'He's holding back.'
The thought landed like a rock in Caeden's gut.
Not because it surprised him.
But because it shouldn't have been possible.
He'd always been proud of his physique. It was his edge. His anchor. Where most Awakened spent their early years hyper-focused on mana—on perfecting the flow, refining their cores, expanding their spiritual lattice—Caeden had taken a different path.
He trained his body.
Hard.
Every strike, every drill, every repetition baked into his bones before he'd even lit his first star.
Because for most northern cultivators, that was the standard.
In the north, physicality was part of survival. You grew up learning to brace against cold, hunger, terrain. The cultivators there didn't just dream of grandeur—they trained because weakness could kill. And more than that, the common doctrine said:
Don't waste time on the body. Not yet.
Why?
Because body reconstruction came later.
After five stars.
