The stones were like boulders on each of his limbs, burning with every movement he made to block the elder's attacks. Five out of six strikes crashed painfully into his body, driving him to his knees in agony.

  The one he managed to block drained what little strength remained. His reinforced bones cracked, his skin screamed, and his eyes grew blurry. The elder had not spared his face either, which was plain from its swollen state.

  He had passed out twice, only to be brought back by healing elixirs poured down his throat, the elder giving him a few minutes to recover before calling him to stand again.

  It was like torture. It was torture. And yet Tunde knew it was his only path to standing any kind of chance against Thalas.

  Breathing heavily, the weight of the stones unchanged, his belly filled with tier three meat and essence fruit, he prepared himself for another round of punishment.

  Elder Joran used no elaborate techniques, no complicated movements, just a simple feat of imbuement that saw his evidently heavy Lithrane staff grow stronger with every swing.

  He was moving, deflecting one attack and straining his body toward a second, when he misread its trajectory. The staff crashed into his knees and drove him to the ground.

  "You have eyes, and yet you fail to use them," Joran said.

  Tunde was fairly certain the elder wasn't referring to Ethra sight. He had tried that after passing out the first time, and it had done nothing. For some reason he could not anticipate the elder's attacks, his sight struggling to even track the blurry arc of the staff.

  When he had tried to identify weak points in the elder's movement, the effort had put him out for the third time. Elder Joran was an immovable wall, so dense that Tunde honestly could not tell where the man ended and the Lithrane rock began.

  Rolling away a fraction too late from another swipe, he gathered what remained of his strength and swung with everything he had. Elder Joran drifted like a calm current, deflecting the blow into the ground before catching Tunde across the face with the staff.

  Tunde went down in a heap, breathing in ragged pulls as painful shocks of electricity tore through his frame from the collar.

  "Your strength is undeniable," Joran said.

  "But make no mistake, Thalas will use that strength against you. You need to anticipate his attacks and prevent him from stealing your momentum. You cannot simply brute-force your way through every fight," he continued.

  "It has served you this far, that and resonance, but unless you want to explain why an entire section of Thalas's body has gone missing without a drop of blood or a piece of flesh left behind, you may find that technique unavailable to you," he added.

  "Cycle your Ethra slowly. Follow the breathing technique I taught you. We continue when I feel you're ready," Joran said.

  Tunde watched through his one unswollen eye as the elder passed through the corridor and disappeared into the darkness.

  He dragged himself to the wall and rested against it, the Lithrane stones heavy on his wrists, working to control his breathing before the collar could deliver another shock.

  He raised his leather water skin and drank deeply, the healing elixir-infused water moving soothingly through him, easing his bones.

  He had been banned from taking additional elixirs or pills without the elder present. As his bones began their slow mending, Tunde winced, closed his eyes, and began to meditate.

  ****

  Thalas sat within the training chambers located beneath his clan's vast estate in the Jade Tower district.

  Around him flowed a miniature stream, water winding around the large circular stone he was seated upon, his eyes closed, his breath moving with the cycling technique passed down from his father, one that, hegemons willing, he would one day pass on to his own descendants.

  The flowing pressure technique gathered the Ethra within a cultivator into strong yet subtle concentrations, pushing them around the heart to produce a dense and powerful Ethra capable of leaving devastating damage on the body of an opponent.

  He stretched one hand forward and began again the process of attuning himself to the pressure Ethra around him, reaching for an affinity he had been working to sense despite not innately possessing it.

  His jade Ethra began to vibrate, releasing small pulses of pressure that he strained every sense to grasp, trying to unravel the underlying nature of the affinity.

  This should have been easier by now. The entire training hall had been embedded with pressure affinity Ethra crystals, the particular affinity saturating the air around him at all times.

  His body was lightly sheened with sweat. He clenched his fists, jade Ethra coagulating into a rippling fist shape in the air before it collapsed. He grunted in quiet frustration.

