Date: May 28, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
Morning began not with waking up, but with the awareness of one's own heaviness. When Dur opened his eyes, it seemed to him that the blanket weighed a whole ton, and the bed beneath him had sagged deeper than the day before. But it was a trick of the senses. His body, exhausted by yesterday's hell, had undergone its first serious transformation overnight.
The young man sat up, and the mattress creaked plaintively under him. Every movement required a conscious effort, as if his muscles had turned into taut steel cables, not yet lubricated. Dur looked at his palms. The abrasions from the boulders had healed over with a rough, dark scab, but the skin around them looked different—it seemed more matte, devoid of youthful softness. Beneath this shell, a strange "fullness" was felt. The energy accumulated during the previous day hadn't dissipated through a Spirit, which he didn't have, but had been absorbed into his tissues, compacting them, making his presence in the room almost tangible.
There was a soft knock at the door. Maël entered, and the contrast between the friends became stark. Maël looked haggard, his skin pale, his movements feverishly quick, almost nervous.
"I feel... hungry, Dur," Maël rasped, sinking onto the edge of a chair. "My Spirit of Adaptability... it's as if it's awakened and is now gnawing at me from within. The little Energy I managed to accumulate yesterday isn't enough for it. It demands fuel to protect me from today's pain."
Dur nodded, understanding what his friend meant. Maël had a "parasite"—a Spirit that consumed all energy for its own needs. Dur's situation was the opposite.
"And I feel too full," Dur replied, and his voice sounded unusually deep, as if vibrating in his chest. "As if I've swallowed a piece of lead that is now spreading through my veins. Heaviness... it's everywhere."
They went out to the training ground, where Divilla was already waiting for them. Today she looked even more aloof. In her hands was a tablet with dispatches from the eastern regions, and she barely deigned to glance at them. For her, Dur remained merely a functional adjunct to her nephew, a tool whose task was not to break before its time.
"Maël, you are weak," she tossed out, not looking up from her papers. "Your Spirit is sucking you dry because your energy development is a thin thread. It should be a full-flowing river. Dur..." she finally looked at him, and momentary confusion flickered in her eyes. "Your body has become 'louder.' You press on the ground slabs harder than your weight should dictate. Your energy development is going into depth, into density. This is good, but it's dangerous. If density exceeds the strength of your channels, you will simply crush yourself."
She pointed to a stone table where two bowls stood with a viscous, almost black substance.
"So you don't die tomorrow, the Agrim Family gives you the 'Bitter Gift.' It's a tincture of rock crawler liver and grated iron root. It forcibly expands energy channels. It hurts. It's dangerous. But it's the only way to prepare you for the pressure Valtorn will bring down on the Iron Gullet."
Maël was the first to take the bowl and drink it in one gulp. His face contorted instantly, veins bulged in his neck, and a wave of convulsions passed through his body. The shimmering Energy of his Spirit flared for a moment and then went out, greedily absorbing the influx of power.
Dur took his bowl. He felt Divilla's cold, studying gaze on him. She didn't sympathize with him; she merely observed, to see if her "experimental specimen" could withstand such a dose. The young man drank.
In that same second, the world around him went dark. It felt as if a red-hot iron bar had been driven into him. The energy of the tincture didn't just flow through his veins—it burst through them like a mountain avalanche. His channels, previously dense and heavy, began to expand rapidly, inflating his vessels and muscles from within.
Dur collapsed to his knees, his fingers digging into the white slabs of the ground. Fine cracks appeared in the stone—not from the impact, but from the monstrous weight his body had momentarily acquired under this internal pressure.
"Get up!" Divilla's command cracked like a whip. "If you let this power stagnate, it will simply tear your channels apart. Lead plates on your legs. Run! Right now!"
Running under the influence of the "Bitter Gift" was like trying to move inside a thick jelly that simultaneously tried to burn you. The density of energy inside Dur had increased so much that he felt each movement as the shifting of a huge boulder. The lead plates on his legs now seemed not just a burden, but an extension of his own, incredibly heavy body.
Divilla moved alongside them. She used her Castling to instantly appear now on the left, now on the right, delivering stinging blows with an energy whip to those parts of the body where Energy stagnated. Her blows on Dur were pointedly merciless.
"Don't you dare close up!" she shouted. "Energy development isn't just about muscular strength! It's about conductivity! If you don't let the power flow, it will turn your flesh into stone that can't be moved!"
Dur felt no offense. In his mind, clouded by pain and monstrous pressure, only one thought hammered: "Denser. Even denser." He intuitively understood that his path was not the path of flexibility. He had to become so monolithic that the very concept of "pain" ceased to matter.
By midday, they reached a slope strewn with sharp slate fragments.
"Sparring!" Divilla commanded. "Maël, use 10% of your Spirit for attack. Dur—only defense. Feel each other's strength. Understand how you differ."
When Maël threw the first punch, Dur didn't even try to dodge. He simply took the blow on his forearm. A sound like two heavy oak logs colliding rang out. Maël cried out and recoiled, shaking his bruised hand.
"You... you're like a stone wall, Dur!" he exhaled. "Your body... it's not just hard, it's... heavy somehow."
"That's density," Divilla came up to them, looking at Dur with new interest. "Your energy has begun to change the structure of your tissues. You're ceasing to be just human. Your muscles are becoming thicker, your bones more massive. You are building a Vessel capable of withstanding pressure that would kill ten Maëls. But remember: the higher the density, the harder it will be for you to move, if you don't learn to fill that movement with Energy."
She paused, looking east, where the sky was hazy.
"Valtorn won't hit you with a sword. He'll simply increase your weight a hundredfold until your hearts burst from the strain. Dur, you are now learning to resist precisely that. Your body must become so dense that external pressure becomes a habitual environment for it."
In the evening, returning to the estate, they barely had the strength to crawl to the dining hall. Divilla ordered them to be served rock boar meat—tough, saturated with concentrated Energy of nature. Each fiber of this meat seemed imbued with the power of the earth.
"Eat," she tossed out, leaving them. "Tomorrow we will begin working on reaction. Maël, your Spirit must begin to awaken. Dur... continue to fill yourself. You are the foundation on which Maël will stand when everything around begins to crumble."
For Divilla, Dur was still a "foundation," something inanimate and serviceable. But Dur, tearing into the tough boar meat, felt something else. He felt power. His strength was beginning to reach a new level. He was no longer that weak boy from the orphanage. Now, each of his movements carried the weight of his will.
That night, lying in bed, Dur listened to himself. The "Bitter Gift" still raged in his channels, but his flesh accepted this heat, becoming ever stronger. He knew that hundreds, thousands of such days lay ahead. But now he had a goal. To become "Unshakeable." To become that force that even Alvost's gravity could not break.