The stone beneath me is cold, its chill seeping into my skin until I can no longer tell where my body ends and the floor begins. My legs are folded neatly, back straight, eyes half-lidded as I simply sit. Time means little here. The room does not change; there is no sun, no moon. Only the pale glow of stone walls and the silence pressing down like a second skin.
I draw a breath.
The ash answers.
It rises not from without, but from within—threads of gray motes drifting out of my chest, out of my arms, my breath, like smoke unraveling from a hidden fire. They do not scatter. They hover, waiting. Always waiting.
I let them go.
The first decision: to not control, but to observe. To allow them to move freely in the air, to watch the shapes they take without my will. They spiral, coil, brush against one another in tiny eddies. I sense hesitation in them, and yet also certainty, as though each mote carries the memory of a river it once belonged to, flowing on a path older than me.
A thought surfaces: Why do I think of them as mine? They flow as blood does. And does blood belong to the vessel, or the vessel to the blood?
I close my eyes.
Inside, it is different. Within me, the ash is not loose but bound. It moves through my body with perfect clarity, weaving into channels I had never carved but have always existed. They pulse as veins pulse, as rivers pulse when fed by unseen sources. No chaos, no disorder. Every line traced neat and deliberate.
For the first time in years, I do not command. I only watch.
---
The days stretch.
Wake, breathe, sit. Let the ash flow outward. Eyes closed, let it flow inward. Back and forth like the pendulum of an eternal clock. I stop counting the hours. Counting them is useless—Barachas does not come for me, no bells mark time, and the body learns silence more readily than it learns rest.
The first year is patience.
I learn the subtle tilt of a mote when released from my skin, how it always seeks the air but never strays far from me, as though tethered. I see how two motes attract one another, forming spirals that linger before dispersing. I notice how a cluster holds shape longer when I do not interfere, compared to when I force them.
The second year is immersion.
I learn to follow their paths inside me, mapping them the way a cartographer might map rivers. I trace them from my chest outward to my fingertips, to my spine, to the crown of my head. I learn that the flow in my legs is slower, heavier, while in my chest it is quick, vibrant. I wonder: Does this mean the ash itself breathes with me? Does it slow where the heart does not touch?
The third year is surrender.
I stop summoning them in large swells. Instead, I call a single thread. One mote. One spark of gray. I let it hover before my face for hours until I understand the weight of one. Its texture, its hum. The sound it makes in silence. The way it bends to a breath but not to a thought.
The fourth and fifth years are growth.
By then, the ash no longer feels finite. Where once I drew only from the faint pool within, now every summoning brings more. Ten, then twenty, then a flood. It is as though my patience has widened the vessel, my silence has hollowed me enough to hold more than before. When I breathe, they pour out like rivers bursting their banks.
I sit in that flood without fear. I let them whirl around me, not as weapons, not as shields, but as companions. They no longer rasp or tremble; they move smooth, refined, like dancers circling in quiet rhythm.
I do not smile. But I feel… steadier.
---
Seven years pass.
I had not touched the ice. I left it to sleep, to dream in hibernation deep within my marrow. There is wisdom in patience. A child cannot hold two blades without cutting himself.
The ash has become something else in this time. Not merely extension, not merely command. It is part of me, indistinguishable from breath. When I call, it comes. When I let go, it lingers. It is no longer brittle, no longer hesitant. Smooth as still water.
Today, when I close my eyes, I do not see veins of gray threading my body. I see rivers. Wide, steady, unbroken. Their banks do not erode when I push. Their currents do not falter when I pause.
I open my eyes. The room is filled.
Ash drifts in every corner, in every seam of stone. They float without falling, as though the laws that bind dust to ground mean nothing here. They circle me gently, orbiting like moons about a planet.
I raise a hand.
They shift, effortlessly.
No jerks, no resistance, no delay. They follow with the smoothness of thought itself, like muscle obeying instinct. A hundred motes, a thousand, no different from one.
And yet, as I watch them, a thought presses deeper: This is still the surface. Still the beginning. If the ash flows like blood, then this is only the learning of a heartbeat. What of the will that directs it? What of the form it yearns for?