  "It is foolish to ask a disciple, even a peak one, to begin grasping and manipulating an Ethra affinity he has no innate control over," a calm, steady voice said beside him.

  "Then again, Jashed has always set impossible standards."

  Thalas snapped his eyes open, gathered his Ethra in a single fluid motion, and rose in the same breath, jade Ethra already coating his arms in line with his imbuement technique. He froze the instant he registered those deep green eyes.

  He dropped to his knees and pressed his head to the ground.

  "Forgive me, venerable lord," he said, the words leaving him in a trembling breath.

  Alaric Verdan stood before him, clad in a black robe, the blade that was its permanent fixture at his waist conspicuously absent. Arms folded, Thalas felt the cold, unhurried weight of the lord's gaze settle over him.

  "I was told you chose isolated training until the day of the duel," Alaric said.

  "Admirable."

  "Your words encourage me, my lord," Thalas replied.

  "Say one more premeditated thing and I may as well snap your spine," Alaric said, with the same even calm.

  Thalas stilled. Could he? Yes. Without question. And his grandmother was the lord's sister, someone who would care very little about it. He had other siblings. He was replaceable. He swallowed slowly and tried again.

  "I fight for my reputation," he said.

  "To put the wastelander in his place."

  "By which you mean deep below the ground," Alaric replied.

  "If the clan wills it so," Thalas whispered.

  No answer came. Then came the soft crinkle of robes as the lord crouched.

  "Look at me," Alaric said.

  Thalas raised his head and met those eyes.

  He felt his chest tighten immediately, his body beginning a faint, uncontrollable trembling. To be near such power was both a privilege and a curse, something hundreds of disciples would kill to experience and thousands of initiates dreamed of.

  It was not comfortable.

  "What do you fight for?" Alaric asked again, slowly.

  Thalas struggled to form words, teeth clenched.

  "To show the clan I am not weak," he said.

  Alaric held his gaze. Thalas tried to look away and found he could not.

  "You have been drawn into the games of those far above you, not of your own choosing," Alaric said.

  "I see that. And yet you walk the same road those before you walked. Why?" he asked.

  Thalas wondered how the lord had entered the sealed training chamber without his awareness. The inscription scripts on the entrance remained untouched; he could sense them from here. And yet here Alaric stood.

  "I only seek to make a name for myself, and for my family, in the eyes of the patriarch himself," Thalas replied.

  "And you believe following the trail of bloody footprints your grandmother left behind is the answer?" Alaric asked.

  "If it leads me to the peak," Thalas said, "then yes, venerable lord."

  "What it will lead you to," Alaric said, rising, hands clasped behind him, "is nothing but an accumulation of enemies and dead bodies left in your wake. None of which, I assure you, you want this low on the ladder."

  "Rhyn followed the same path," Thalas said, and regretted it the moment the words left his mouth.

  He dropped his head back to the ground, feeling the full weight of the lord's attention land on him like a stone.

  The silence that followed was long enough to fray every nerve he had.

  "Rhyn knew better than to let some vainglorious cultivator impede his progress," Alaric said softly.

  "Certainly not one who barely scrapes through every fight he finds himself in."

  Thalas said nothing, head still bowed.

  "You are fighting a ranker who has nothing to lose and everything to gain," the lord continued.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "The opposite of you, Thalas. All of this is nothing but a pastime for your grandmother, and I daresay the same holds for Joran and your father. When adepts fight, disciples absorb the damage."

  "Think carefully on what I've said," Alaric finished, moving toward the wall, which parted for him.

  "The patriarch has forbidden this duel from ending in death. Which means you now have far more to lose than you did before, Thalas."

  He watched the passage close behind the lord, a hidden corridor he had not known existed despite five years of using this very room.

  He turned back to the miniature waterfall and steadied his racing heart, settling himself cross-legged on the stone once more. The silence pressed in around him.

  What did he fight for?

  "I fight for honor," he whispered.

