of hot forges rising from the city smithies below, and the acrid smoke of bonfires. Ligra was preparing. From the height of the balustrade, it was visible how the trade caravans on the eastern road leading to the Ridge of Sorrow had halted, giving way to mounted patrols of the guard.
At that moment, a sharp trumpet sound came from the direction of the estate's main gate. It wasn't the call to dinner or the signal for a changing of the guard. It was a long, mournful wail of a horn, announcing the arrival of an official embassy.
Dur and Maël exchanged glances. "Alvost?" asked Maël, his hand instinctively going to where his training knife usually hung.
"No," Koh squinted, looking at the banners unfurling at the gate. "The banner with the black griffin on a red field. It's the inner circle of Agrim Ma Rat. Your father has sent for you, Maël. It seems Sarim's assessment of reality coincides with Valerius's troop movements."
For Dur, this meant the end of their brief respite. Orwen's library, the waterfalls, and Koh's training ground had been their cocoon, protecting them from the real world. Now the cocoon had cracked.
"Go," Koh gestured for them to leave. "And remember: energy channels only burn for those who are afraid to use them. Accept the pain, and it will become your fuel."
They left the training ground, and Dur felt each step resonate with a vibration in his "rooted" leg muscles. He wasn't frightened. After months spent on the brink of exhaustion, after the labyrinth and the tunnels, fear had become something secondary. Only the hunter's curiosity and the warrior's cold resolve remained.
Descending the wide steps towards the main house, they saw servants bustling in panic, clearing away superfluous items and preparing the halls for a reception. Ligra was no longer just a backdrop. It was becoming a battlefield. And they were meant to be the ones who would not let this field turn into a graveyard.
"Are we ready, Dur?" Maël asked quietly, when they stopped before the heavy oak doors of the reception hall.
Dur looked at his hands—calm, heavy, full of hidden energy. "No," he answered honestly. "But we have no choice but to pretend we are ready. And to strike first."
The doors swung open, admitting them into a world of high politics, where words killed no worse than swords, and where the shadow of Alvost had already fallen on the polished marble floor.