The air was cold before dawn.
Kaelen stood in the clearing, shirt soaked with sweat, arms trembling from the previous day's brutal training. Every inch of his body ached, but he didn't complain. Not anymore.
Razen walked up silently, as he always did, the forest seeming to part around him.
He glanced at Kaelen's stance. "Your balance is better."
Kaelen gave a slow nod.
Razen didn't smile. "Not enough."
Without warning, Razen moved. A kick aimed at Kaelen's ribs.
Kaelen blocked, staggered back, then countered with a low sweep—but Razen was already gone. A chop came down toward Kaelen's shoulder. Kaelen barely raised his arm to guard, and the impact sent a jolt through his entire frame.
"Still too soft," Razen said calmly. "If you hesitate during the real thing, you die."
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Training Without Mercy
From that moment on, the forest became a battlefield.
Razen pushed him harder than ever before. There were no breaks. No lectures. No sparring with safety. Only raw survival.
3 a.m. until nightfall.
Kaelen crawled, climbed, sprinted, dodged, lifted weights beyond his limit, held one-armed positions over cliffs, meditated in ice-cold rivers, and endured strikes that could crack stone.
Razen said nothing during most of it. Only watched. Studied.
Every time Kaelen fell, he got up.
Every time he screamed, he bit it back.
Every time he collapsed, Razen threw water on his face and pointed him back to the task.
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Body of Iron
By the end of the first week, Kaelen could move with twice the speed he once had.
By the second, his hands no longer trembled when catching weapons mid-air.
By the third, his skin had bruises like armor and muscles like cords of steel.
And now, in the final week of the third month—Kaelen stood in front of a row of training dummies, each reinforced with stone.
Razen gave a simple order: "Destroy them. One strike each."
Kaelen closed his eyes, focused, and moved.
One blow—stone cracked.
Second—splintered.
Third—shattered.
By the time he reached the last, he wasn't thinking.
He wasn't trying to hit hard.
He was the strike.
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The Quiet Acknowledgment
That night, Razen sat across from Kaelen by the fire.
"You've built a warrior's body," Razen said, voice low. "But that isn't enough."
Kaelen looked up.
Razen tossed a piece of cloth onto the ground in front of him. It was a chart—Kaelen's training progress, filled with daily notations and marks of pain and improvement.
"It's nearly full," Razen said. "One day left."
Kaelen stared at the chart, then clenched his fists.
Razen nodded slightly. "Tomorrow… we test not your muscles—but your instincts."
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