The Master stood in the distance, a silent shadow against the broken woods.
Loid wiped blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, every breath a fight. His fingers, raw and trembling, closed around the first branch he could find—a thin thing, barely thicker than his wrist, light enough he could lift it even with his ruined arms.
He staggered back to the boulder, dragging the sword at his side. But before he could even touch it—
"Leave it," the Master's voice cut through the dark. Sharp. Uncompromising.
Loid froze.
The Master pointed—not at the smaller branches, not at the debris scattered like dead bones but at the massive, half-sunken limbs further out. Thick as his torso. Gnarled. Waterlogged. Immovable.
"Those," the Master said, voice like iron cooled in water. "Only those."
Loid stared.
He wanted to argue. Wanted to scream that he couldn't. That it was impossible. But the Master only turned his back, giving him no room for questions, no room for weakness. The choice had already been made.
Loid staggered toward the larger branches, sword dragging behind him like a broken limb. The first was a twisted mass of wet bark and shattered wood, so heavy it seemed fused to the earth itself. Rain slicked its surface, turning it into something monstrous. He dropped to his knees before it. Gripped it with both hands.
Heaved.
Nothing.
It didn't move. Not an inch. His fingers slipped. His arms buckled. His breath tore free in ragged, gasping sobs he couldn't swallow down. The branch might as well have been a mountain.
Pain lanced through his shoulders, his spine, his shattered legs. Every nerve shrieked betrayal. Still he gritted his teeth. Still he tried again. And again. And again.
The mud sucked at him, clinging to his legs like chains. His blood mixed with the water, dripping into the earth.
Each failed attempt drove him deeper into the ruin of himself.
I can't.
The thought slipped through the cracks of his mind before he could stop it.
I can't move it.
He slammed his forehead against the sodden wood, hating the weakness, hating the truth. Somewhere near the stone, the Master watched silent, waiting, not helping. Never helping.
Because help was death.
The bark dug deeper into his sore hands, splinters tearing into his palms. He urged his body up and forced the scream building in his chest back down into his bones.
The branch shifted—barely. A breath. A shudder. He dragged it. An inch. The sword scraped through the mud behind him, useless but never leaving his side. He did not dare let it fall.
His heart hammered against cracked ribs. His lungs howled for air that hardly filled them. Every step was the slow murder of what remained of him. But he moved.
The branch scraped and snarled against the earth as Loid dragged it, inch by miserable inch, across the dead woods. Mud sucking him down with every step. His body moved like something stitched together from broken parts—each motion an insult to the pain roaring through his veins.
The sword never left his grip even as his fingers spasmed, even as his arms screamed mutiny, even as his vision frayed at the edges, darkness gnawing inward.
He dragged the branch toward the Master. The moment the branch crossed the unseen line between them, Loid's legs finally betrayed him.
He collapsed, face-first into the mud, the sword landing beside him with a dull thud, still clutched in blood-slicked hands. For a long moment, he couldn't move. He could barely breathe. But something stirred around him—so faint it was almost imagined.
The mud around his body trembled, just slightly. The air seemed to pull tighter, as if some unseen thread had snapped taut. A whisper of pressure, so small that even the world overlooked it. It flared—not with power, not with mastery, but like the first twitch of a newborn's hand, raw and uncertain. A ripple from somewhere deep inside, tied not to thought or technique, but pure, stubborn will.
Loid didn't notice.
The Master did.
His eyes narrowed—just a fraction. No words. No reaction. No mercy. The moment passed like a breath swallowed by the night. The Master walked forward, the wet earth silent under his steps, and kicked the branch closer to the rock with a single sharp nudge.
Mud clung to Loid's face. Blood matted his hair. Breath scraped raw from his lungs like rusted metal.
For a long, cold moment, Loid could do nothing but exist there—half-sunken into the earth, a broken thing clinging to a blade. Then the Master's boots entered the edge of his vision.
Slow. Heavy. Inevitable.
He crouched beside Loid, the unknown firelight throwing harsh shadows across the deep lines of his face.
"You are weak," the Master said, voice like a blade sliding into the ribs. "But not useless."
