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Keeper's Adide:
"The mind's glyph is drawn before the hand moves. Victory is not in the strike, but in the thought that precedes it."
– Scroll of Sundered Threads of Virgil
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The silence in the Resonance Atrium was a living thing, thick with the hum of the Akar Font and the weight of Torvin's gaze. Hatim's newly-cleaned meridians tingled, the faint spark of his own Core a fragile ember. He settled into a low stance, fists raised—the universal language of the Sinks scrap.
The seamless door sighed open.
Theron Torvin flowed into the room. The three orbs on his belt pulsed—two with furious amber light, one with a cool, steady blue, hissing faintly. He acknowledged his uncle with a slight bow, then his cold eyes assessed Hatim.
"Theron," Torvin's voice was neutral. "A practical evaluation. Disarm and subdue. Do not break him." A faint smile. "The Aegis?"
"Unnecessary, Uncle," Theron said, his voice flat. "This will not take long."
He settled into a poised, open-handed stance. The real action was internal.
Hatim felt it—a subtle pull in the air. Akar streamed from the orbs in visible, liquid-gold rivulets, snaking up Theron's arms and suffusing his body. Then, a subtle change came over him. A faint, ethereal golden aura flickered around his form, and his irises glowed with a soft, molten-gold light as his mind engaged with the power. The air around his hands shimmered with contained force.
Theron's attack was a thought that became motion.
His glowing eyes narrowed. As his mind issued the command, his body flowed. He didn't just launch a glyph; he lunged, his movement enhanced by the Akar fueling his muscles. His lead hand shot out in a knife-hand strike aimed at Hatim's throat, but as it extended, a Sennari force-lance manifested around his fingertips, extending the strike's reach and power exponentially.
Hatim reacted. His hands came up, but not with grace. He had to physically carve the air, his arms moving in the wide, sweeping patterns Kander had beaten into him—the crude, physical mnemonics for those who couldn't yet visualize the glyphs internally. He was literally drawing the shape of Veshan with his hands. A faint, sputtering shield of gold flickered around his forearm just as the enhanced strike landed.
He parried the wrist, the physical part of the attack, his own forearm—hardened by weeks of swinging a Verge hammer—meeting Theron's with a solid thwack. The Sennari lance seared past his cheek. He'd blocked the blow, but the effort was clumsy, obvious.
Theron's glowing eyes registered amused contempt. "By the Throne... he draws them in the air. Like a child tracing shapes in the dust."
He didn't retreat. He flowed with the motion, his other hand coming around in a sweeping back-fist. But this wasn't just a punch. As his fist moved, his mind issued another command. A Tharnel glyph flared into existence around his knuckles an instant before impact, layering concussive force over the physical blow.
Hatim crossed his arms, taking the hit. CRACK. The sound wasn't just fist on arm; it was the detonation of force. Hatim grunted, skidding back a step, his bones vibrating from the impact. But he held. He didn't break. The endurance forged in the heat and grit of the Verge held firm against the magical enhancement.
"Akar-tempered," Theron mused, not missing a beat. "A rough polish on a common stone." His mockery was a weapon in itself.
He pressed the attack, a beautiful, terrifying blend of art and violence. A kick aimed at Hatim's knee was accompanied by a Petra's Grasp glyph materializing at the point of impact, trying to petrify the joint. Hatim jerked his leg back, the stone of the floor where his foot had been melting upward for a second. A sweeping gesture from Theron summoned a Zephyr's Coil, ethereal chains of air snapping at Hatim's limbs, trying to bind him even as Theron closed in with a series of sharp, Akar-enhanced jabs.
Hatim was a storm of desperate defense. He dodged, weaved, and blocked, his own movements purely physical, his attempts to form glyphs too slow and obvious to be of any use. He took hits that would have shattered a normal man. A kick to his ribs sent him stumbling, the Tharnel energy bruising deep, but he shook it off, his breath hissing through clenched teeth.
He couldn't match the glyphs. So he fought the man, relying on the endurance forged in the heat and grit of the Verge.
