The transition from one lesson to the next did not feel like a pause. It felt like something reached inside my body and rested its hand on the steering wheel, guiding me along a path my body accepted without resistance. At first I did not even notice it. The shifts were too subtle, too natural, like my body had always been waiting to move that way and finally remembered how. It felt like something reached inside my body and took the controls away in a way that felt natural, as if my body had simply agreed to follow. My limbs did not stop belonging to me so much as they stopped hesitating. They moved because something in me recognized the motion. They held positions because the stance felt right, familiar in a way I could not explain. I felt every strain, every tremor, every ounce of effort… but it did not feel stolen from me. It felt chosen, even when I was not the one choosing.

  That was the first lesson I had not expected: this body was not mine to command. Not here. Not in this place between life and death. The God of Iron let me feel the consequences, but he did not let me fail the form.

  Sometimes he allowed me to notice what I was doing, let me feel the weight settle correctly through my hips or the coil of my core tightening in exactly the right place. Other times the correction came so smoothly I barely registered it. My spine lengthened. My stance widened. My arms lifted. My breath aligned with the motion before I even realized it was happening. It was like being held inside the shape of a perfect technique, over and over, until the memory carved itself into me.

  Time here did not behave. Every moment felt endless, yet afterward I could not have said whether I had spent minutes or months suspended inside a single posture. It all blurred together, repeating and resetting so quickly, so often, that the ache of effort became background noise. The body broke. The body rebuilt. The form remained.

  Until what came next did not feel like a pause. It felt like a shift in gravity, a moment where my breath caught and refused to move until the world decided which way was down. Heaven did not have days or nights, no markers of passage beyond the weight of what I learned and the ache that settled into the spaces between those lessons. If time existed here, it existed only to be bent around the purpose of the training. I had lost track of how many times my body had been broken and rebuilt, how many poses I had held until my vision tunneled, how many steps I had taken before the track reset beneath me. But there was a rhythm to it now, a sense of forward motion even when everything else stood still. Whatever came next would not be easier. It would only be deeper. And I understood now that this entire place was shaped to make sure I learned exactly what I was meant to carry back with me.

  He clapped again. “Lesson three. Core stability.”

  The floor shifted yet again. My arms lifted themselves, my legs straightened, and suddenly I was hovering a fraction of an inch above the ground, supported by nothing but tension. My body became a single line from head to heel, held in place by invisible hands that were not gentle.

  “Hold,” he said.

  “I can’t.” I protested weakly.

  “You can. And you will. This is not your real body. We can break this one as many times as needed. The lessons will stay. The damage will not.”

  I held.

  My stomach clenched. My lower back flared. My shoulders fought to tear themselves free from the rest of me. I shook so hard my teeth rattled. Every time I thought I would collapse, something deep in the pose adjusted. My breathing shifted. The strain redistributed.

  Time warped. It stretched. It collapsed. At one point I felt like I had lived an entire year inside that single held breath. At another, like only a heartbeat had passed.

  The tension broke. I dropped onto the floor like a sack of wet grain.

  He knelt beside me, placing a titanic hand gently on me. It covered my whole back. Warmth flowed from his palm, soothing the exhaustion.

  “Remember this,” he said quietly. “Training is not punishment. It is preparation. You do not train because you are weak. You train because you intend to carry more than other people can.”

  I panted, sweat dripping into my eyes. My limbs felt like sandbags. “Are we done.”

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  He laughed softly. “Not even close. You wished to build a body worthy of the power you once had. This is only the introduction.”

  He rose and held out his hand. The ground shifted again, stretching into an endless track that curved off into the hazy distance.

  “Now we run,” he said. “Your exact schedule will be: One hundred push ups. One hundred sit ups. One hundred squats. Then a ten kilometer run. Every single day. No excuses. No skipping. No cooling. No heating.”

  “No cooling,” I repeated. “I live in one of the hottest regions imaginable.”

  “Then you will sweat,” he said. “That is part of the process. When you return to your body, your training on normal days will be exactly this. You will never skip it. Not once. Not ever. But you will grow into it.”

  He leaned forward slightly, his voice steady and unyielding.

