The second year was a desert. The third was its mirror.
The initial, terrifying novelty of the chamber had worn off, replaced by the grinding monotony of eternity. The breathtaking, impossible vistas were now just the walls of our cage. The hum of creation was the sound of our isolation.
The training cycles blurred into a hell of repetition. Breathe. Feed. Rest. Fail. Try again. K's critiques were a constant, maddening soundtrack.
"Your form is sloppy, Deo. You're thinking about your toes. Stop thinking." "That energy draw was greedy. You look like a glutton at a feast. Have some decorum." "Anya. Your control is adequate. Now try to remember you have a spine. Assert yourself."
My progress was a jagged line of microscopic advances and spectacular regressions. The power within me was a caged beast, and I felt its claws scraping against the inside of my ribs, hungry for a freedom I couldn't grant it. Every attempt to channel it felt like trying to catch smoke with my bare hands.
Anya was different. Her control was a thing of quiet beauty. Where I was a storm, she was a still pond. She could maintain a perfect, low-level energy draw for days, her form flawless.
But that was the problem. It was too flawless. Too careful. She was holding back.
"Push it," K would tell her, for the thousandth time. "Adequate is another word for dead. You are polishing a pebble when you have a diamond in your grasp. Stop being afraid of it."
She would just nod, her jaw set, and try again with the same meticulous, restrained precision.
The fracture happened over something stupid.
We were practicing environmental manipulation—plucking a single thread from the tapestry, as K called it.
Fueled by three years of pent-up frustration, I reached for a thread of silver energy. My will was a fist. I didn't pluck; I yanked.
The thread snapped.
The backlash wasn't violent, but it was discordant—a jarring, off-key note that vibrated through the chamber and through Anya's carefully maintained focus, shattering her concentration. The delicate helix of light she had been guiding between her hands dissolved into a spray of useless sparks.
Three years of silence broke.
"Gods, Deo! Again?" Her voice was sharp, strained. "Do you ever think? Or is it all just… force?"
The words hung in the air. She immediately looked regretful, but the dam had broken.
« Emotional spike detected. Partner's focus: broken.»
I whipped around, the System's cold report echoing my own hot anger. "What would you know about it? You're not the one trying to hold back a supernova! You get to play with pretty lights while I'm trying to keep from tearing this whole place apart!"
"Play?" she shot back, her hands curling into fists. "Is that what you think this is? I'm the one holding the line! I'm the one maintaining stability while you… while you flail! You think this is easy for me? Watching you grind yourself into dust day after day?"
"Maybe if you pulled a little harder, I wouldn't have to!" I snarled, taking a step toward her. The air around me began to warp. "Maybe I need to break to become something else! Something that doesn't need a keeper!"
It was the wrong word. I saw it hit her like a physical blow. The hurt in her eyes was worse than any criticism from K.
"Is that what I am?" she whispered, her voice suddenly small. "Your keeper?" The fight drained out of her, leaving behind a hollowed-out exhaustion. "I thought I was your partner."
She turned her back on me, walking to the far edge of the platform and sitting down, drawing her knees to her chest. The silence that followed was colder and more vast than the chamber itself.
K, who had been observing the entire exchange while casually shaping a ball of condensed light between his fingers, let the energy dissipate.
"Good," he said, his voice infuriatingly casual. "Took you long enough. Suppressing that much resentment is bad for cultivation. Clogs the meridians. Now maybe you can actually focus."
His indifference was a spark on tinder. My fury, denied its original target, swung toward him. "You think this is funny? We're losing our minds in here! This is… it's impossible! What's the point of any of this?!"
K finally turned to look at me, his expression unreadable. "The point?" He shrugged. "The point is you're still thinking in minutes and hours. You need to think in centuries. A little emotional collapse is just… seasoning." He gestured vaguely at the space between me and Anya. "Now you've said the ugly thing. It's out. You can either let it fester, or you can get over it. I'd recommend the latter. You've got a long, long time to go."
He began to walk away.
The dismissal was the final straw. The careful control I had spent three years building shattered. The dam broke.
"I AM NOT A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED!"
The roar was not entirely my own. It was layered with something else, something deeper. The power within me didn't just flare; it erupted.
But it was different.
It wasn't the uncontrolled shockwave of my early failures. This was something purer. A ring of silent, black fire exploded outward from me. It didn't distort the light; it consumed it. For a fraction of a second, the eternal light of the chamber was snuffed out in a perfect sphere around me, replaced by an absolute, primordial darkness. A void.
In that darkness, for a single, terrifying heartbeat, I wasn't holding back power. I was power. Unmade. Uncreated. Absolute.
Then it was gone.
The light of the chamber rushed back in. I collapsed to my hands and knees, gasping, my body trembling with a new, profound exhaustion. The platform was undamaged.
But something had changed.
Anya was staring at me, her earlier anger forgotten, replaced by pure, unvarnished awe… and a flicker of fear.
K had stopped walking. He was turned back, looking at the spot where the darkness had been. For the first time, his casual demeanor was completely gone. His expression was sharp, focused, intensely interested.
He walked back slowly, stopping before me as I panted on the floor.
"Finally," K said, his voice low and devoid of any mockery. "A spark. Not control. Not even close. But a glimpse of the truth." He leaned down slightly, his eyes boring into mine. "That feeling of being utterly, completely other? Don't try to bury it. Remember it."
He straightened up and glanced at Anya, including her in his instruction. "The kindergarten lesson is finally over. Now," he said, a genuine, unsettling smile touching his lips for the first time. "Shall we begin?"