Velaris's morning market greeted the day with a clamor of bells, hawkers, and frying pans, and in the center of it all was a boy methodically bankrupting himself with joy.
"Two skewers—no, four! And that soup! And those round things—are they sweet? Give me six of the sweet round things!" Orin declared, kneeling on a crate like a tiny warlord of appetite. Grease gleamed on his cheeks; steam fogged his grin. He bit into a skewer, then a bun, then drank a bowl of broth without breathing.
Vendors laughed and clucked their tongues. "That's the lightning brat!" one whispered. "The dragon boy!" another said, half thrilled, half afraid, as if speaking too loudly might call down thunder.
Behind Orin, Code watched the coin pouch sag with each purchase. His jaw tightened one notch at a time.
"Master, look!" Orin said around a mouthful, pounding his belly with pride. "I'm forging iron in here."
"That is not forging," Code said. "That is theft. From our future."
Orin nodded solemnly and pointed at the vendor. "Don't worry—I'll protect you from bandits by eating your inventory."
Code seized him by the collar. "We're done."
Orin clutched a final skewer like a lifeline as he was dragged through the market. "But the round things! They called me father!"
"They called you a liability."
They slipped out a lesser gate and followed a dirt track down to the river, where trees crouched over the bank and water ran clear enough to mirror the sky. Orin's enthusiasm evaporated the second his feet touched grass; he rolled onto his back and spread his arms.
"Nap time," he announced. "My ki achieves balance when horizontal."
"Stand up," Code said.
"Horizontal is a stance."
"Stand." The word carried iron. It left no room for negotiation.
Orin pushed upright, rubbing his neck where Code's grip had left a red mark. The wind smelled like wet stones and willow bark. He could hear bees somewhere in the brush. For once, he didn't smile first.
Code planted his staff in the soil and measured Orin with a look that weighed, judged, and found wanting. "You have advanced by breaking things. Useful. Crude. The next opponent will not let you break him. He will unmake you while you grin." A breath. "And if you meet the devil without control, you will not leave the ring."
Orin's fingers curled around air, as if they wanted to grab something to crush. He exhaled, long enough to make the silly words die in his throat. "Show me."
Code nodded once. He touched his palm to a waist-high slab of riverstone. Ki folded into his hand—no crackle, no flare—then CRACK, the stone split in a clean seam, halves settling with a soft clack like two books closing.
"Heaven-Splitting Palm," Code said. "Do it."
Orin raised his hand. Habit tugged him toward a slap and a shout. He swallowed the shout. He set his feet the way Code liked—weight under hips, shoulder soft, elbow loose—drew in breath, tucked it where it needed to go, and struck.
THUD.
Pain kissed his palm. The stone held. He hissed through his teeth and shook his hand.
"Again," Code said.
Orin scowled, but he did it again. This time he watched the way Code's palm had not pushed, but cut. His fingers spread until tension hummed; his wrist in line with forearm. He sank a fraction deeper and let breath leave as the strike landed.
CRACK.
A hairline ran down the slab. Not pretty. But real.
He grinned despite himself. Code's eyes gave him nothing.
"Again," Code repeated.
Orin worked until the seam deepened, until the two halves surrendered to gravity and parted. He lifted his reddened palm and flexed his fingers. They didn't shake.
"Piercing Fang Fist," Code said, stepping to a log as thick as a man's thigh. He set his knuckles on it, drew ki tight—no sparks, simply density—and drove through. Wood whispered as it split around his fist, a perfect ring of puncture on exit. He pulled his hand free; the hole was neat enough to frame the river beyond.
"Precision. One strike, one answer."
Orin bounced on his toes. Every cell screamed to make a storm of fists. He clenched them until knuckles ached. "One answer," he echoed, and he listened.
He set his fist, not too tight; he raised his guard hand; he lined shoulder-hip-heel. Breath in. Breath out. He struck.
THNK.
His knuckles cratered the log but didn't pass through. His lips twitched upward; Code's silence crushed the smile flat.
