Three years passed in the quiet blur of days and nights, a rhythm built on sweat, steel, and soil.
The boy who had once struggled to lift a blade without wobbling was gone. At fifteen, I was taller, my limbs longer, my muscles leaner. Every swing of the sword, every bruise and blister, had left its mark on me. I wasn't carved like the heroes from stories, not yet, but the outlines were there..., etched by stubbornness and repetition.
My training in the River Blade technique continued, slow and stubborn. If mastery was a mountain with ten peaks, I had barely scrambled up to the third ledge. Grandpa flowed like water itself, his strikes smooth and inevitable, while mine were closer to an uneven faucet: sudden bursts, awkward stops, and the occasional sputter. Still, I never quit. I couldn't. This was the only path forward. This was how I'd protect the fragile, stubborn thing we had built: our little family.
Beast subjugation trips had long since stopped being an event that left my legs jelly and my heart pounding out of my chest. They were routine now. The early days of terror were a memory tucked away like a childhood fever dream. Goblins? Nothing more than warm-ups. Orcs, the brutes that once haunted my nightmares, now fell to me with measured breaths and steady hands.
Grandpa slowed with age, and I began to shoulder more of the work. While I stalked the forests and fields with sword in hand, he held court at the shop we had opened in the front room of our house. It wasn't much, a mismatched collection of shelves and counters, but travelers trickled through with herbs, beast hides, odd crystals, and the occasional magical trinket. Adventurers passed through town, swapping goods and gossip, and somehow Grandpa always managed to trade a bent spoon for something useful.
That shop became his battlefield. He leaned against the counter like it was a rampart, gruff jokes his weapons, wise advice his shield. People left with lighter purses but brighter smiles. And when I returned from my own battles, whether it was a goblin nest or a quick run to the neighboring town, there was always a warm meal and a new story waiting for me.
Our life was simple, yet unshakable. Grandpa guarded our hearth, I guarded our name. Together, two strays who had once wandered alone had turned an empty house into something weightier than walls and roof. We had made a home.
But if our days were soft, training was anything but. Grandpa never let me forget the river's lesson: it carved stone not through strength, but persistence. His teaching grew harsher every year, stripping away comfort and forcing growth.
Sword drills were endless. Some weeks I rehearsed the four River Blade forms until my arms quivered like reeds in the wind. On others, Grandpa tied stones to my wrists and ankles, barking that "the river flows even when weighed down by the earth." I hated those stones. They were my personal nemesis. I collapsed under their burden more times than I could count, kissing the dirt face-first while my lungs burned like bellows. Grandpa never coddled me. He'd prod me with his boot and say, "Up, boy. Rivers don't stop flowing." Somehow, no matter how heavy I felt, I always got back up.
But nothing compared to aura training.
"Sword swings are easy," Grandpa claimed. "Aura is where a swordsman is born or broken."
Aura, he explained, was spirit given form. Beautiful words. Miserable practice.
Step one was meditation. Step two was misery.
He made me sit cross-legged in the river, the current biting like fangs, for hours. The freezing water gnawed at my bones, tugging at me like it wanted to sweep me off to the sea. My teeth rattled like dice in a cup, my lips turned blue, and after the first dozen attempts I swore my toes had become popsicles.
"I don't feel anything!" I shouted one afternoon, fists clenched as I shivered.
"Good," Grandpa said from his comfortable perch on a sun-warmed rock, arms crossed. "Means you're alive. Keep sitting."
I cursed him silently, but I sat.
It took months before something shifted. A faint thrum began deep in my chest, so subtle I thought it was imagination. But it persisted: steady, pulsing, like a second heartbeat.
"That's aura," Grandpa said when I described it. His eyes gleamed in a way they rarely did. "But don't celebrate yet. Feeling it once means nothing. You have to shape it."
Shaping was worse.
The first time I tried to guide aura into my sword, it fizzled like a wet sparkler. The second time, it rebounded violently, leaving my arm numb from shoulder to fingertips. I stumbled around, flapping my dead limb while Grandpa nearly toppled off his rock laughing.
"You look like a chicken trying to take flight," he wheezed, wiping his eyes.
"Not funny," I groaned, massaging my useless arm.
"It's hilarious. But keep flapping, chicken. One day you'll fly."
And so, I flapped.
Day after day, cut after cut, meditation after meditation. My body ached, my mind dulled with fatigue, but slowly, something changed. The edge of my blade began to hum with faint power, almost imperceptible but undeniably real.
By fourteen, I had finally taken my first true step: I could apply aura, faint though it was, into my sword. Not enough to cleave trees like Grandpa, but enough to bite deeper than steel alone could manage. It was progress, hard-earned and undeniable.
One night, after a session that left me staggering, I collapsed at the table, forehead pressed to the wood. My spoon drooped in my fingers like a defeated banner.
Grandpa chuckled, setting down his own empty bowl. "You know, most kids your age are out playing tag, not trying to freeze themselves into enlightenment."
"Most kids don't have a cranky old man yelling at them all day," I mumbled into the table.
His laugh boomed through the house, warm and full. "Fair enough. Eat up, boy. Tomorrow, the river waits."
And despite the exhaustion, despite the bruises and frozen toes, I smiled.
Because no matter how harsh the training, I wasn't walking this river alone. And that made all the difference.