A few hundred meters into the Spirit Hunting Forest, the city's noise faded to a dull hum. Sunlight fell in broken patches through the canopy, dappling the soft earth. In a quiet clearing, Arthev sat motionless.
He was deep in meditation, legs crossed and hands resting on his knees. His breathing was slow and even, the only movement in his statue-like form. He had picked this place for its balance, far enough in to be left alone, but not so deep for it to be truly dangerous. The air smelled of pine and wet earth.
Then, the scene shifted.
On the surface of a black sea, a ripple of force disturbed the stillness. This was Arthev's subconscious, a silent expanse of dark water under a blank, empty sky. On its mirrored surface stood Matatabi, her form massive and feline, blue flames flickering silently in the void.
Arthev faced her, his right fist coated in a fierce, silver-white energy. Tiny blue sparks snapped and hissed around his knuckles.
"The form is still crude," Matatabi's voice echoed, a low purr that vibrated through the very air. "Power is wasted in the flare. You must contain it."
"I'm containing it," Arthev gritted out, the strain evident in his voice.
"Barely."
He lunged. Matatabi met him with a sweeping claw. Fist and claw collided.
"White Star Fist!" he roared.
A concussive wave exploded outwards. The calm sea churned; the air shivered with power.
From the distant shoreline of the mind, Shukaku grumbled, "All that flash for a tap. My sand could swallow that whole show without a burp."
Isobu, the Three-Tails, only blinked his lone, red eye. "The plasma is unstable, but its potential is… sharp. Unlike your shapeless dunes." His deep, watery voice was almost a sigh.
"Shapeless? I'll show you shapeless, you floating sea urchin!"
They watched from the edges, more from boredom than interest.
It was a familiar scene. Arthev was practicing, honing the plasma power granted to him by Matatabi. As the progenitor of this energy, she was both his sparring partner and his guide. The practice was essential, for plasma was a far more difficult force to master relative to the granular flow of Shukaku's sand or the fluid dynamics of Isobu's water.
"Again," Matatabi commanded, her twin tails lashing the empty air. "And this time, do not announce your intent to the void. Let the energy be your only signal."
Arthev steadied himself, letting the energy build once more. He clenched his fist, focusing not on the output, but on the source a tiny, furious sun within his core. The charge gathered again but this time smaller, more tighter. A sphere of white-hot light enveloped his hand, so bright it blurred at the edges. Thin blue arcs licked the air around it, hissing like angry serpents.
He had given the technique a name only a week ago, but he was still trying to earn it.
White Star Fist.
He curled his fingers, and the sphere vibrate, dense with contained heat. It could melt through armor like wax, or explode on impact. That kind of power was both a promise and a threat. His real test was not unleashing it, but holding it at the brink.
"You know," Shukaku began, his grating voice cutting through the distant thunder of colliding energies, "this place is dull. A blank sky, a flat sea. My desert had texture. It had dunes that sang when the wind passed over them. It had bones buried for a thousand years. This… this is nothing."
Isobu shifted his immense weight, causing gentle waves to lap at the shoreline of consciousness. "Your desert was a testament to starvation. Life withered under your gaze. This sea… it has potential. Depth. Things can grow in the depths."
"Things like what? Blind, squishy fish? At least my bones had character! You ever try juggling human skulls with sand? It's an art form. You wouldn't appreciate it, though. You probably think coral is exciting."
"Coral is a complex ecosystem," Isobu rumbled. "It builds land from life itself. Your sand only buries. It is the end of things. My water is the beginning."
"A beginning of what? Dampness? Rot?" Shukaku scoffed, the sound like grinding stones. "I had a pyramid, you know. A real one, all polished stone and shifting halls. It was a tomb, a fortress, a puzzle. It was mine. What did you have? A trench?"
"I had silence," Isobu replied, his voice dropping to a subterranean register. "A pressure that would crush your pyramid into glass. And in that silence, one could think. One could remember. Your mind is too loud for memory. It is all present-tense anger."
