The first time Kael split the log, it took more than three weeks.
Not because he lacked strength, and not because the axe was wrong. It took that long because every mistake cost him breath before it cost him progress. The blade struck at the wrong angle. His stance slipped. His breathing collapsed before force could carry through the wood.
Each failure left him standing still, chest burning, counting air back into himself one controlled cycle at a time.
When the log finally split, it did not feel like a victory.
It felt like permission to continue.
The axe rested in his hands exactly as it had before. The balance was unchanged. The weight felt the same. What had changed was how quickly his arms began to tremble afterward.
Kael assumed that was improvement.
That assumption was not wrong.
It was incomplete.
The second split came faster.
Still slow. Still painful. But measured in days instead of weeks.
The third followed not long after.
Kael learned the routine through repetition rather than instruction. He learned when to breathe before lifting, when to wait after impact, when to stop entirely. His technique stabilized. His breathing no longer shattered immediately.
The axe did not change.
His recovery did.
Fatigue arrived earlier in the day. Hunger arrived before evening. Breathing stopped being something he used only after failure and became something he maintained constantly.
Kael blamed himself for this.
That was normal.
The animals changed gradually.
At first, wild chicken. Easy bones. Quick preparation. The hunger eased briefly and returned quickly.
Then sheep. Thicker muscle. Fat that lingered in his mouth. Marrow that mattered for the first time.
The 10th Senior Brother said very little.
"Here," he would say, tapping a joint.
"Again," when Kael rushed.
"Slow," when breathing began to slip.
Kael learned this world's biology through resistance. Through tendons that did not separate cleanly. Through bones that cracked sharply instead of dull. Through meat that took longer to cook and longer to settle.
He did not think of these animals as stronger.
He only noticed that his hunger worsened when they were finished.
By the time deer entered the routine, Kael had stopped counting days.
He counted logs.
Each successful split came faster than the last. The time between successes shortened steadily. Weeks became days. Days became regular.
The axe still felt normal.
What changed was how long Kael could work before hunger forced him to stop.
When the hundredth log split cleanly, Kael did not notice anything unusual.
The strike was clean. The wood gave way. His breathing broke and recovered as it always did.
That night, out of habit rather than concern, he weighed the axe.
The number made him pause.
One kilogram heavier.
He recalibrated the scale and checked again.
The result did not change.
Kael stared at the axe for a long time.
It did not feel heavier.
That unsettled him more than if it had.
The animals escalated again.
Deer gave way to boar. Hide thicker. Muscle denser. Bones resistant enough that preparation took patience rather than force.
Eating became work.
His appetite grew until it frightened him.
He ate in the morning. After training. At night. Sometimes he woke hungry, chest tight, breathing uneven until food was placed in front of him.
The 10th Senior Brother adjusted without comment.
Larger portions. Denser cuts. Organs Kael had once avoided.
"Finish it," he said once, when Kael hesitated.
Kael did.
By the hundred-and-fiftieth log, the axe weighed more again.
Kael barely reacted.
His body had already decided what "normal" was. His stance compensated automatically. His breathing adjusted without thought. The absence of resistance would have felt wrong.
By the two-hundredth split, the axe carried two additional kilograms it had not possessed at the beginning.
Kael did not celebrate.
He did not complain.
He ate more.
Old Master Ren watched all of this without interference.
This was not cruelty.
It was timing.
Kael would not remain here. This place was a delay, nothing more. A narrow stretch of ground carved out so a body too fragile for the world could be made less so before the world was allowed to touch it.
That delay was ending.
One evening, as Kael soaked in the pool and breathed carefully to keep the pressure from rising too high, the 10th Senior Brother sat nearby, cleaning his tools.
"You won't be staying," he said casually.
Kael's breathing faltered for half a beat before he recovered it.
"When?" Kael asked.
"Soon," the Senior Brother replied. "Not tomorrow."
Fact, not comfort.
Kael nodded and continued breathing.
He had known this was coming.
That night, the hunger was worse than usual.
Kael ate until his stomach ached, then lay still, breathing through the heat and pressure until sleep took him. His body repaired itself slowly, deliberately, consuming everything it had been given and demanding more for the next day.
The axe waited.
The animals would change again.
And soon, the hands that had guided him through all of this would no longer be there.
This training was not meant to make Kael strong.
It was meant to make him survivable.
Because the next place he would stand would not care whether he understood what was happening to him.
And neither would the world.