Chapter Two – The Long Climb
The north was not kind.
It welcomed Emrys with jagged paths, hungry beasts, and a wind that howled like forgotten gods. He moved through its wilderness for weeks—scarce food, sleepless nights, and blood on his blade more often than not. Bandits stalked the foothills. Snow leopards prowled in silence. Even the wolves traveled in desperate packs. But none of it compared to what came next.
He had never seen a Wyvern before.
The first time he laid eyes on one, it rose from the mist like a nightmare made flesh—horned, scaled, its wings spanning wide as the entrance to a temple. Lightning crackled around its maw as it hovered, snarling, high above the cliffside. For a breathless moment, it hesitated. Its slitted eyes narrowed. And then… it shrank back, the faintest twitch of unease rippling through its stance.
It had felt his Aura—the accumulated force of over a century of cultivation. And for a heartbeat, it feared him.
But only for a heartbeat.
Then it struck like thunder.
Emrys barely remembered the fight. It was a blur of claws, screams, and pain. The Wyvern tore through stone and bone alike, smashing him against the cliffside like a ragdoll. He shattered ribs, snapped limbs, cracked his spine in three places. Were it not for his mastery of Tendon Refinement, he would have died within moments. His Aura meant nothing to a beast that knew no honor or hesitation.
As he lay broken and half-buried in snow, the Wyvern poised for the kill—until something changed.
Above them, high on a distant peak veiled in snow and silence, a figure appeared.
No words. No movement. Just a presence—one so heavy, so ancient, that even the Wyvern trembled. It hissed, shuddered, and fled into the clouds, leaving Emrys bloodied and barely alive.
He would never forget that moment.
For days he lay in a shallow cave, his body knitting itself back together with slow, excruciating patience. When at last he could walk, he set his eyes on that peak.
The one where the figure stood.
The path there was merciless.
The Wyverns did not forget him. Again and again they attacked, as if driven by instinct or vengeance. Each battle left him bloodied. Each wound slowed his climb. But each recovery… made him think.
He needed to be more than a Martial Knight.
He needed to refine his bones.
As the weeks turned into months and months into years, Emrys began to understand what would be required. The skeletal system was not merely bone—it was the foundation of the body, the fortress protecting the heart, lungs, and brain, the machine that gave structure to every movement.
He knew its divisions—the axial skeleton anchoring the body's center, the appendicular skeleton granting it reach and grace.
He knew its functions—support, movement, protection, mineral storage, blood production, even hormone regulation.
He knew its vulnerability.
And so he began to train it.
Fighting the Wyverns became a method. He allowed them to break him—but only to the edge of death. Then he retreated, meditated, breathed deeply, and circulated his essence into the fractures. Slowly, painfully, the pieces knit back together—stronger, denser, more alive.
It was crude. Primitive. A far cry from what sects or scrolls might teach.
But it worked.
Twenty-five years passed. The Martial Master was still only a shadow. A ghost on a peak. But Emrys had gained something better: the seed of his own Bone Refinement Technique.
The next twenty-five years were spent mastering it.
His breath grew deeper, his mind more attuned to the structure within. He could feel the shifting plates of his skull, the intricate layering of his spine, the web of marrow-fed channels inside his ribs. He no longer needed to fight the Wyverns to grow stronger. With every breath, every heartbeat, he refined.
The last decade was spent on his Axial Skeleton—the skull, spine, sternum, and ribs. It was the most dangerous phase. A mistake here meant death. A fractured vertebra or cranial misalignment could shatter his nervous system or end his life in seconds. But Emrys was careful, disciplined, relentless.
He reached Peak Bone Refinement in silence.
No crowds. No fireworks. Only a stillness in his breath and a resonance in his bones—like a gong struck deep within his chest.
But he had one final test.
The strongest Wyvern he had ever fought—a black-scaled beast with thunder in its blood—lay dead beneath his blade. Emrys did not celebrate.
Instead, he drained its blood, brought it to boil, and prepared the final crucible.
Using a vibrational resonance technique he had spent years developing, Emrys shattered every bone in his own body from the inside. A thousand fractures erupted in unison—calculated, intentional. He slipped into the boiling Wyvern blood, the minerals and essence flooding into his bones, drawn inward by breath and will.
His body trembled.
His mind broke.
And then—
His skeleton awakened.
The road to the Sixth Pillar—Organ Refinement would begin soon.
But first, he would have to see what waited on that peak.
The figure.
The one that made the Wyverns tremble.
And perhaps, at last, he would meet the Martial Master.