  The words felt wrong in his mouth before he had finished saying them. He cared nothing for honor.

  "I fight for power," he said.

  That sat no better.

  In truth, he cared little for the games the adepts were playing. He was in this mess because his teacher, Elder Moros, carried some long-standing grudge against Elder Joran, and his grandmother had taken an inexplicable interest in the wastelander.

  He breathed deeply, cycling his jade Ethra. The crystals embedded in the walls of the room glowed as he drew from them, feeling the added power settle into his body.

  He had a mission. To surpass the grandson of Lord Alaric. To secure his place as the future hope of the clan, not merely in the eyes of the other house heads and his peers but in the eyes of the patriarch, the high lord, himself. He steadied himself and spoke once more.

  "I fight for strength," he said.

  This time, he felt his heart beat in answer.

  *****

  Alaric stepped out of the corridor leading from the underground training chambers and moved with fluid ease through the estate grounds, shocked servants dropping into prostrations as he passed, ignored entirely.

  He felt the aura of his sister arrive like a spear point settling between his shoulders. He paused and tilted his head slightly.

  "You tread where you are not welcome, brother," Lady Lirien's voice came through her aura.

  Aura speech was a delicate and demanding technique, difficult even for those who had spent lifetimes refining it. To weave intent into one's aura and give it the precise shape of words was a craft known to develop gradually in high lords.

  Lirien had mastered it long ago. She had always been their father's favorite, for battle and for governance alike. Alaric had always been catching up, something he was inwardly glad his grandson had broken the pattern of.

  Rhyn was the kind of talent that appeared once in a generation. Measured against the scions of the greater empire, he shone in a way that put the combined heirs of Lirien's line in shadow.

  Alaric knew it had been building a slow discontent between the two of them. He did not see it that way. He would not allow his grandson to follow the same greedy, corrosive path that cultivators within the same family walked when they began viewing each other as competition to be eliminated.

  He sighed and folded his hands.

  "You set him on a road that will do nothing but ensure his early death," he replied.

  "Then he is not worthy to be called a ranker," she said.

  "Not worthy to carry the Verdan name."

  "It's always black or white with you," he replied.

  "Would you have me breed weak cultivators that dregs from the wastelands could walk over?" she asked, scorn carried cleanly through her aura.

  "I raise, not breed, rankers who know better than to stake everything on something as fleeting as pride," he said, the steel entering his voice as his patience thinned.

  "Then we can at least thank the hegemons that Rhyn turned out right," Lirien said.

  "Though for how long, one wonders."

  "The wastelander did not ask for any of this," Alaric said.

  "You were not there when he arrived. He is Joran's project, a tool to needle Moros, nothing more. And yet you intend to make this duel a matter of shame or glory?"

  "One party had nothing to lose while the other had everything to lose," she said.

  "I simply evened the balance, dear brother."

  He could picture the smile on her face without seeing it, the sharp, persistent gleam that had been there since they were children. He rubbed his forehead and turned to leave.

  "He is your heir," he said. "Do as you wish. Ruining his siblings' lives apparently wasn't enough."

  He should not have said that.

  It had not been entirely her fault, and he knew it. But he felt her aura shudder before he could take it back, and the servants of the household began dropping to their knees around him, clutching their heads.

  Alaric clapped once, his aura sharpened to a blade's edge cutting cleanly through hers. The servants scrambled away in relief and terror.

  Adept Bo had appeared from somewhere among the estate buildings, taking in the scene with undisguised disapproval before bowing respectfully to Alaric.

  "That was petty, even for you," Alaric said.

  No reply came from his sister. Her silence was its own kind of dismissal. He briefly considered cutting open her residence and drawing her out, but setting aside the servants whose safety he could not guarantee, he simply was not prepared for an enraged Lirien today.

  "These children need friendships and healthy rivalries," he said.

  "The path of advancement is not meant to be walked alone. A lone wolf dies."

