The air over the Ironreach training fields was thick with dust and morning breath. No clouds. No breeze. Just heat from the baked earth and the weight of unspoken pressure.
"Form Three!"
Instructor Garen's voice rang out like a war drum.
Twenty-one children shifted in unison, their feet scraping dry soil, hands rising into practiced, if uneven, stances. Adem's calves burned, his shirt clung wet to his spine, and his shoulders trembled from drills done since before the sun had risen.
But he didn't slow.
He couldn't afford to.
Garen moved like a ghost between them—always watching, always silent, until he wasn't.
"You—Toren. That's not a stance, that's a collapsed tent."
Smack.
Garen's wooden rod struck the boy's thigh, just enough to sting. No more. No less.
Toren grunted but said nothing, biting down his breath. Garen walked on.
"Adem. Too much weight on the back foot. Correct."
Adem adjusted.
A nod. The instructor moved on.
Every motion mattered. Every flaw, a weakness. In Ironreach, weakness had no place.
---
After two hours of form repetition, the children collapsed in the shade of the northern wall, gulping water and stretching sore limbs. Their hands were blistered from stancework and bare-knuckle strikes against the weighted poles.
Adem sat beside Lira and Soren, arms folded around his knees, staring at the far training stone—a black monolith polished smooth by generations of fists. It loomed like a grave, yet felt like a challenge.
One day, he'd strike it hard enough to leave a mark. One day.
"You ever wonder what's inside that thing?" Soren said, panting. "They say it sings if you hit it hard enough."
Adem didn't reply. Lira didn't look up.
"You think it sings with pain or joy?"
Still no answer.
Soren sighed. "Why do I even bother?"
Adem blinked slowly. "If you hit it wrong, your arm shatters. That's what it sings."
Soren snorted. "Dark."
Lira glanced at them both. "Everything here is dark. You just haven't looked long enough."
---
Later that day, Garen gathered them on the eastern ridge, where the training ground gave way to broken cliffs and silent fog. Below, Echo Hollow sprawled — a sunken basin of cracked stone where sound vanished and where, just days before, each child had walked the silent spiral.
Adem hadn't forgotten the presence that had whispered his name.
"You will not be returning to the Hollow," Garen said. "But the Hollow has returned with you."
That silenced even the usually talkative ones.
He continued, voice flat:
"Some of you may hear things at night. See marks that disappear. Experience pressure in the skull, dizziness, nausea, flickers in the eye. You are not dying. You are being tested."
Soren raised a hand nervously. "By who?"
Garen's eyes fixed him with the cold weight of stone. "Wrong question."
He let the silence stretch.
"None of you are ready to understand what lurks beneath that place. But know this—those who break are lost. Those who endure may yet stand."
Lira tilted her head. "Stand where?"
Garen gave no answer.
---
That evening, Adem stayed behind to clean the training weapons as instructed. Wooden blades, iron practice rods, weighted staves. The shafts were sweat-slick and chalk-dry. Splinters bit his palms. Still, he worked with methodical care.
As he packed the final bundle, he noticed something on the far wall of the armory—scratches. But not random ones.
A shape.
A spiral.
His stomach tightened.
He reached out. The moment his finger neared the mark, it vanished. Like ash scattered by windless air.
---
That night, Adem dreamed again.
He was standing beneath a sky with no stars. Only a great circle of light pulsed overhead, like an eye seen through water. A soundless hum filled the horizon. In the distance, a staircase twisted into the clouds—endless, wide, made of translucent stone that bled color like oil across glass.
From its lowest step, a voice beckoned.
"Not yet."
Adem turned to flee, but the staircase tilted downward, folding into itself. The voice echoed again—deeper, older.
"You will ascend when you learn to fall."
He awoke drenched in cold sweat, the ceiling of the barracks above him a dull blur.
Around him, the others slept. Even Soren snored peacefully.
Adem's pulse slowed. The dream faded—but the hum lingered behind his ears, like the echo of a song not yet sung.
---
By the fourth day of training, the tone shifted.
They were no longer just running or practicing forms.
Garen introduced sparring.
"First to yield or bleed. No breaks. No stopping. No excuses."
Pairs were called at random.
Adem found himself facing Harlan—a thick-limbed, sharp-jawed boy a year older and half a head taller. Harlan grinned with too many teeth.
"Don't worry. I'll leave your ears."
Adem didn't answer.
When Garen signaled, Harlan charged like a bull—wide stance, power over precision.
Adem moved.
Not away. Not into the blow.
He ducked beneath, shoulder twisting. His fist struck Harlan's gut—not hard, but deep.
Harlan wheezed.
Adem didn't wait. A sweep kick dropped the larger boy, followed by a palm to the throat that stopped just shy of impact.
Silence.
Then Garen's voice:
"Yield?"
Harlan coughed. "Yield."
Adem stepped back without expression.
Garen gave him a look—not praise, but recognition.
Later that evening, Soren clapped him on the shoulder.
"Where'd you learn that?"
"Balance," Adem replied. "He leaned forward. It made him hollow."
Lira nodded slightly from nearby. "You're starting to listen to the ground."
Adem frowned. "What do you mean?"
She tapped her foot against the packed dirt. "Everything speaks, Adem. Even the earth. Especially the earth."
He didn't sleep well that night.
---
The week ended with the first round of **wall endurance training**—standing beneath weighted slabs for timed intervals. It was cruel. Purposefully so. But Adem endured.
At one point, he looked across the line of struggling bodies and saw Lira—eyes closed, body trembling, face utterly calm. Not from lack of pain. But from presence.
She wasn't fighting it.
She was absorbing it.
And something about that unsettled him more than the pain itself.
---
On the seventh day, Garen called them to the northern cliff just before dusk. The sky bled purple, the light curling gold on the mountain edges.
"This world does not reward effort," Garen said. "It does not care for kindness, or belief, or mercy. It rewards control. Understanding. Force."
He looked over them, one by one.
"Some of you will rise. Some will disappear. Most will break. But if you listen… and if you last… you may one day look down from a greater peak and remember this moment."
Adem listened, heart quiet.
Not with awe.
But with the feeling of a lock turning in the dark.
Something inside him had begun to move. Not a hunger. Not yet.
But a pressure. A whisper. A question with no words.