"Again."
The word was a hammer blow, echoing in the cold, vast silence of the Forge. Kael's muscles screamed in protest as he pushed himself up from the concrete floor, his whole body a symphony of aches. The phantom taste of ozone and feral rage still coated his tongue. He had lasted seven seconds that time. An improvement of two seconds. Pathetic.
The days that followed blurred into a single, continuous cycle of pain and failure. Jax was a relentless, unforgiving force of nature. He drilled Kael from the moment the enclave's morning chimes rang until Kael was collapsing from sheer exhaustion. There was no praise. There was no encouragement. There was only the cold, hard reality of the training yard and the ever-present command: "Again."
Each attempt to tap into the Shard Hound's Echo was a fresh hell. The moment Kael reached into his own soul and touched the jagged, crystalline parasite, the beast would roar to life. It was intoxicating. A tidal wave of power and predatory certainty that promised to wash away the fear and doubt of being Kael, the boy who had stood by helplessly while his world burned.
And every time, he drowned.
The rage would consume him. His vision would sharpen, the world resolving into a matrix of threats and prey. His hands would begin their agonizing transformation. He would snarl, crouch, and prepare to lunge at Jax, the rival alpha. And every time, Jax would move with that impossible, brutal grace. A jab to a pressure point. A sharp, kinetic jolt that wasn't an attack, but a system reset. The connection would sever, the power would vanish, and Kael would be left gasping on the floor, a hollowed-out puppet with its strings cut.
"You're fighting it like a brute," Jax growled, circling him after a particularly spectacular failure that had left Kael spitting blood. "You're trying to wrestle the beast into submission. You can't. It's stronger than you. It's older than you. Its instincts are burned into its very essence. You will never beat it at its own game."
"Then what the hell am I supposed to do?" Kael shot back, frustration and pain making his voice raw.
"Stop trying to be a warrior," Jax said, his voice a low rasp. "You're not one. Your file says you're a technician. A mechanic. So stop trying to punch the machine and start trying to understand how it works."
The words struck a chord deep within Kael. He was a technician. He'd spent his life in the guts of the enclave, his hands stained with grease, his mind attuned to the hum of machinery. He understood circuits, power relays, energy flow. He knew that when a system was overloaded, you didn't just hit it with a hammer. You rerouted the power. You installed a regulator. You built a better circuit breaker.
That night, lying on a hard cot in the small, spartan barracks Jax had assigned him, Kael didn't try to sleep. He closed his eyes and meditated, but this time, he wasn't just looking for the beast. He was looking for the machine.
He visualized his Aethel Frame not as a spiritual blueprint, but as a complex, organic power grid. The thrumming in his bones was the hum of the main reactor—his Aethel Core. The network of light was the circuitry. And the Shard Hound's Echo… it wasn't just a parasite. It was a foreign, high-yield power source that had been violently plugged into a system not designed to handle it. The surges of rage, the physical transformations—they were the result of that overload. The system was trying to compensate, to rewrite itself to accommodate the new, unstable power source.
He couldn't fight the power. But maybe… maybe he could build a better cage.
The next day in the Forge, something was different. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But beneath it, there was a flicker of something else. A familiar, analytical calm. The calm he felt when faced with a complex, broken piece of machinery.
"Again," Jax commanded, his voice as unforgiving as ever.
Kael closed his eyes. He reached inward, but this time, he didn't just touch the Echo. He prepared for the surge. He visualized a new circuit in his mind, a bypass. A spiritual firewall. He wasn't going to stop the beast's rage. He was going to channel it.
He tapped the glass.
The surge came, hot and immediate. The feral instincts roared. The world sharpened. But this time, Kael didn't try to stand against the tide. He let it flow. He guided the initial, explosive burst of rage away from his conscious mind, away from the part of him that controlled his body, and rerouted it into a closed loop within his Aethel Frame.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done. It felt like trying to contain a lightning strike in a bottle. The energy screamed, wanting to be unleashed, but he held it, his mental firewall groaning under the strain.
He opened his eyes. He was still himself. His hands were his own. He was breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face, but he was in control. He could feel the beast, snarling and raging in its new, internal prison, but it was contained. He had done it.
He held the connection for a full ten seconds before Jax's voice cut through his concentration.
"Enough."
Kael severed the link, collapsing to his knees, not from a violent disconnect, but from pure mental exhaustion. He looked up at Jax, expecting the usual scorn. Instead, he saw a flicker of something in the veteran's eyes. It wasn't praise. It was a look of cold, hard, professional assessment. The look of a master craftsman seeing an apprentice finally use the right tool for the job.
"Not bad," Jax grunted. It was the closest thing to a compliment Kael had ever heard from him. "You're starting to think like a technician. Now do it again. And hold it for twenty seconds."
Before the next session, Jax tossed him a small, metal token. "Infirmary. One hour. Don't be late."
The walk to the medical wing was a strange experience. The enclave was a wounded thing, its corridors filled with the quiet grief and grim determination of a people who had survived a catastrophe. But for the first time since the breach, Kael didn't feel like a victim. He felt… purposeful.
Lina was sitting up in her bed, her leg encased in a complex medical brace. She looked pale and tired, but her eyes lit up when she saw him.
"Kae," she said, her voice a little stronger than he remembered. "You look… awful."
He managed a weak smile. "You should see the other guy."
Their conversation was quiet, stilted. He couldn't tell her about the Echo, about the beast in his soul, about the brutal training that was his new reality. And she couldn't understand the new hardness in his eyes, the dangerous energy that seemed to hum just beneath his skin. A chasm had opened between their two worlds.
But as he sat by her bedside, listening to her talk about the rebuilding efforts, about the friends they had lost, the purpose of his ordeal became terrifyingly clear. It wasn't just about his own survival. It was about this. About ensuring that the quiet, mundane world of nutrient paste and worried conversations could continue to exist.
He held her hand, the same hand he had seen outstretched from beneath the rubble. It felt warm, real. A stark contrast to the cold, crystalline rage of the beast he now carried.
"I have to go," he said finally, the hour almost up.
"Be careful, Kae," she said, her eyes searching his. "Whatever it is you're doing… just be careful."
He nodded, unable to promise something that was no longer in his control.
He walked back to the Forge, the warmth of Lina's hand still lingering on his own. The fear was still there. The pain was still there. But now, there was a new element in the equation. A cold, hard, technician's logic. The beast was a problem to be solved. The cage was a machine to be perfected. And he was the only one who could do it. He stepped back into the cold, silent training yard, ready for the next lesson.