Kalpit awoke the next day on the summit before dawn. He hadn't been moved. Parashurama had left him on the cold stone, forcing him to find shelter in a small crevice, his only comfort the thin scavenger jacket he wore. Every muscle in his body was a frozen, screaming knot of agony. The climb had shredded his muscles; the night had solidified the damage.
He crawled to the edge of the cliff. The two-hundred-meter drop was a terrifying, vertical sheet of rock. He was weak, exhausted, and now he was expected to descend, perform an impossible task, and climb it all over again.
He's trying to kill me. The thought was cold and certain. This wasn't training. It was a trial by ordeal designed to make him quit, or to break him completely.
He looked at the small hand-axe still embedded in the rock. With a groan, he pulled it free. The handle was smooth, worn from use, the head perfectly weighted but laughably small. He remembered the tree Parashurama had pointed out, a black, petrified husk at the canyon's floor. Ironwood.
For an hour, he considered his options. He could refuse. He could try to climb down and just run, though he knew Anasuya wouldn't leave, and he'd likely die in the wastes. He could simply give up.
Rage, stubborn and hot, was the only thing that got him to his feet. It was the same fury that had propelled him up the second half of the cliff. A defiant refusal to be broken. I will not fail.
The descent was in many ways harder than the ascent. His muscles, now stiff and uncooperative, trembled with every move. His Muladhara-sight was a flickering, unreliable thing, his concentration frayed by pain and exhaustion. Several times, his foot slipped, his heart lurching into his throat as he was saved only by the raw, desperate strength of his scraped and bleeding fingers.
When he finally reached the bottom, his entire body was shaking with strain and relief. Anasuya was there, waiting for him. She had a small waterskin and a piece of dried, tough wasteland jerky. He devoured them ravenously.
"He is insane," she said, her voice a low, angry hiss as she looked at his raw hands. "This is not teaching. This is torture."
"It's his way," Kalpit rasped, his throat dry. He looked at the dead Kraya tree. It was a monster. Its trunk was thick and gnarled, its bark like overlapping plates of black stone. It looked less like wood and more like a fossilized metal sculpture. He walked up to it and struck the trunk with the flat of the hand-axe.
CLANG!
The sound was of metal striking stone. The axe bounced off, leaving not so much as a scratch. The vibration of the impact shot up his arm, a painful, jarring shock. This tree hadn't seen water in a thousand years; it was petrified, as hard as the rock around it.
Anasuya swore under her breath. "No axe can cut that."
Kalpit gritted his teeth. The mind is a liar. What did Parashurama mean by that? His mind was telling him this was impossible. That he was being told to punch down a mountain. Was that the lie?
He swung the axe properly this time, putting all his weight and anger behind the blow.
CRA-CHUNK!
The sharp blade bit into the trunk. A tiny, thumbnail-sized chip of black wood flew off. The impact was so severe that Kalpit dropped the axe, his hands and wrists screaming in protest. A single, pathetic chip. He would need to make ten thousand such swings to even make a dent. The sun was already climbing. He would die of exhaustion long before he made any real progress.
He began to work. It was a brutal, mindless rhythm. Swing. CHUNK. Drop the axe. Pick it up. Swing. CHUNK. His mind emptied of everything but the next blow.
An hour passed. He had managed to carve a small, fist-sized notch into the massive trunk. Sweat poured from him, stinging his eyes. The blisters on his hands had already broken, leaving raw, weeping sores. The pain was no longer a sharp signal, but a constant, dull fire that consumed his entire upper body.
He stopped, leaning against the unyielding trunk, gasping for breath. This was stupid. There had to be another way. His mind raced.
The lie. The lie. What was the lie? That the task was impossible? No, that felt terrifyingly like the truth.
Maybe the lie was in the tool. The axe was just an axe. But he wasn't just a man. He had power.
He placed his hand on the tree, closing his eyes. He tried to use his Muladhara-sight to find a weak point, a structural flaw. The sight activated, but the tree was a solid, uniform column of impossible density. There were no fractures. No hidden weaknesses.
Frustration built. He tried to push his Prana into the tree, to disrupt it from within. It was like pushing against a mountain. The ancient, dead wood was inert, a Prana black hole that absorbed his energy without any effect.
The sun reached its zenith, beating down on the canyon floor. He had been working for hours, and the notch was now barely the size of his head. He was dehydrated, exhausted, and no closer to completing his task.
The mind is a liar.
His mind told him his body was at its limit. That he couldn't swing the axe one more time. He was thinking about his pain, about his failure.
And then, a new thought entered his head, a memory of Vashistha's first lesson. See its purpose. Its Dharma.
He had been seeing the tree as an obstacle. An enemy. He looked at the axe, then at the tree. What was their Dharma? The axe's purpose was to cut. The tree's purpose, even in death, was to stand. An irresistible force versus an immovable object. It was a contradiction. A path to madness.
So what was his purpose in this moment? What was his Dharma? Not to destroy the tree. That was just the means. His purpose was to provide firewood for a week.
He wasn't meant to destroy the mountain. He was meant to take a small piece of it.
The subtle shift in perspective changed everything. He wasn't Kalpit the Destroyer. He was Kalpit the Harvester. The anger and frustration that had fueled his wild, inefficient swings began to recede, replaced by a cold, clear focus.
He looked at the small notch he had carved. The shape of it was wrong, a ragged bowl. His wild swings were wasting energy, impacting the wood at inconsistent angles. He needed a focus point. A single line. A perfect cut.
He picked up the axe. His body screamed. He ignored it. My mind is lying to me. This pain is not my limit. He raised the axe, not high and wild, but in a controlled, deliberate arc. He focused all his intent, all his will, on a single point at the bottom of the notch. He didn't think about the next swing, or the last one. Only this one.
CHUNK.
The blow landed true. The sound was cleaner. The chip that flew off was larger.
He did it again. And again. His world shrank to the axe, his arms, and a single, deepening line in the petrified wood. He fell into a rhythm, a trance of pure action. He was no longer trying to smash his way through the tree; he was reasoning with it, one sharp, persuasive argument at a time. The pain was still there, but it was just a noise in the background. His focus was absolute.
He didn't know how long he worked. The sun began its slow descent, painting the canyon walls in hues of orange and red. Anasuya watched in silent, worried awe.
With a sound not of shattering, but of weary surrender, a huge, wedge-shaped slab of the ironwood, as long as his arm, cracked free and fell to the ground with a heavy THUD.
Kalpit stared at it. It was more than enough for a fire. But it wasn't a week's worth. He looked up at the sun. He didn't have time to cut more. How was he supposed to get this single, impossibly heavy piece of wood up the cliff? He could barely lift it, let alone climb with it.
His heart sank. He had won the battle with the tree, only to be faced with the impossible mountain once again.
This was the final part of the test. He looked at the heavy slab of wood, then at the sheer cliff face. His body had no strength left for a normal climb, let alone one while carrying a crushing weight.
He had passed the test of body. He had passed the test of will.
The mind is a liar. The mountain is an obstacle.
His eyes fell on the small, razor-sharp hand-axe. Its Dharma was to cut. And it wasn't done cutting yet.