"Do you want a statue of dents," Code asked evenly, "or a door?"
Orin rolled his shoulders, eased the tension he hadn't noticed gathering like rope. He thought of the beat of Rashid's feet, of matching rhythm then bending it; he thought of Elyas's quiet and how it had broken a blade. He thought of the devil's eyes and willed his hand to stop pretending, to be a tool instead of a tantrum.
He punched.
CRACK—POP.
His fist slid through. Wood chips sighed onto his forearm. He left his arm there a heartbeat longer than needed, feeling the log's grain give, then withdrew. The hole wasn't perfect, but it was honest.
Code's mouth almost, almost softened. "Earth-Cracking Step."
He stomped. The ground around his foot fractured outward in a tidy circle, like a pebble thrown into still water.
Orin eyed the dirt. His muscles remembered the fun of jumping, of thundering down, of making zigzags bloom like lightning strikes. He set that memory on a shelf.
He raised his heel, set it carefully, exhaled, and pushed ki into soil the way water pushes into sand.
KRK.
The circle wasn't a circle. It was lopsided, oval where it should be round. He grimaced.
"You think the enemy will clap for abstract art?" Code asked.
Orin breathed, felt heat flare in his cheeks and let it pass. Again. He made the ribs of the earth tremble until they obeyed a shape instead of a mood. On the third try, the ring of cracks looked like Code's had—less elegant, but correct.
"Good enough for a child," Code said, then lifted his staff and planted it again. The air around them tightened as if listening.
"Enough drills," he said. "It's time you face your own chaos. Release it—your black aura, and the lightning that stains it."
Orin blinked. "You want me to—now?"
"If you cannot summon it at will, it owns you," Code said. "Not the other way around. Release it."
Orin remembered the first time that darkness had come—claws in the air, blood in his mouth, the world shuttered by red haze as an orc screamed and the river swallowed his reflection. Back then, the aura had been a beast that grabbed him by the throat and shook until it was tired.
He swallowed. "Okay," he said, voice small for once. "Okay."
He set his feet. He closed his eyes. He found the knot of wildness where anger, joy, hunger, and the need to hit braided together. He touched it.
It answered.
Black seeped from his skin like smoke from embers; blue lightning stitched through it in thin veins that snapped and died and snapped again. The grass around his ankles bent as if a wind circled him. Pebbles skittered toward his toes.
His breath stuttered.
"Don't drown," Code said, voice iron steady. "Cage it."
Orin pulled the smoke tighter. The first tug made it buck. He nearly laughed from the sheer feel of it—like grabbing a tiger by the whiskers and telling it to sit. The old Orin would have ridden it like a storm until both of them crashed.
He inhaled through his nose—slow. He counted the beat in his chest. One. He let aura swell to match it. Two. He pressed it smaller. The black mist thickened, not spreading, condensing, each pulse answering his heart instead of ignoring it. The blue sparks began to blink on the beat—one, two, one, two—tidy, almost gentle.
He opened his eyes. His edges looked sharper, even to himself, as if someone had drawn a line around him with ink. Static lifted his hair. The world narrowed to his hands.
"Dragon Vein Wave," Code said. "Now."
Orin set his palms. The beast in the smoke bared its teeth, but it did not lunge; he could feel it look where he looked. He let breath fill his ribs; he let it out and pushed the caged storm forward.
BOOOOOOM.
Earth ripped in a straight line. River spray leapt up in a white curtain. The sound rolled back from the trees like applause from giants.
He didn't stumble. His knees didn't sag. His palms stung, but his bones didn't scream. The black mist twined around his forearms, blue filaments pulsing with the steady patience of a heartbeat. Pebbles that had floated a thumb's breadth above ground settled like feathers.
He stared at his hands. His smile came slow, smaller than usual, and warmer. "So this is—" He searched for a word he had never needed. "—control."
Code watched him in a long silence that the river filled with light. "Adequate," he said. "Tomorrow it should be better. Stop smirking."
Orin's mouth snapped obediently back to neutral. It crept upward again anyway. "I'm not smirking. My face is celebrating."
