A month had passed.
The boy in the dorm mirror was no longer the same Wads who had first stepped into Zhero.
The hollow lines in his face had sharpened into definition. His once-slender arms now carried faint but visible muscle along the shoulders and biceps, not bulky but taut with strength earned from repetition. His back had straightened. Even his height had shifted-half a hand's breadth taller than before, enough that Keiya had to tilt her head slightly more when speaking to him.
The soreness never truly left, but it had dulled into something he could live with. Something he could push through.
---
That afternoon, when the academy's bells marked the end of classes, Wads didn't return to the dorm. Instead, he walked toward the fringe of Zhero's borders, where the stone walls gave way to a forest that breathed with an older kind of silence.
The canopy overhead filtered the sunlight into scattered ribbons, the air cool and damp with the scent of earth.
He settled cross-legged on a flat rock in a small clearing, closing his eyes.
This wasn't the rigid Diety practice inside the training hall. This was him - alone, still, letting the world slow until he could hear the faint hum in his veins.
---
He focused inward.
Breath in. Breath out.
The hum deepened, the edges of his awareness expanding until the rustle of leaves felt as near as his own heartbeat. He reached for it - the thin, slippery thread of something beyond instinct.
And then, it answered.
---
The world did not stop, but it changed.
Every sound became sharper, layered, and distinct - the drip of water on moss, the shift of an insect's wings, the subtle creak of a distant branch. The wind didn't just touch his skin - he could feel its pressure, gauge its direction, measure its weight.
Shapes in motion slowed, as if every movement existed in frames he could walk between.
His thoughts burst into rapid streams, branching into dozens of possibilities and outcomes, each one evaluated in less than the space of a heartbeat.
It was as if time had been pulled thin, stretched out so he could walk through its threads and choose the one he wanted.
This was Ren.
A hypercognition state, raw and electrifying, and at this stage... fleeting. He could feel its pull on his body already, like every second spent here burned twice as much of himself. His aura bled from him unconsciously - black, laced with shades of deep violet that shimmered like oil on water, swirling close to his skin before dissipating into the air.
---
When he released it, the world rushed back.
Sound returned in a single, overwhelming wave. His breath came heavy, his heartbeat thundered. The ache in his temples pulsed in time with his pulse.
And then, his vision swayed. The forest tilted.
The last thing he saw before darkness closed in was the fading glimmer of his own aura dissolving into the cold air.
---
The Dream
He saw his family.
Not in sharp detail, but in the warmth of memory - voices he hadn't heard in years, the echo of laughter from a house that no longer stood, the weight of a hand on his head.
For a moment, he was small again. Safe.
---
He woke to the scent of jasmine.
Blinking slowly, he found himself staring up at a pale strip of sky framed by leaves. Something soft cradled his head - softer than the rock he remembered sitting on.
When his eyes focused, he saw her.
Liora sat cross-legged, her gaze half on him and half on the trees beyond. His head rested on her lap, her fingers idly brushing stray strands of hair from his forehead.
"You're awake," she said without looking at him.
"You..." His voice was low, still hoarse. "...why are you here?"
She tilted her head down, the faintest smirk tugging at her lips. "Because someone decided to pass out in the middle of nowhere after overexerting himself. I wonder who that might be."
He groaned, closing his eyes again. "I was training."
"You were dying," she corrected lightly. "Big difference."
"...I unlocked something," he murmured.
"I could tell," she replied. "Your aura lit up like a storm cloud. Black with violet streaks... you should've seen it. It was almost pretty."
"Almost?"
Her smirk deepened. "Well, it would've been prettier if you didn't collapse like an idiot right after."
He cracked one eye open at her. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
"Immensely."
Despite himself, a faint laugh escaped his lips. She didn't move him or tell him to get up. She just let him stay there, her hand brushing against his hair again in a gesture that was too casual to be purely casual.
The forest was quiet around them, the kind of quiet that wasn't empty but full - the kind you could rest in.
And for the first time in weeks, Wads allowed himself to.