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Chapter — The Breaking Ground
The silence of Alatar's quarters shattered the moment the stone doors groaned open.
Barachas's silhouette filled the threshold, massive and immovable, eyes like chips of flint. His voice was the same gravelled rumble as always, but sharper now, more cutting.
"You've reflected long enough. Now you bleed for it."
The floor beneath Alatar's feet shook. Spears of stone erupted from the training hall, sleek and sharp, their tips glinting like the fangs of some great beast. Barachas lifted his hand, and with a gesture, they hurled forward—fifty at once, a storm meant to tear flesh and shatter bone.
This was no test of patience. This was death, sharpened and given purpose.
Alatar's ash swirled into motion, weaving instinctively into shields and blades. Ice crackled from his palms, lacing into the gaps. For a breath, he held the storm at bay—then a spear slipped through, grazing his shoulder. Another tore past his side. Pain flared hot, but the wounds sealed almost as fast as they opened, his blood knitting him back together.
"Defend yourself, or you die."
Barachas's tone was not cruel. It was absolute.
The training began.
---
The days blurred into weeks, weeks into months. Every dawn began with stone spears flying to kill him, and every dusk ended with Alatar collapsing into his quarters, body aching though it healed, mind scarred though it endured.
At first, he failed constantly. The ash buckled under pressure, the ice shattered, and Barachas's weapons tore him apart. He drowned in failure, suffocating in the gap between thought and action.
But pain, repeated enough, becomes its own teacher.
Each day he learned a little more. To anticipate the angle of a spear by the shift of the earth. To layer ash and frost not in conflict, but in tandem—ash for absorption, ice for redirection. His movements grew sharper, his mind clearer.
Barachas did not relent.
One morning, Alatar rose expecting the usual storm of spears, but the ground itself bucked beneath him. Pillars of stone surged upward, knocking him off-balance. He scrambled, trying to regain footing, only to find the floor softening, sucking at his boots like wet clay.
And still the spears came.
Ash shields collapsed when his focus slipped. Ice walls shattered under sudden strikes. A pillar slammed into his side, knocking him breathless, and a spear followed, piercing his thigh clean through. The wound closed seconds later, but the lesson lingered.
"You think you control your storm," Barachas said, his voice cutting through the dust. "But what use is your storm if your footing fails? If your world betrays you? Control is nothing unless it endures every pressure."
Alatar spat blood, eyes burning. He raised his hand, ash spiraling outward, frost snapping into spears of his own. The storm continued.
---
Weeks later, the ground itself became his enemy. Barachas hardened it underfoot until Alatar moved as though chained, every step slow, every dodge sluggish. Pillars burst from the walls, crashing inward like giant fists. Rock hammers swung down, heavy enough to crack bone if not for his regeneration.
And still the spears came. Always the spears.
Alatar's days became a rhythm of endurance: wake, bleed, heal, endure. Nights were for reflection, for weaving ash and ice in silence, trying to master the balance he glimpsed in stillness but lost in chaos.
His failures were countless, but slowly—painfully—his survival improved.
Where once a dozen spears pierced him, now only two struck. Where once he crumbled when the ground shifted, now he anchored himself with ash spread like roots. Ice lattices carried him across softened earth, letting him move even when the ground sought to devour him.
Barachas never praised. But his silence when Alatar succeeded was louder than any approval.
---
The training hall became battlefield, prison, forge.
One month in, Alatar faced storms of spears so thick the air seemed nothing but stone. His ash shields multiplied, spreading into a dozen forms at once—walls, blades, barriers. Ice lanced outward, freezing incoming spears into brittle shards before they struck.
Two months in, Barachas unleashed the full might of the earth. Pillars rose like jaws snapping shut, hammers swung like the fists of giants, the very ground shifting beneath Alatar's feet until balance itself seemed impossible.
Three months in, Alatar no longer simply defended. He struck back. Ash spears met stone, ice claws shredded hammers, frost spread across the pillars to weaken them before they could crush him. His movements were fluid now, his weaving deliberate. Still flawed, still breaking at the edges—but undeniably his own.
---
Barachas watched, always with that same hard expression. One evening, after a particularly brutal session where Alatar had collapsed in exhaustion, covered in ice-dust and ash, Barachas's voice carried across the hall.
"You are beginning to learn."
Alatar lifted his head, chest heaving. Sweat dripped down his brow, blood dried across his hands.
"I am surviving."
"That is learning," Barachas said. His eyes narrowed, a faint spark of approval hidden in the stone. "But surviving is not mastery. Not yet."
Then, without warning, the spears came again. Twice as many.
---
It was endless. Unforgiving.
But Alatar endured.
Each injury healed, each scar remembered. Each failure carved deeper resolve into him. Where he once faltered, he now adapted. Where he once drowned, he now swam through storms of stone and steel.
And in the stillness of night, when the chamber was silent again, he returned to the dance of ash and ice. Not yet perfect, but closer with each breath.
Barachas pushed. Alatar bled. And through it all, something new was being forged.
Not just control. Not just survival.
A will that did not break.
---
Alatar staggered into his quarters at dusk, the ash still drifting faintly around his shoulders like embers refusing to die. His body bore no wounds—his blood had long since closed the gashes, knitted the muscle, sealed the skin—but beneath the surface, he felt every strike. The ache of crushed ribs, the phantom echo of spears that had driven through him, the bruises left in marrow and mind.