"Make it stop."
Orin tried to flatten his cheeks with his palms. The aura receded as if amused, blue fading last, leaving spiderweb afterimages that vanished when he blinked.
"Again," Code said.
They worked until the sun lifted, until clouds burned away and returned, until Orin's shirt clung and his hair dripped and his lungs felt scraped clean. Heaven-Splitting Palm until the stone obeyed every time. Piercing Fang until the log wore rings of surrender. Earth-Cracking Step until his feet could draw circles in dirt like a calligrapher's brush. Dragon Vein Wave until the cut in the ground ran like a scar all the way to the river's bend, each attempt straighter than the last.
When Orin's hands failed to make fists cleanly, Code made him stop. "Sit."
Orin collapsed backward into grass, chest pumping. He felt both empty and expanded, like something heavy had been shaken out of him to make room for something sharp.
"You're not funny like this," he said to the sky.
"That is the point," Code said.
The wind pushed clouds like rafts across blue. Dragonflies stitched the air. Orin turned his head and watched the river roll past as if it knew the way to every fight he'd ever want.
"Master," he said without looking, "when Elyas punched that sword and it just… gave up… it was quiet. I don't know how to be quiet."
"You do now," Code said. "You just refuse, because noise hides fear."
"I'm not afraid."
"You are," Code said without heat. "You were born afraid of stopping. So you never stop. It's a child's answer to a man's problem. Today you stopped where you chose. That is control."
Orin let that sit in his ribs. It stung, then soothed.
"Will the devil be quiet?" he asked.
"No," Code said. "He will be loud. He will try to make you a storm again. Make him weather. Then take his sky."
Orin laughed, raw at the edges. "That sounds like something a wise person would say."
"It is something a tired person says to an idiot."
Orin rolled to his side and pushed himself up. He wobbled, then stood. "Again?" he asked, surprising himself.
Code's eyes warmed half a degree. "Tomorrow. Eat. Sleep. Do not flirt with fences, horses, or the mayor's daughter."
"I don't flirt with horses," Orin said, scandalized. "They flirt with me."
"Eat," Code repeated.
They walked back along the dirt track as the day drifted toward gold. Velaris rose from the fields like a promise that someone somewhere would always be shouting. Orin's legs felt like they belonged to a taller boy. He wasn't sure when that had happened.
At the gate, a pair of guards leaned on spears and tried to look unimpressed. One failed. "Did the ground always have that… line?" he asked, pointing past Orin toward the river's new scar.
"It tripped," Orin said. "I helped."
The guard decided not to hear that.
They cut through streets blooming with carts and jackets and the smell of spiced nuts. Orin bought none of them. He held his last copper up to the sun, squinted at it, then tucked it away with unexpected care.
"Master," he said as they passed the shadow of the Grand Coliseum rising beyond roofs, torches already winking awake along its crown, "tomorrow we… train more?"
"Yes."
"And I… will not be a beast."
"You will be both," Code said. "When you choose."
Something settled in Orin's chest. Not a stone. Not a storm. A key in a lock, turned.
They reached their lodging—a narrow room over a tavern whose windows always smelled like onions. Orin fell onto the bed face-first and mumbled into the linen, "I'm not smirking."
"Good," Code said from the doorway. "Because you're not done."
Orin turned his head. "I know."
Code paused, then added, "You did well."
Orin blinked. "Say that again."
"No."
He closed the door. Footsteps receded. Somewhere below, someone laughed too loudly; a lute picked up a tune that didn't fit the season. Orin stared at his hands in the dim and flexed them. They didn't tremble.
He let his eyes slip shut and saw the aura again, black like ink in water, blue like lightning under skin, pulsing to a drum only he could hear. It didn't drag him. It circled him, waiting for orders.
Outside, the city hummed. Far across rooftops, the Grand Coliseum loomed, torches cutting teeth into the night. Two days. Bigger ring. More eyes. Louder everything.
He smiled into the pillow, small and certain.
"Tomorrow," he whispered, "I pick the weather."