He saw a pattern. The only sign of an impending, more complex attack was a slight intensification of the golden glow in Theron's eyes and a sharper pull of Akar from his orbs.
Theron, confident now, decided to end it. His eyes flashed, burning like miniature suns.
There was no wait. No grand kata.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, the air in front of Theron screamed. A glyph of terrifying complexity—a spiraling vortex of amber and violet light that hurt to look at—snapped into existence. It was nothing Hatim had ever seen or imagined. It wasn't a shape from Kander's lessons; it was a living equation of annihilation, radiating pure heat.
It didn't form; it was already there, a cage of incendiary force rushing to engulf him.
This was it. This was the opening. The sheer, overwhelming shock of the unknown glyph froze Hatim for a microsecond—long enough.
He didn't try to understand it. He acted on the only instinct that had ever kept him alive.
He dropped low and kicked out not at Theron, but at the low table beside the cot. The ceramic pitcher of water tumbled and shattered, water splashing across the floor around Theron's feet.
The reaction was instantaneous. The water hit the base of Theron's belt. The coolant orb screeched. The beautiful, flowing streams of Akar from the orbs stuttered violently. The golden aura around Theron flickered. The terrifying glyph wavered, its perfect geometry distorting for a critical instant before collapsing in a shower of harmless steam and sparks. Theron's flawless focus shattered into pure, startled irritation at the technical malfunction and the vulgar mess.
It was all the opening Hatim needed.
He surged forward. No glyphs. No fancy moves. Just raw, desperate speed and the hardened body of a forger. He crashed into Theron, inside his guard, before the noble could recalibrate.
OOF.
Theron grunted, shocked by the sheer physicality of the tackle. His boot slid on the wet onyx. Hatim drove a fist into his solar plexus—a clean, brutal Sinks punch. All muscle, no magic.
Theron doubled over, gasping. Hatim didn't let up. He grabbed Theron's tunic, yanking him off-balance, and brought his forehead forward in a savage, brutal jerk.
CRACK.
The sound was brutally organic. Theron cried out, reeling back, clutching his bloody nose, the golden glow in his eyes snuffing out, replaced by wide, watery orbs of utter, humiliated outrage.
"You animal!" he snarled, his voice thick.
Enraged, his discipline gone, he didn't form a glyph. He simply willed a crude, angry wave of raw power from his Core, his body lurching with the uncontrolled release.
But Hatim was already moving. He dropped low under the wild blast and swept Theron's legs out from under him. Theron crashed down hard onto his back, the wind knocked from him.
Hatim scrambled backward, chest heaving, knuckles bleeding, the image of that terrifying, unknown glyph seared into his mind.
A single, sharp clap echoed through the atrium.
Torvin.
Both boys froze.
"Enough," Torvin said, his voice calm.
Theron shoved himself up, his face a mask of fury and shame. "Uncle! He—"
"Used the environment against an opponent who was too focused on the symphony to hear the discordant note," Torvin finished, his tone frosty. "You sought to overwhelm him with technique, forgetting that a well-placed stone can break a master's foot. You possess the Library of Ages in your mind but forgot to look at the floor."
Theron stood, trembling with rage.
Torvin's gaze shifted to Hatim. "You fight with a dissonant chaos. The Trial will demand harmony. Your current path is a quick death."
He paused.
"And yet... you endure. You read the fight not for its art, but for its flaws. And you struck the flaw. That is a foundation. It is the first lesson." He turned back to his nephew. "Theron. You are dismissed. Tend to your face. And contemplate why a masterpiece can be undone by a single crack."
Humiliated beyond words, Theron shot a look of pure venom at Hatim and stormed from the room.
The silence that followed was profound.
Kander let out a slow breath. "He's not wrong. You can't just be a durable rock down in the dark. You gotta become the hammer too. And that starts not with your hands," he tapped his own temple, "but in here."
Hatim, adrenaline still screaming through his veins, just nodded. He looked at his bloody knuckles, then at the spot where breathtaking glyphs had been spinning from a thought. He had survived by being hard and clever. But to pass the Trial, he would have to learn to speak the language of light without a clumsy tongue.
The test was over. The true, much harder lesson was about to begin.