He sat at the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. Fingers curled, trembling slightly, as if the storm of stone and earth still pressed against him.
I held longer than yesterday.
I endured where once I fell.
But still… I bend too easily. Still, I am dragged like a branch in a torrent.
The thought should have stung, but it didn't. Instead, he felt something sharper, harder—a pride not of triumph but of progress. The cracks in his control were smaller now, his recovery quicker, his response more precise.
I am learning to breathe within the storm.
He let the ash circle his palm, weaving with faint threads of frost. The two elements still resisted one another, colliding like fire and flood, but now he could coax them into harmony for a few breaths at a time. It was enough to mark growth. Enough to prove the storm was his to shape.
Sleep claimed him with those thoughts, not as surrender, but as preparation.
---
Morning came.
The training hall was already awake with the hum of stone when Alatar arrived, Barachas standing like a sentinel at its center. Dust motes hung in the air, caught in shafts of pale light spilling from cracks high in the walls.
Barachas's gaze fixed on him, steady and unreadable.
"I have come to a realization about your training," the giant said, voice as heavy as the ground beneath their feet.
Alatar straightened, ash curling instinctively at his shoulders. "And what realization is that?"
Barachas shook his head. "When the day is finished, you will know. Not before."
Before Alatar could press further, the floor split open with a grinding roar. From its depths, a massive oval of stone rose—a monolith shaped like an egg, towering twice Alatar's height, its surface smooth and impenetrable.
"This is your goal," Barachas said, gesturing toward it. "Destroy the orb. Reduce it to rubble. But know this—"
The ground trembled as spears of rock erupted in a ring around the orb, their tips sharp as needles. Pillars loomed close, rumbling as though eager to rise. Shadows shifted as slabs of stone shaped themselves into hammers, axes, shields.
"—I will defend it. With everything."
Alatar's pulse quickened. For the first time, the trial was not merely to survive. It was to overcome. To strike. To prove he could pierce defense, not only endure it.
He breathed, steadying himself. Ash stirred at his call. Ice shivered into blades.
"I understand," he said.
Barachas gave a single nod. "Then begin."
---
The first volley struck like lightning. Spears tore through the air, dozens at once, shrieking toward him in lines that seemed impossible to intercept. Alatar flung up a wall of ash, the particles knitting into a dense shield. The first impacts shuddered through it, some spears breaking, others punching through. He twisted, ice lances bursting outward to intercept the rest.
He moved forward.
But the ground betrayed him. Pillars erupted to block his path, while others shot up at his sides to crush him like a closing jaw. He shattered one with a sweep of ice, rolled under another, ash swirling to soften the impact of the falling stone.
And then came the hammers. Massive constructs swung down from the walls, their weight enough to crack the floor where they landed. Alatar leapt back, a spear grazing his arm, another punching into his thigh. Pain lanced hot and bright, but he gritted his teeth, ripping it free as his blood closed the wound.
The orb loomed ahead, untouched.
Closer.
He dashed forward again, weaving through the storm. Frost spread along his arm, shaping into a spear of his own. With a cry, he hurled it toward the orb—
—only for Barachas's shield to rise, intercepting it with a clang like thunder.
"Strike harder," Barachas growled, hurling another wave of spears.
---
Hours passed in agony.
Again and again, Alatar pressed forward. Again and again, the defenses broke him back. Spears pierced his stomach, his chest, his shoulders. Pillars slammed into his spine, hurling him across the hall. Hammers crashed into his ribs, forcing blood to spill from his mouth before it sealed again.
But every failure taught. Every wound refined.
His shields grew sharper, his counters swifter. Where once he fell to the first wave, now he cut through three before faltering. Where once he was pinned by a single pillar, now he used frost to vault over them, ash to blast them apart.
Still the orb stood. Immaculate. Untouched.
Alatar's breath came ragged, his body trembling though whole. Sweat and ash clung to him like armor. His hands bled despite the healing, nails cracked from the strain of channeling too much at once.
Yet his eyes burned bright. Not defeated, not broken.
I am close. I am learning. Each wound is proof. Each step forward a mark of growth. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after. The orb will break.
---
At last, as Alatar collapsed to one knee, chest heaving, Barachas lowered his hand. The storm of stone halted. Dust drifted in silence.
Alatar's gaze flicked to the orb. Still whole. Still mocking.
"I failed," he rasped.
Barachas regarded him for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, his hands came together. The sound of stone meeting stone echoed like applause, heavy and deliberate.
"You did," Barachas said. "But your failure was not weakness. You did not cower. You did not yield. You faced more than most would survive—and still you reached."
Alatar's head lifted, surprise breaking through exhaustion.
Barachas stepped closer, his towering form casting a long shadow over both man and orb. For the first time, his voice carried something not of stone, but of fire.
"Your progress has been… fascinating. Each strike you endure, you learn. Each fall, you rise sharper. You have begun to understand not only survival, but defiance. That is what I wished to see."
Alatar swallowed hard, the ache in his bones sharp, but his spirit unbent.
"Then… what was your realization?" he asked, voice hoarse.
Barachas's gaze lingered on him, inscrutable as the mountains. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corners of his mouth.
"When the time is right, you will know."
And with that, the giant turned away, leaving Alatar kneeling before the unbroken orb, chest burning not with shame, but with the fierce light of pride and promise.