CHAPTER 52: THE FIRST BLOOM

Dawn spilled like watered blood across the eastern sky as Soren dragged himself back to the training yard, each step a negotiation between determination and agony.

His hands, wrapped in strips of cloth he’d torn from his spare shirt, throbbed with every heartbeat. The bandaging was crude, already dark patches bloomed where reopened blisters wept through the fabric.

The yard stood empty, caught in that liminal space between night and day. Perfect. No witnesses to his failure. No eyes to mock his obsession.

’One more time,’ he thought, the words a mantra that drowned out his body’s screaming protest. ’Just one more time.’

The shard nestled against his chest remained cool and silent. Valenna’s presence hovered at the edge of his awareness, watchful but offering nothing, no encouragement, no guidance, no criticism. Testing him, perhaps. Or simply waiting to see if he would break.

He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Soren moved to the center of the yard, his practice sword clutched in his bandaged hands. Each breath sent spikes of pain through his ribs where Kaelor’s training blade had found him repeatedly. His legs trembled beneath him, muscles liquefied by last night’s endless failed attempts.

The memory of those failures burned hotter than any physical pain. Dozens of attempts, perhaps hundreds, and only that single, fleeting moment of success. A ripple in the air, gone almost before he registered it. The barest hint of what might be possible.

Not enough. Nowhere near enough.

He closed his eyes, recalling the diagrams from the hidden manual. The Nine Petals of the Blade. The First Petal..."The Seed Awakens"...its precise angles and postures illustrated in faded ink. He could see it perfectly in his mind’s eye: the stance, the distribution of weight, the alignment of hips and shoulders, the breath that powered it all.

’Start again,’

he told himself. ’From the beginning. From the foundation.’

Soren planted his feet in the dirt, adjusting their position with meticulous care. Shoulder-width apart, right foot forward, left foot angled just so.

He bent his knees slightly, feeling the way this shifted his center of gravity. His spine straightened, each vertebra stacking perfectly atop the next.

The practice sword felt awkward in his bandaged hands, the wood slick against blood-dampened cloth. He adjusted his grip, finding the balance point where the blade became an extension of his arms rather than a separate object.

He drew a deep breath, held it, then released it slowly through his nose. The sun crept higher, painting the yard in hues of amber and rose. The air remained still, as if the world itself held its breath in anticipation.

The first attempt was clumsy, his exhausted muscles refusing to obey with the precision the form demanded. The blade wavered mid-strike, the arc incomplete, the timing fractured.

Soren reset his stance, ignoring the trembling in his legs, the burning in his shoulders. He focused inward, beyond the pain, beyond the exhaustion. The second attempt was smoother, still flawed, but closer to the ideal that burned in his mind.

’Again,’ he commanded himself. ’But this time, no wasted movement. No hesitation. No doubt.’

The third attempt began like the others, the same stance, the same breath, the same intention.

But as he moved into the form, something shifted within him. Not surrender, exactly, but a letting go. His consciousness seemed to sink deeper into his body, past the surface pain, into a place where movement existed before thought.

The blade cut the air with sudden, startling precision. His hips rotated at exactly the right moment, transferring power through his core to his shoulders, arms, wrists. The practice sword became a blur of motion, tracing an arc so perfect it seemed to leave a visible trail in its wake.

And there, just there, the cut didn’t end with the blade.

The air before him rippled, like heat rising from sun-baked stone. A thin line of disturbance extended perhaps a handspan beyond the wooden edge, causing dust motes to dance and swirl in its path. For a heartbeat, it hung there, tangible and undeniable.

Then it was gone, the air settling back to stillness as if nothing had happened.

But something had happened. Something real.

The realization hit Soren like a physical blow. The sword aura...that extension of will beyond flesh that Kaelor had demonstrated, he’d touched it. Created it. Manifested it, however briefly and weakly.

The effort caught up with him all at once. His knees buckled, legs folding beneath him as if the bones had suddenly dissolved. He hit the dirt hard, practice sword clattering beside him. His chest heaved with labored breaths, each one burning as if he’d swallowed fire. Darkness crowded the edges of his vision, the world tunneling down to a narrow point of awareness.

He tasted iron on his tongue, blood from where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek without realizing it. The metallic flavor spread through his mouth, strangely satisfying in its reality. This was no dream, no hallucination born of exhaustion. This had happened.

"Shaky, flawed, but real," Valenna’s voice finally broke through the silence, cool and measured. "You’ve plucked the stem."

Soren lay flat on his back, staring up at the lightening sky. Her words weren’t praise, not exactly, but acknowledgment. Recognition that something had changed, however small and imperfect.

"Not... enough," he managed between ragged breaths.

"No," she agreed dispassionately. "A stem without petals is just a weed. But it’s a beginning."

The shard pulsed once against his chest, neither hot nor cold, simply present. Soren reached for the practice sword, dragging it across his body until it lay flat against his chest. The wood felt warm against his sweat-soaked tunic, alive somehow in a way it hadn’t been before.

Lying there in the dirt, body broken but spirit flaring like a torch in darkness, Soren made a vow, not to the indifferent sky above, not to the silent shard against his chest, but to himself.

"I will force it open," he whispered, the words carrying the weight of an oath. "Petal by petal. Whatever it costs. Whatever it takes."

The shard pulsed again, warmer this time, like a heartbeat answering his own. A resonance. A recognition. Perhaps even a warning.

Soren closed his eyes, letting the exhaustion claim him at last. But even as consciousness slipped away, the memory of that ripple in the air remained, burned into his mind like a brand.

A beginning. A seed. A stem.

And soon, the first petal would unfurl.