CHAPTER 31: CHAPTER 31 — SPARKS OF DISCIPLINE

The eastern training yard was nothing like Bright expected.

He’d imagined a hall full of recruits shouting in rhythm, maybe the clash of weapons and the hum of energy grids.

Instead, he found silence — and sand.

The entire courtyard was a flat, sun-baked expanse bounded by high walls. Metal posts marked an open circle at its center. Beyond that: nothing. No benches, no observers, no teachers.

Except for the man sitting cross-legged in the dust.

Bright recognized him from archived files.

Hailen.

The stories said he once fought bare-handed against machines that crushed tanks. The stories said his body was more scar than skin. But those were all stories.

Now he just looked old.

"Recruit," Hailen said without opening his eyes. His voice carried, flat but calm.

"You’re late."

Bright froze. "I was told to—"

"Late," the man repeated, rising in one slow motion. His frame was lean, his left arm mechanical from shoulder to wrist, the metal darkened from use rather than shine.

"Lesson one," Hailen said, brushing sand from his knees. "The battlefield doesn’t wait for orders. You arrive before the fight, or you don’t arrive at all."

Bright nodded, swallowing his reply.

"Draw your weapon."

He hesitated. "Now?"

"Now," Hailen said, stepping into the circle. "Show me what your are capable of."

Bright pulled his blade free. The metal hissed, faintly resonant with his pulse.

Hailen moved before Bright could blink.

The first strike came low — a sweep of his prosthetic arm that caught the sand and threw it upward. Bright flinched, Danger Sense flashing a warning half a second too late.

He twisted aside, barely avoiding the follow-up elbow that would have shattered his ribs.

"Too slow," Hailen said simply.

Another strike — this one feinted, the pulse of danger flickering erratically. Bright reacted, but it was wrong; he parried air and felt Hailen’s boot drive into his chest.

He hit the sand hard.

Hailen didn’t advance. "What did you feel?"

"Everything," Bright gasped. "It’s... overwhelming."

"Then your sense owns you. You don’t own it."

The instructor crouched. "You see too much because you don’t trust your instincts to filter. You’ll drown before you fight."

Bright gritted his teeth. "Then teach me to breathe."

Hailen smiled faintly — a sharp, approving thing. "Good answer."

The days that followed blurred together.

At dawn, Hailen woke him with strikes rather than alarms. The training focused on suppression: how to reduce the noise of his own ability, how to feel danger not as chaos but as direction.

"Your power warns you of death," Hailen said, pacing around him as Bright balanced on a single metal pole, blindfolded. "But death is constant. What you need to sense is intent."

Every false motion Hailen made triggered Bright’s reflexes; every genuine one came without warning.

By the end of the third day, Bright could finally distinguish between the two — barely.

When exhaustion set in, Hailen switched tactics.

"You rely too much on weapons," he said. "Show me your hands."

Bright obeyed.

"Good. Now learn to use them."

The following week was nothing but close-quarters sparring — bruises, sand, and silence. The air itself felt thicker around the training ground, infused with the energy of motion.

For the first time, Bright felt his Danger Sense flow with him rather than against him.

He began to anticipate, not just react.

He began to move before the strike — guided by something quieter, steadier.

Elsewhere , others faced their own trials.

Duncan’s armor, newly forged, was tested in the gravity chambers. The increased weight forced him to adapt, every step echoing with the clang of defiance.

He endured electric storms and kinetic waves until his frame could withstand blows that once shattered bone. He was becoming a walking fortress.

Adam trained in a sealed simulation chamber. Neural links hummed around his skull as he dissected combat footage at ten times normal speed. His eyes flickered with data — strategies born from hundreds of parallel battles fought in his mind.

He was turning intellect into instinct.

Bessia and Silas sparred under the supervision of a scout-tactician. She refined her aim; he practiced vanishing between shadows, his body moving with deliberate misdirection.

They didn’t say it aloud, but both were waiting. Waiting for another chance at an ability core. Silas for the ability he can get as an initiate and Bessia for the a more compatible ability core.

Each of them changed — visibly, invisibly — shaped by repetition, driven by the memory of the Shroud.

One evening, Bright sat on the outer steps of the eastern hall, bandaged and drenched in sweat.

The sun was sinking low, and the air smelled faintly of ozone.

Hailen stood behind him, silent for a long time.

"You’re improving," he said at last. "Barely, but it’s there."

Bright chuckled weakly. "Doesn’t feel like it."

"It’s not supposed to," Hailen said. "Progress hides inside pain. If you feel nothing, you’re not changing."

Bright looked down at his hands — trembling but steady enough to grip the edge of his blade.

"I can sense things now," he said quietly. "Not just danger... intent, movement, weight. It’s like reading the world through pressure."

Hailen nodded. "That’s what separates a survivor from a fighter."

Then, unexpectedly: "You could be more than that."

Bright turned. "What do you mean?"

"Your core," Hailen said. "It’s near saturation. You feel it, don’t you?"

Bright hesitated — then nodded. The light within his chest pulsed softly, as if agreeing.

"I’m close," he admitted. "But I don’t know what’s on the other side."

Hailen’s smile was faint. "Neither did I. You’ll learn when it breaks you — or when you break it."