The ice waits. I can feel it now, faint in the marrow of my bones. A cold breath I have ignored, patient, waiting for its own years to be born.
But not yet. Not yet.
---
I fold my hands together in my lap. The stone floor no longer feels cold. The silence no longer feels heavy. My body aches less, as though the years have burned the stiffness out of me.
I am in no rush.
Barachas will come when he wills. Time does not corrode me as it corrodes others. The ash has grown, and with it, so have I.
Seven years of stillness, seven years of refinement.
And I am only just beginning.
The years bled together in silence. No bells rung, no voices intruded. The room was the same, stone unyielding, walls patient. Only change was I. Only the ash changed with me.
----
It has been three extra years since the rivers of ash became smooth. Since the motes ceased their stutter and began flowing like breath itself. Three years since I thought myself steady, only to find another horizon waiting.
Now the challenge is not control. Not summoning, not shaping. It is something deeper. Imbuing will.
Barachas had spoken of will once, in passing: "Power bends only when it carries more than command. Command is wind. Will is stone."
I did not understand then. Now, alone in this hollow chamber, I begin to see.
---
The First Year — Strain
I start simple. A single mote, drawn out from my chest. It hovers before me, quiet, waiting. I stare at it, not with eyes but with thought.
Move as I move.
It shifts, faintly. That much I already command. But when I let my thought go, it stills. Always waiting for the next command, the next nudge. It has no desire of its own.
I try harder.
I whisper to it, not with words but intent: Burn when I burn. Be blade when I am blade.
The mote flickers, trembles, collapses into nothing. Gone. As if smothered by my own insistence.
Failure.
The days repeat like this. One mote, ten motes, a hundred. Each time, I push intent into them. Each time, they falter. Some scatter like dust in a storm. Others simply fall to the ground, inert, lifeless.
I grind my teeth. Too much force, too much hunger. I am trying to make them servants when they are not servants.
The lesson comes slowly, painfully: I am not asking. I am crushing.
The Second Year — Listening
I change approach.
Instead of forcing will, I listen. When I close my eyes, I hear their hum—the low vibration each mote carries. Subtle, almost imperceptible, but there.
I realize then: they are not empty. They already move with something like memory, something older than me. To pour myself into them, I must first hear what they are.
So I sit. Days, weeks, months. I call forth ash and let them hover around me. I do not move them. I do not shape them. I breathe, and I listen.
Slowly, their hum grows clearer. I notice the difference between clusters and singles, between threads and clouds. I notice how a mote brightens faintly when close to my skin, as though it recognizes its source.
And so, I try again. Not command this time, but invitation.
Follow where I go, as an arm follows a hand.
The ash does not collapse. It wavers, uncertain, but lingers. I rise to my feet, extend a hand. Some of them drift forward, half-heartedly, before losing strength and falling away.
Progress. Fragile, but real.
---
The Third Year — Extension
I begin to treat them not as tools but as limbs. My arm reaches, they extend. My head turns, they arc in that direction. I breathe slowly, steadily, syncing each inhale with their pull, each exhale with their release.
At first the synchronization is clumsy. I lose focus, and the ash scatters. I grip too tightly, and they collapse. My will, even when gentler, wavers too easily—faltering when pain strikes, when weariness gnaws at me.
But persistence is patient.
Months bleed away. The ash begins to hold shape longer. No longer waiting for each precise command, they start anticipating. My hand twitches, and they ripple in answer. My stance shifts, and they drift as if adjusting balance for me.
The failures lessen, though they never disappear. When I falter too greatly, they still vanish. Yet I no longer see this as rejection. I see it as a reflection: they fail because I fail.
And in that lesson, clarity forms.
They are not separate from me. Not tools, not slaves. They are blood, bone, extension.
When I open my eyes on the last day of the third year, the room is not filled with countless motes drifting idly. Instead, they coil around me in subtle arcs, weaving without order yet not without purpose.
I move a hand, and they do not wait. They move with me.
For the first time, I feel no delay, no gulf between thought and action. The ash is not following me. It is me.