  "And yet," Lirien said, her aura voice dropping to something cold and deliberate, "a lone wolf stands at our gates, eyeing our prizes with hungry eyes."

  Alaric glanced back briefly.

  "My point exactly," he said, and stepped through the gates of the residence, vanishing the instant he cleared them.

  ****

  Tunde had no idea when he had dozed off. The elder's soft whistling pulled him back out of it. He woke bleary-eyed and hollow with hunger, struggled to his feet, and registered that his body was only lightly sore. Elder Joran stood a few meters away, Lithrane staff still in hand.

  "Prepare yourself," the elder said.

  Tunde took his stance, noticing something different about the cuffs. They were still channeling Ethra, and yet they felt lighter. He looked at them with a frown.

  "Your body rapidly adjusts to whatever trial you put it through," Elder Joran said.

  Tunde looked up at him.

  "Venom, fire, pain, weight, you make for a very curious and interesting subject," the elder continued.

  "And while it has all but confirmed that your growth will be accompanied by a great deal of pain and suffering," he said, pausing briefly as a smile crossed his face, "one can only wonder how quickly it adapts as you advance further. But for now, we push it to that limit."

  Tunde heard the undisguised pleasure in the elder's voice. He ignited his Ethra sight and tracked the arc of the staff, his body reacting a full second faster than it had before.

  His own staff, the lighter of the two, caught the elder's with a sharp crack, and he felt the raw strength Joran had poured into the weapon.

  It drove him to his knees immediately, his body groaning under the weight, the temptation to imbue himself almost overwhelming.

  He tried rolling clear as the elder reversed his grip. The staff caught him in the abdomen and launched him upward, absolute pain tearing through him.

  He landed on his feet, knees bent, and rolled away, pouring Ethra into his staff until the weapon glowed. Elder Joran crackled with laughter as the staffs met again.

  Tunde's entire arm fractured. He screamed, and then the elder's heel cracked across his jaw, sending him spinning through the air before he hit the ground like wrung cloth.

  He lay still. Sight blurring, blood filling his mouth, skull ringing, he had nothing left to move. He heard the elder's footsteps approach.

  "Some would call me a sadist for how far I am willing to push my students," Joran said.

  "Perhaps that is why the noble families prefer to have their children learn elegant techniques from Celia and Moros." He crouched beside Tunde, who could not move so much as a finger.

  Tunde cycled his Ethra through sheer stubborn effort, healing his body one shattered, pain-bright bone at a time.

  "But I am not forging you to be some passable adept or lord," Joran said.

  "I want to raise a predator, not prey. And you have it in you," he continued.

  "I saw it in you from the beginning. Gale saw it before he met his end. The Corespawns saw it. Miria saw it," he said.

  "You see it too, but you have not fully embraced it. Not yet."

  He stood and tossed a small vial toward Tunde, which landed close to his lips. The sparkly liquid inside was a fourth-tier healing elixir, adept-rank quality.

  "That is the easy path," Joran said.

  "With the funds the clan allocated us for the house, you can afford several of these. Drink it, assuming you can move your arms, and you will be as healthy as a peak disciple within the hour," he continued.

  "Or you let your body heal on its own. Cycle your Ethra over and over until it becomes second nature to your heart. Listen to the pain and what it is teaching you. The choice is yours," he finished, and walked back into the corridor.

  Tunde watched him go, tears tracking silently from the corners of his eyes, blurring with the blood already on his face. His gaze drifted to the vial sitting there, patient, within arm's reach.

  Was that what it was?

  An easy way out, or simply a reprieve from pain that was moments from pulling him under again? He shuddered, and the movement sent fresh agony through him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Strength did not come free. Thorne, Elyria, Rhyn, Sorin, Thalas, all of them sitting at the top of the disciple rankings, what had each of them paid to be there?

  He began to cycle. Slowly. His Ethra expanding and receding with each breath, like a band stretched to its limit and then left to grow accustomed to the new length. He would start paying the price from here.