Loid tried to lift his head but his neck failed him.
The Master leaned closer, a shadow over him.
"The body breaks first," he said quietly, almost as if it were a truth whispered to the dead. "Then the mind..... Then the self."
He tapped Loid's temple lightly—once—with two fingers.
"Only then does the Will rise."
The words sank deeper than any blade.
Without pity.
Without promise.
Only law.
The Master stood, towering above him like a monument to something ancient and merciless.
"Good," he said at last, voice flat. "You're close."
And then—
He turned. Walked away. Leaving Loid alone in the freezing mud, the rain a thin mist now, the fire guttering weakly against the night. No orders to get up. No command to continue.
Nothing.
Just the cold.
The pain.
And the demand that had been laid before him.
Loid lay there for a time he could not measure. The stars spun and blurred above him. The storm grumbled like a dying beast in the distance and deep inside—deeper than his ruined muscles, deeper than the scream in his bones—something began to stir.
Something small.
Something terrible.
A pressure just beneath his skin, a faint shudder not from exhaustion—but from somewhere else. If someone had been watching closely—very closely—they might have seen a ripple in the air around him. The faintest distortion. A breath of Will. He didn't notice. Couldn't notice.
Not yet.
All he knew was that he was still breathing. That he was still holding the sword. And that he refused—utterly refused—to stay broken.
With a sound more of a snarl than human word, Loid planted the sword into the mud beside him and forced himself upright. One inch at a time.
Every joint screamed. Every muscle betrayed him. But inch by inch, he rose. Not standing. Not yet. But kneeling. Alive.
Loid remained kneeling, the sword half-buried in the sucking mud beside him, shoulders trembling, breath shallow and ragged. The Master watched from the shadows, arms crossed, gaze like a blade resting on the Loid's neck.
After a long, merciless silence, he spoke.
"Stand."
Loid flinched. Not from fear—but from the sheer impossibility of the word.
"Stand," the Master repeated, voice iron.
"And raise your blade."
Loid's fingers spasmed around the sword hilt. His body refused. His mind screamed. But the order hung in the air like a sentence already passed.
There was no option.
There was only obedience—or death.
With a sound like creaking bones, Loid dragged the sword free from the mud. It felt a thousand times heavier than before—an iron mountain grafted to his arms.
He gritted his teeth until blood welled between them. And he rose. First one knee. Then the other. The sword swayed in his hands like a drunken beast, trying to drag him back into the earth. But he held it.
The firelight caught on the battered sheathe of the blade, throwing fractured light across the ruin of the boy standing there.
The Master stepped forward until he was a few paces away. His voice was low. Final.
"You will hold it above your head," he said. "Until the sun rises."
The words might as well have been a death sentence. The Master saw the flicker of disbelief—the human flicker—and smiled without warmth.
"If the sword falls," he said, "so do you."
No anger. No cruelty. Just truth.
Loid stared at him—something burning behind his eyes now.
He sucked a breath through torn lips and without a word, he lifted the sword above his head.
Arms trembling so violently it looked like he might drop it at any second.
The Master said nothing, he merely turned and sat by the fire, the flames painting deep shadows across his face.
Waiting.
Judging.
Teaching.
The night crept by in an endless crawl. The fire spat and hissed. The rain returned, thin and needling, a cold so deep it chewed at the bones. And Loid stood there.
The blade wavered. His legs buckled. His arms went numb. But every time the sword dipped, he snarled silent oaths through gritted teeth and dragged it back up.
The world slowly shrank into one single thing: The weight. The endless, screaming, devouring weight.
Time had no meaning, only the battle did. The Master occasionally glanced at him but said nothing it was not cruelty it was faith. A brutal, merciless kind of faith—that Loid must find strength in himself or be broken beyond repair—even if it didn't exist.
The stars wheeled overhead.
The fire hissed lower.
And somewhere, very faint, that same ripple—barely noticeable—shuddered in the air around Loid.A breath of his Will.Thin as mist.But growing.
Loid did not notice, he only knew that he still stood. That he had not fallen, that he would not fall, and that no matter what the world demanded, no matter what his body screamed.
He. Would. Stand.