Another week passed.
Inside the abyssal training grounds, the first stage had mostly ended.
Abyssal Mist Breathing had been completed by the majority of the special forces.
That was already more than many beings in the Big World could have endured.
Those who survived the first stage no longer breathed quite the same way.
Their lungs had become calmer.
Their eyes no longer flinched immediately when abyssal pressure brushed past them.
They had learned how to let the mist pass through them without inviting it to own them.
That was the point of Abyssal Mist Breathing.
The second stage had already begun for many of them.
Nihility Skin Tempering.
That stage was far more unpleasant.
Abyssal mist tested the breath.
Nihility tested the boundary of existence.
The skin was the first border between self and world. To temper it with Nihility meant teaching that border to survive contact with something that wanted the idea of borders to stop mattering.