  The sweat, the pain, the anger, he would pay all of it, starting now. He had no guarantee he would ever reach adept, or lord, or anything beyond what he was. But he would make sure his body could weather whatever was brought against it.

  Without noticing the moment it happened, his thoughts drifted into the cold quiet of sleep. As he healed, his aura rose slowly from him like smoke in still air.

  ****

  Joran stood in the darkness of the corridor, arms folded behind him, watching.

  The aura drifting up from the broken form on the ground carried a potency that made him quietly grateful the underground chambers were both aura and Ethra sealed. That was no aura belonging to a disciple. That was the aura of something else entirely.

  Its lethality, its depth, it could pass for the signature of a truly gifted disciple to an untrained eye, but any cultivator of the upper ranks who encountered it would want to claim Tunde immediately.

  The child had chosen to let his body heal on its own. It was foolish, and it proved his resilience. He had not lied about what it would cost.

  Allowing the body to heal itself this way would have it cannibalize his internal Ethra first, pulling more from the surrounding air, converting it to whatever his affinity was, and allowing his heart to grow denser and stronger in the process.

  This was not about reaching the next tier of body strength. His body was already at peak disciple quality.

  Whatever the bone of the true beast had done to him, it had completely overhauled his natural tempering process, which meant he would not need to follow the traditional path any longer. He would wake up measurably stronger.

  The subtle vibrations Joran had been sending through the stone staff during the session had been calculated to fracture his bones at just the right degree, allowing the body to heal them thicker.

  He turned and walked away with a quiet sigh, allowing himself one more moment of appreciation for the boy's stubbornness. It would be a shame if he lost to Thalas. He had given everything he had.

  *****

  It was hunger that woke him, a sharp, hollow pang that cut through sleep like a blade. Tunde opened his eyes and his voice came out hoarse.

  He sat up and looked down at himself in quiet shock. He was skeletal, every line of muscle gone, nothing left but his frame.

  "Your body cannibalized itself to mend your fractured bones," Elder Joran said from nearby, seated on a rock.

  "You are relatively weak at the moment."

  Tunde crawled toward where he had stored his elixirs and food.

  "To your left," Joran said.

  He turned. A platter of sizzling meat in various cuts sat beside him, wafting with raw Ethra energy, and several pitchers of elixir-infused water alongside it.

  He ate without ceremony, tearing through the meat and pouring the drinks down his throat as his body burned through everything almost as fast as he could take it in.

  When the last of it was gone he sat back against the wall, heaving slowly, and looked at the elder, who watched him in silence.

  "How long was I out?" he asked.

  "A few hours. Give or take," Joran replied.

  Tunde raised one slowly healing arm and noticed the Lithrane cuffs had gone dull, their surface matte where it had been dense before. He tapped one. It crumbled to fine dust. He did the same for the other three, the stone of each dissolving at a touch.

  "It appears," Joran said, as Tunde looked up at him, "that not only does your body grow stronger through adversity, but it also draws in and absorbs whatever qualities it requires from materials that remain in contact with your skin."

  "Like the relic?" Tunde asked, his eyes moving to the dormant black band on his right wrist.

  "Possibly," the elder said, turning the thought over with visible interest.

  "Whether your body absorbed a particular attribute of the relic, or whether this is an innate quality it has always carried, I cannot say for certain." He paused.

  "Either way, we will exploit it and push it as far as it can go."

  He stood and produced a new pair of Lithrane cuffs from his void ring, larger than the previous set, and threw them across. Tunde caught them, noting his own speed with surprise.

  "More potent Lithrane," Joran said.

  "Less refined. Stronger. Heavier."

  Without a word, Tunde shattered the dust-pale remains of the old cuffs at his ankles, locked the new set around both wrists and ankles, and began channeling his Ethra into them. It felt denser than before, more present. He cracked his neck as he stood, the renewed weight pressing down on him immediately.

  He took his stance.

  "Prepare yourself," Joran said, and attacked.