Another distant BOOM rolled across the water as Arthev flew backward and skimmed the surface like a skipped stone. He steadied himself, Matatabi's low, chiding voice slipping through the steam around them.
'Just a scratch. Need to get past her guard,' he thought, the words a silent mantra. Arthev blurred forward again, cutting across the distance in a heartbeat. He feinted left, dropped low, and drove his silver white fist toward the narrow spot beneath her forelimb.
The strike was small and exact, enough to make her eyes widen. She pivoted with smooth ease, letting the blow brush a thin veil of flame.
It was the cleanest, most controlled hit he had managed all session.
A flicker of approval, passed through Matatabi's eyes. She did not praise him, but the next command held a slightly different timbre.
"Enough."
The word was a gong, silencing the hiss of plasma and the churn of water. The black sea stilled instantly, returning to its perfect, mirrored calm. Arthev stood panting, the silver-white energy around his fist winking out. The sudden absence of power left a ringing silence in its wake.
"You are beginning to understand the difference between a blast and a strike," Matatabi stated, her massive head dipping slightly. "Power is not in the noise. It is in the silence just before the impact. Remember that feeling."
"The quiet… where everything is decided," Arthev breathed, his chest still heaving. "I'll remember."
On the shore, Shukaku let out a loud, exaggerated yawn. "Finally. The light show is over. My eyes are sore."
He shifted his sandy bulk. "So, the gnat finally landed a tap. Don't let it go to your head, boy. She was going very easy on you."
"A tap is a start," Arthev said, a faint, tired smirk touching his lips. "Even a genius had to begin with a grain of sand, did they not?"
Isobu's lone red eye swiveled towards the One-Tail. "Your perception is as granular as your substance. That 'tap' carried more focused energy than any of your wild sandblasts. It was… efficient."
"Efficient? I'll show you efficient! A sinkhole is efficient! It gets the job done without all the glowing and yelling!"
As the two beings fell back into their cyclical argument, Arthev felt the connection to his subconscious sea begin to fray. The world of pure mind started to dissolve at the edges, the sounds of the forest the chirp of a bird, the rustle of a leaf intruding like a distant radio signal.
"Until next time," he murmured to the fading titans, a promise to himself as much as to them.
He opened his eyes.
The shift hit him hard, like always. One moment he floated in a silent void, the next he sat in a sunlit clearing. Pine and damp soil filled his nose, sharp and real after the clean emptiness of the mindscape. He was still cross-legged, but his body had that strange mix of heaviness and lightness that came after long focus. A deep fatigue settled into his limbs, the kind that came from thought rather than effort.
He loosened his hands and stretched his fingers. They tingled, as if the White Star Fist still burned under his skin. The small, angry sun in his core had dimmed, but he could feel it waiting.
A breeze moved through the canopy. A few gold leaves drifted down around him. The low hum of the city pressed in from beyond the trees, a reminder that he was back in the real world. Here, his power would not be tested on a patient, eternal mentor. Here, it would be used on people who wanted him dead.
He stood. His joints complained. The memory of that clean, precise strike under Matatabi's forelimb replayed in his mind. Power lived in the quiet before the hit. He had earned the name of his technique today, not through a bright flash, but through control.
It was a small step. But in the Spirit Hunting Forest, with the chatter of tailed beasts lingering in his soul, it felt like a leap. The road ahead was long and dangerous.
"Time to head back," Arthev said.
The sun dipped below the tree line as Arthev left the Spirit Hunting Forest, its oppressive silence giving way to the open road. The journey was short, the familiar path yielding quickly to the sight of Soto City's formidable walls. Under the newly lit torches, the main gate stood as a welcome threshold between wilderness and respite. With a weary grunt, he stepped inside. He was back.
A few steps later he stopped. "Hey. Why are you trailing me? Come out. I know you are there."
He turned, eyes narrowing.
A figure eased out from behind an object. A girl in a black veil, light leather boots tapping against the stone, stepped toward him.
To be continued...