The world was nothing but pain and golden light. I'd lost count somewhere after the three-hundredth body tempering. My consciousness drifted in and out, like a small boat on violent seas.
"Four hundred and seventy-one," Eamon's hoarse voice reached me through the haze.
Each reconstruction tore me apart and reformed me stronger than before. My skin split open only to heal instantly, my bones shattered and fused again with increasing density. The garden around me pulsed with displaced energy, plants bending away as if cowering from a storm.
"Five hundred..." Eamon's voice cracked with disbelief.
I couldn't respond. Speech, thought, existence itself had been distilled to a single purpose: endurance.
"Five hundred and thirty..."
The energy inside me reached a critical point. My meridians, once narrow channels, had expanded into vast rivers of power. My bones no longer felt like bone—they had become something else entirely.
"Five hundred and thirty-three," Eamon whispered.