"Mana capacity increase. Spell efficiency improvements. Core stability metrics." Vasir pulled out a leather journal, handing it to me. "This is your training log. You'll document every technique, every success, every failure. I'll use it to fabricate the reports."
I took the journal. It was blank, waiting to be filled.
"We start the real work tomorrow," Vasir continued. "Today was assessment. Tomorrow, we begin systematic core mastery. Six months to bring your Fire, Water, and Earth techniques to combat-ready proficiency."
"And then?"
"Then we hunt your next affinities. Air and Lightning are non-negotiable for your build. Your blank slate build is your blessing boy. Air will give you the bypass circuits you need to compensate for that Dead Zone in your shoulder. Lightning will give you speed—thought-speed, reaction-speed, the ability to process combat in real-time."
He gestured to the timeline on the wall.
"Nine hundred days," Vasir said. "Thirty Earth days. Every morning, your family fights for forty-eight minutes, if they are alive. Every spell you master costs Earth three hours of war. This is the equation. Can you live with it?"
I looked at the dual chronometer:
Avulum: Day 25, Hour 8Earth: Day 0, Hour 20
Twenty hours. Still the first day. Still the same burning night I'd watched from the ship.
In nine hundred more Avulum days, it would be Earth's Day 30. One month of hell. For two and a half years of becoming something that could end it.
The equation was brutal.
But it was the only one that worked.
"Yes," I said clenching my teeth. "I can live with it."
Vasir nodded. "Then let's make sure you survive it."
He walked to a cabinet, pulling out what looked like a small, crystalline vial filled with condensed mana—pure, refined, impossibly dense.
"This is a Resonance Catalyst," Vasir explained. "It's used for forced core expansions. One vial can add approximately fifty units of capacity to your core. The Tower uses them sparingly—they're expensive and dangerous. Too much, too fast, and your pathways rupture."
He set the vial on the table.
"But you have a special core. Your compression is already beyond standard parameters. I think you can handle three vials per month without permanent damage."
Three vials. One hundred fifty units per month. Over nine hundred days...
"That's four thousand, five hundred units," I said. "More than enough for Tier 4."
"If your body doesn't explode first," Vasir corrected. "This is a gamble. Forced expansions have a sixty-percent survival rate for normal mages. For you, with your unusual core structure, I estimate forty percent."
Forty percent.
Six-in-ten chance of dying.
"What are my odds if I go back to Earth at Tier 2?" I asked.
Vasir didn't hesitate. "Zero. You'd be dead within the first week."
I picked up the vial. It was warm against my palm, pulsing with contained power.
"When do we start?" I asked.
Vasir's smile was grim. "We already have."
I left the workshop as the false dawn broke over Orizon, climbing back through the maintenance shaft to the "interrogation level" where I was officially being held. Vasir had created a small cell for me—spartan, monitored, perfectly appropriate for a contaminated Hero under investigation.
The cell had a cot, a desk, and a small window that looked out over the city's lower districts. I sat on the cot and pulled out the training journal Vasir had given me.
I opened to the first page and began to write:
Day 25, Hour 14; Techniques Mastered: - Resonant Ignition (Fire): 95% success rate, 25 units per cast - Thermal Gradient Pressure (Water): 80% success rate, 35 units per cast - Seismic Perception (Earth): Passive function, 5 units/hour, maintenance Mana Capacity: 1,147/1,147 (currently at 340/1,147 after training) Core Stability: Supercritical (maintaining) Elemental Integration: Fire/Water/Earth (balanced)
Notes: Vasir's teaching method focuses on INTUITION over calculation. The aspects aren't tools to be wielded—they're forces to be understood and cooperated with. Fire wants to accelerate. Water wants to balance. Earth wants to remember. Tomorrow: Combination techniques. Fire + Water = thermal shock. Water + Earth = liquefaction. Earth + Fire = glass formation.
I closed the journal and pulled up my internal chronometer:
Avulum: Day 25, Hour 14Earth: Day 0, Hour 20
Twenty hours and change. My father had been at war for less than a full day.
In thirty more Avulum days—one Earth day—Vasir would submit his first progress report. The Council would grant the first extension.
In nine hundred days, I would walk through the portal.
And Earth would have survived one month.
I lay back on the cot, letting the Stone's cooling loop cycle through my exhausted nervous system. My mana pool was dangerously low—340 units out of 1,000. I needed sleep. Needed recovery.
But before I closed my eyes, I whispered to the Stone:
"Library: Store today's training data. Cross-reference with Architect's frameworks. Identify optimization opportunities."
The Stone hummed in response, pulling the memories of Vasir's lessons into permanent storage. When I woke, the knowledge would be there—catalogued, analyzed, ready to build on.
I wasn't just training with Vasir.
I was building a database of techniques that no one in Avulum had ever seen combined this way.
The Architect had given me the blueprint.
Vasir was teaching me the song.
And I was going to compose a symphony that would make the Tower regret ever opening a gate to Earth.
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, I slept without nightmares.