The second month didn't start gently. It crashed down on them like a lead weight.
The four companions had survived the physical massacre of the first few weeks, but for Brest, "surviving" was level zero. That morning, while the forest was still bathed in a freezing midnight blue, the old sage dragged them from their sleep by slamming his staff against a hollow trunk. The sound rang out like a gunshot.
"Up, you brats!" he barked. "Muscles are for pack animals. If you want to take a swing at Tiger, you're going to have to learn to see further than the end of your nose."
Yabal groaned as he crawled out of his blanket, his eyes glued shut.
"Seriously? What time is it? Even the owls are still sleeping..."
"Time to learn," Brest retorted, turning on his heel. "Follow me."
They walked for a solid hour, half-stumbling, until they reached a deep valley where a thick, milky mist swallowed everything. It was a weird place. No sound. No breath of wind. It felt like the world was holding its breath.
Angel shivered and pulled up the collar of his tattered jacket.
"Is it just me, or is this place super creepy?"
"Looks like a horror movie set," Yabal added, suspicious. "The kind where the loud guy dies first."
Brest stopped and planted his cane in the soft earth.
"Your eyes are liars," he announced. "They only see the surface of things. Today, we change methods. Close them."
"What?" Leopold asked, incredulous.
"Close your eyes. And look."
"That makes no sense, you old crazy coot," Yabal muttered.
But under the Oracle's piercing gaze, they obeyed.
Total darkness. Silence.
For long minutes, nothing happened. Just boredom and the damp cold of the mist.
"Don't look for shapes," Brest's gravelly voice guided them, softer this time. "Look for what vibrates. Everything that lives emits a signature. Fire, lightning, wind... Your own essence. Find it."
Rhea frowned behind her eyelids. She tried to stop thinking, to let her instinct take over. At first, nothing. Then, a sensation of heat in the pit of her stomach. Like an echo.
Suddenly, in the darkness of her closed eyes, a red stain appeared. Not an image, but a presence. Like an ember floating in the fog.
She opened her eyes abruptly, breathless.
"I saw something! It was... red. Hot."
"Me too," Leopold whispered, looking surprised. "A golden line. Thin, unstable. Like a live wire ready to snap."
Angel kept his eyes closed, concentrated, his face tense.
"Wait... I don't see anything. Just white. Void."
Rhea gave him a friendly nudge.
"That's already something. Yabal, what about you?"
The small warrior opened one eye, looking disappointed.
"My eyelids hurt from squeezing them so hard. That's all I got."
"You're hopeless," Angel sighed with a smirk.
Brest tapped Yabal's shin lightly with his cane.
"Shut up and focus. Your anger, kid, it vibrates the air three meters around you. It's a forest fire, not a candle. Learn to see it before it burns you."
The following week, the atmosphere changed. Brest took them to the center of a clearing where the calm was absolute, almost heavy.
"Sit down. And shut up," he ordered.
"To do what?" Yabal asked, collapsing into the grass.
"To listen. Really listen. The world never stops talking, but you're too busy making noise to hear it."
At first, they heard only their own breathing and the gurgling of Yabal's stomach. But as the hours passed, as boredom gave way to a light trance, the sounds changed.
There were tiny vibrations. The crack of a root pushing through the soil. The friction of air against a leaf.
Leopold adjusted his glasses, fascinated.
"It's crazy... I feel like the ground is humming. As if there's current running underneath."
"The roots," Angel suggested in a low voice. "They're moving."
"They're breathing," Rhea corrected.
She had her palms pressed flat against the humus. She felt something deeper. A slow, heavy, powerful rhythm. Thump... Thump...
"The Earth has a heart," she whispered, her eyes shining. "I can hear it beating."
Brest, sitting on a stump, lit his pipe and nodded, a rare smile stretching his thin lips.
"That rhythm is the foundation of everything. If you sync your breath to it, you will never tire. That is the secret."
The next stage was, by general consensus, the most unpleasant. Brest dragged them into a foul-smelling swamp, where stagnant water gave off fumes of sulfur and rot.
"Dammit, Brest, it reeks in here!" Yabal blurted out, pinching his nose. "Are we being punished or what?"
"Scent is memory," the old man replied unfazed. "It cuts through everything. Close your eyes. Don't smell with your nose, smell with your mind. What is hiding behind the stench?"
Rhea took a deep breath, suppressing a gag reflex. She sorted the smells mentally. Mud. Dead wood. And... underneath... a smell of warm ash. Of a wood fire. A reassuring scent.
"Garma..." she whispered. "It smells like the Phoenix."
Yabal sniffed loudly.
"For me, it stings my nose. It smells burnt. Like acid. Like when I lose my temper."
"That's your aura," Leopold explained. "It's aggressive. I smell ozone. Like right before a storm."
Angel, however, remained perplexed.
"I got nothing. Just... fresh air. Like high altitude. Is it serious, doc?"
"No," said Brest, staring at him intensely. "It's just... unique."
Then came the phase Yabal renamed "The Cave from Hell."
Brest locked them in a cave black as ink. Not a ray of light. And to top it off, he had burned herbs that numbed their sense of smell.
"First one out wins," he said before sealing the entrance. "Oh, and watch out for the traps."
Inside, it was chaos.
They saw nothing, heard nothing. But they had to feel the attacks. Blasts of compressed air, falling stones, or worse: each other.
"Ouch! Dammit!"
"That wasn't me, that was the wall!"
"No, that was my foot, you idiot!"
In the dark, Yabal slammed into Angel full force.
"Are you made of concrete or what?" Yabal grumbled, massaging his shoulder.
"You shouldn't have been standing there!" Angel replied, amused.
"I was standing still!"
"Well, you should have moved!"
"Boys..." Rhea's voice sighed from somewhere in the darkness. "Stop hitting each other and try to feel the air currents. That's how I'm navigating."
It was brutal, frustrating, and they came out covered in bruises. But by the end of the week, they weren't bumping into things anymore. They were dodging before the blow was even thrown. They "felt" the air pressure change when someone moved an arm.
The final part of the month was the most intense. Aura Mastery.
On the edge of a volcanic fissure, under crushing heat, they had to learn to stop suffering their energy and start commanding it.
"Visualize," Brest ordered. "Don't let it leak. It's water in your hands, tighten your grip!"
Rhea, sweating, visualized a dancing flame in the pit of her stomach. When she opened her eyes, the air around her shimmered with heat—controlled, precise.
Leopold, teeth gritted, managed to make small electrical arcs run along his arms without burning himself.
Yabal was a pressure cooker. His black and red aura boiled, threatening, explosive.
"Easy, Fox!" Angel shouted. "You're gonna blow us up!"
As for Angel... He tried. He really did. He accumulated, focused, but nothing visible came out. Just an atmospheric pressure drop that happened abruptly around him, making his friends' ears pop.
"It's malfunctioning again!" he cursed, frustrated.
"No," Brest intervened, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's not malfunctioning. It just doesn't show itself, that's all. Keep going. Your path is different."
When the third month ended, they were no longer the same.
They stood differently. They walked lighter. Their gazes didn't just land "on" things anymore; they looked through matter.
The forest no longer seemed hostile to them. It had become an extension of themselves. They were ready for the final step.