  “This is what your training should become when you are fully grown. By the time you are twelve, you should be able to complete every part of this regimen. That gives you nine years to reach this level. Hopefully you do it sooner. The sooner the better. But I do not expect a three year old to perform all of it. That is physically impossible. Even with a tin core, you will not be able to complete this yet.”

  His smile sharpened with pride.

  “This is the regimen that will build you the body of a god.”

  “That is a lot,” I said.

  “You have a lifetime,” he replied. “Several, if you do it correctly.”

  I hesitated, then asked, “And what about Cheat Day.”

  The God of Iron smiled, the kind of grin that looked carved into stone by someone very proud of their own chisel work. “Once a week,” he said. “But here is the important part. You still train on Cheat Day. You always train. What changes is everything around it.”

  He tapped his chest lightly. “On that day, you eat more. You rest longer. You pick the day when you usually have the most time to yourself, and you stretch the training through it. Slower. Gentler. You let your body breathe while still completing the regimen.”

  His eyes narrowed with amusement. “Cheat Day is not skipping. Cheat Day is pacing. If you skip, you weaken. If you pace yourself, you grow.”

  I nodded, understanding settling in like a weight I chose to lift. I had already agreed to his tenets. Now I would live by his teachings.

  The God of Iron gave a single satisfied nod of his own. “Good. You understand.”

  He straightened, towering once more, all warmth sliding back into firm expectation.

  “Now,” he said, “back to work.”

  The track beneath my feet beckoned. My legs moved before my mind agreed. At first the pace was gentle, then less gentle, then not gentle at all. My breaths came in harsh pulls. My arms pumped at my sides. The air in the Heaven of Iron stayed warm and dense, the kind of air that made every inhalation feel like work.

  When I stumbled, the world caught me and set me upright. When I collapsed, the ground swallowed me, reset me, and dropped me back at the start. I ran until my legs gave out. I ran until my lungs burned. I ran until I was certain I had died five separate times. And then I did it again.

  Each time I broke, I reformed. A little smoother. A little steadier. The form of the run carved itself into me. How my feet struck the ground. How my arms moved. How to time my breath with my steps.

  Eventually, the God of Iron called me back. The track retracted, folding in on itself like a ribbon being wound up and stored away.

  He stood over me, arms folded. “This is what your days will look like once you wake. This regimen will be your foundation. Maybe a tenth of this to start just to be on the safe side.”

  I lay there, staring up at the vast ceiling of the Heaven of Iron. The angels had gone back to their impossible weights. The bulls snorted softly, satisfied.

  A familiar scraping sound approached.

  Squishy the hammer turtle plodded into view at my side. His shell gleamed. His eyes, slow and thoughtful, regarded me with something that might actually have been respect this time.

  He bumped his shell lightly against my arm enough to be noticed.

  “See,” the God of Iron said. “Your first true rival approves. That is a good sign.”

  Squishy bobbed his head once, solemnly. Then another head of lettuce appeared beside him. He glanced at it, glanced at me, and then, in a great show of restraint, nudged the lettuce a little closer to my hand before beginning to eat from the other side.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  I was not entirely sure if I was talking to the turtle or the god.

  The Heaven of Iron began to change. The edges of the hall grew hazy. The sound of weights faded to a dull, distant thrum.

  The God of Iron raised a hand in farewell. “You will not remember the pain,” he said. “You will remember the form. That is what will stay with you. When you wake, you will feel different, stronger, but that strength comes from your new core, not from what we did here.”

  He tapped my forehead lightly.

  “This should work because your memory is sharper than most. And that new body of yours needs these instructions.”

  The mist thickened. Squishy’s form blurred, but I could still see the faint outline of his shell as he gave me one last nod.

  “Go,” the God of Iron said. “Wake up. Eat well. Train properly.”

  The world twisted.

  I gasped awake in my real body.

  For a moment, the world tilted. My limbs felt lighter, yet stronger and denser at the same time, like the muscles had been packed tighter beneath my skin. My breath came deeper. My spine straightened on its own.

  I looked down and examined how my body had changed.

  I had abs.

  Terrifyingly perfect abs.

  Abs on a three year old’s body.

  “Oh no,” I whispered. “This cannot be healthy.”

  I would absolutely have to ask Greta about this.