Chapter 106: The Calm Before
Five days.
In a world with thirty-two-hour days, five of them is a lifetime. It's enough to get used to the strange rhythm, to stop feeling the stretch in the afternoons and the endless depth of the nights. The body adapts. The mind, eventually, follows.
My body, however, was in open rebellion.
I'd gotten used to the idea of Corvus's Method. The principle of it was elegant, beautiful even. In the quiet of the Shattered Ladle, listening to him philosophize about force and intention, it made perfect sense.
In the Grinder, it was a form of exquisite torture.
The first step, true, effortless yielding, was a wall I kept hitting my face against. My body had twenty-odd years of Earth instincts and another few months of this world's brutal survival schooling. It believed in two things: hit it, or run from it. The concept of meeting a charging force not with counter-force but with a welcoming, redirecting embrace was fundamentally alien to my nervous system.
"You are trying to do the Method," Corvus had rasped at me yesterday, after I'd been knocked flat by a swinging sandbag he'd set in motion. I was supposed to guide it past me. I'd tried to steer it. "It is not a thing you do. It is a thing you are. You are not a sculptor molding force. You are the water in the riverbed. The force is the river. Do you see the water fighting the river?"
"I'm not water, I'm a person!" I'd snapped back, spitting out dirt.
"Today, you are a very dense, stupid rock," he'd replied, unmoved. "We will try again tomorrow. Perhaps you will be slightly more porous."
So, five days of being a dense, stupid rock. Five days of bruises, of grit in my teeth, of muscles learning new aches. The 24.5% hadn't budged. I wasn't gaining power; I was trying to rewire my fundamental software, and the System's cold calculus didn't award points for effort.
On the evening of the fifth day, I dragged myself into the Mikaelson. I moved with a new kind of tiredness, not the bone-deep exhaustion of Ki depletion or the frantic drain of adrenaline, but the deep, systemic fatigue of the mind being forced to relearn everything the body thought it knew.
I collapsed onto my usual stool at the bar. Erik was there, a silent monolith of calm. He took one look at me, the new layer of dust and grime from the Grinder, the particular slump of my shoulders that spoke of mental, not just physical, defeat and wordlessly set a bottle of the good whiskey and a clean glass in front of me. Not the top-shelf stuff for celebrations or near-death experiences. The reliable, solid-tier bottle that meant I see you're having a day.
I poured two fingers and knocked it back. The fire was a familiar, comforting burn. I poured another and just stared at it.
"Your pervert-sensei breaking your spirit, or just your body?" Erik rumbled, polishing a glass with a slow, endless rhythm.
"Both," I groaned, resting my forehead on the cool wood of the bar. "He's trying to teach me to be a ghost. To let things pass through me. I keep trying to be a wall."
"Walls are simpler," Erik conceded. "They have a clear job. Stand there. Get hit. Sometimes they fall down. The job is still clear."
"Exactly! I'm good at being a wall! A bad wall, but a wall nonetheless. This… this flow thing. It's like he's asking me to become the wind. How do you become the wind?"
"You don't," Erik said, setting the glass down. "You observe the wind. You learn its patterns. Then you put yourself where the wind isn't, or you make a sail. Maybe your man is starting at the wrong end. You're not the wind. You're the sailor. The Method is your sail. You're trying to weave the canvas before you've even found the mast."
I lifted my head and looked at him. For an eight-foot-tall skeleton who ran a tavern, he had an unnerving habit of cutting through noise. "So I'm learning the sail before I have the boat?"
"You're learning the philosophy of sailing while drowning," he corrected. "Maybe you need a smaller pond. Less… falling stone columns."
I was about to argue, Corvus would say the Grinder was the perfect pond, when the door to the inn opened, letting in a slice of cool evening air and a familiar, armored silhouette.
Freya.
She'd traded her full plate for the lighter leathers she wore around the city, but she still moved with that knightly precision, a sense of purpose etched into her posture. Her eyes scanned the room, bypassing the few other patrons, and landed on me at the bar. A flicker of something crossed her face, not the old hostility, not the grudging respect from after the wall, but something more professional. Official.
She walked over, her boots silent on the floorboards. She nodded once to Erik. "Father."
"Daughter," he replied, his tone neutral but his eyes watchful.
She then turned her gaze to me. "Kaizen."
"Freya," I said, not bothering to inject any particular warmth into it. We had an understanding, but we weren't friends. "Come to criticize my drinking posture? My flow is off, I'm told."
She ignored the jab. "I've been asked to find you. You're summoned to the Guild Hall."
A cold trickle, unrelated to the whiskey, went down my spine. A summons wasn't a quest posting. It wasn't Gwen waving you over. It was a formal call. In my experience, formal calls were never good.
"Summoned? By who? What for?" I kept my voice casual, but Erik had gone very still beside me.
"Guild Master Valerius," she said, and the name landed with weight in the quiet tavern. "He returned to the city last night. He's reviewing all reports related to the recent… instability. The beast surge, the incident at the Serpent's Coil." She paused, her blue eyes holding mine. "He wants to speak with the adventurer who was present at the latter. The one who walked away."
Shit.
The "incident at the Serpent's Coil." The polite, guild-sanctioned term for the murder of a Patron and the near-destruction of a hallway. The event that put me on Silas Vane's kill list. Of course the Guild Master would be digging into it. A dead Patron was bad for business. An adventurer caught in the middle was a loose end, a witness, and a potential liability.
Erik spoke, his voice a low warning rumble. "Does he come as a witness, or a suspect?"
Freya's jaw tightened. "He comes as an adventurer of record who was involved in a guild-sanctioned contract that ended in a civil disturbance. The Master wants his account. That is all I have been told." She looked back at me. "You will come. Now."
I drained the rest of my whiskey, the fire doing nothing to melt the cold ball forming in my gut. This was it. The world was beginning to turn, to align with the System's pre-loaded mission. A summons from the highest guild authority in the city. This wasn't about training anymore. This was the first ripple of the coming storm.
I stood up, my body protesting. The aches from Corvus's training felt suddenly trivial.
"Well," I said, shooting Erik a look that I hoped conveyed if I don't come back, the pervert's final payment is under my floorboard. "When the Guild Master calls, even dense, stupid rocks have to roll." I looked at Freya. "Lead the way. Let's go see what kind of story the Guild Master wants to hear."