The training regimen was a special kind of hell, one designed with the cold, passionless logic of a machine built to test stress tolerances. Jax was no longer a mentor; he was a force of nature, an unmovable object against which Kael was repeatedly thrown. The days bled into one another, each marked by the same cycle of agonizing effort and crushing failure.
The physical conditioning was brutal. Hours spent running circuits in the cavernous Forge, his muscles screaming, his lungs burning. He lifted weights that felt impossibly heavy, his body pushed to the absolute brink of its human limitations. Jax's logic was simple and cruel: the cage had to be strong enough to hold the beast. If Kael's body failed, his Aethel Frame would have no foundation, and the Echo would tear him apart from the inside.
But the physical pain was a dull, distant ache compared to the mental torment of his true training.
"Again."
That single word, spoken in Jax's gravelly rasp, had become the soundtrack to Kael's new life. He would stand in the center of the scarred concrete floor, close his eyes, and reach inward. The goal was no longer just to contain the beast, but to understand it. To feel the very current of its power without being swept away.
Jax had been right. Fighting it like a brute was useless. The Shard Hound's feral rage was a force of nature, a hurricane of instinct. Kael's will was a flimsy shack in its path. His new approach, the technician's approach, was to stop trying to build a better wall and start trying to build a better dam.
He began to map his inner world. In the quiet moments of meditation, between the grueling physical sessions, he would visualize his Aethel Frame. He saw the intricate lattice of his own soul, the pale blue light of his own life force. And at its center, the jagged, angry shard of the Hound's Echo. He began to see the connections, the points where the parasite had grafted itself onto his own spiritual circuitry. He saw how it drew power from his own Aethel Core, the furnace in his chest, twisting his energy into its own violent shape.
His training shifted. It was no longer about just building a firewall. It was about redirecting the flow. He would tap the glass, feel the surge of the beast's power, and instead of trying to block it, he would try to guide it, to channel it through the pathways of his own Frame, to feel its energy without letting its consciousness take the wheel.
It was like trying to rewire a live power station in the middle of an earthquake.
The failures were spectacular. One moment he would feel a flicker of control, the next his vision would sharpen, the scent of old metal and Jax's sweat filling his senses with predatory clarity. A snarl would build in his throat. And then the inevitable, jarring system-reset from Jax's precise strike, and the humiliating collapse back into his own skin.
"You're thinking too hard," Jax growled after one such failure, Kael's body still twitching from the overload. "You're trying to draw a schematic for a storm. Stop thinking. Feel."
"Feel what?" Kael gasped, the concrete cold against his cheek.
"The current," Jax said, his voice a low rumble. "Every Frame has a Core. A source. The energy that flows from it is your current. The Echo is a rock dropped into that current. It creates ripples, eddies, chaos. You're trying to stop the ripples. You can't. You have to become the water. Flow with it. Around it. Guide it where you want it to go."
The words clicked with Kael's technician brain. It wasn't about building a dam. It was about building canals.
That night, exhausted and bruised, Kael lay on his cot and reached inward one more time. He ignored the beast's rage. He ignored the intoxicating promise of its power. He searched for something deeper. He searched for his Aethel Core.
He found it. A spinning sphere of quiet, steady light at the very center of his being. It was the source of the hum he'd felt his whole life, the hum of the wall, but this was the original song. It was his song. From it, a gentle, constant current of energy flowed outward, feeding the lattice of his Frame. This was his Flow. It was calm, steady, and analytical. It was him.
The Shard Hound's Echo was a jagged, chaotic disruption, a foreign object that twisted his calm current into a raging torrent. He had been so focused on the chaos, he'd forgotten the nature of the current itself.
The next day, he stood before Jax, a new sense of quiet determination settling over him.
"Again," Jax commanded.
Kael closed his eyes. He found his Core. He felt his current. Then, he reached out and touched the Echo.
The familiar surge of feral power roared to life. But this time, Kael didn't focus on the rage. He focused on his own current. He let his calm, steady Flow surround the beast's chaotic energy, not to suppress it, but to envelop it, to create a channel for it.
For a single, breathtaking moment, he had it.
The world behind his eyes exploded into a symphony of impossible sensory detail. He felt the subtle vibrations in the floor from Jax's shifting weight. He could smell the faint tang of rust on a weapon rack fifty feet away. He could feel the heat signature of a flickering light panel high above. It was the Hound's senses, the predator's awareness, but the rage was gone. There was no anger. No hunger. Just a pure, crystalline clarity. A perfect, predatory awareness, guided by the calm, analytical mind of a technician.
He opened his eyes. Jax stood before him, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. Kael felt no urge to attack. He simply saw. He saw the subtle tension in Jax's shoulders, the almost imperceptible way his weight was balanced, ready to spring. He saw the flow of Aethel energy within Jax's own powerful Frame, a deep, steady river of immense power.
And then, for a fleeting half-second, another image bled through. A memory that wasn't his. A sky with two pale moons hanging over a silent, crystalline forest. It wasn't a thought. It was just a feeling. A sense of profound, ancient peace.
The vision, the sheer overwhelming flood of pure information, shattered his concentration. The connection broke. He stumbled backward, gasping, his heart hammering in his chest. He hadn't been disconnected by Jax. He had simply… let go. The strain was too much.
He looked up, expecting a sharp rebuke. But Jax was quiet, his head tilted slightly, his eyes narrowed in thought.
"What did you see?" Jax asked, his voice strangely subdued.
"Everything," Kael breathed, the word inadequate. "The floor. The lights. You. It was… clear." He hesitated, unsure how to explain the rest. "And something else. A memory. A sky."
Jax's expression didn't change, but Kael, with his newly refined senses, could feel a subtle shift in the man's Aethel signature. A flicker of something that might have been surprise. Or recognition.
"The beast is not just rage," Jax said, his voice a low murmur, almost to himself. "It has other echoes. Other memories." He looked at Kael, his gaze sharp and intense. "You held it. For almost a minute. You didn't fight it. You didn't command it. You guided it."
He walked over and clapped a heavy hand on Kael's shoulder. The gesture was so unexpected it made Kael flinch.
"The first lesson is over," Jax said, and for the first time, there was a grudging respect in his voice. "You've learned to hold the leash. Now, it's time to learn how to walk the dog."