Training did not begin with a sword.
That disappointed me more than I wanted to admit.
Hoshino woke me before the sun cleared the hills. He didn't shake me or raise his voice. He just set a bucket of water beside the bench and waited.
I opened my eyes to the smell of ash and iron.
"You're late," he said.
"I was asleep," I replied.
He nodded. "That's what late usually looks like."
He gestured toward the door. "Outside."
The morning air was cold enough to bite. Fog clung low to the ground, curling around the village like it hadn't decided whether to leave yet. Hoshino walked ahead of me toward the edge of the fields, stopping where the dirt flattened out into packed earth.
"No blade," he said before I could ask.
I looked at the empty space where a weapon should have been. "Then what am I doing?"
"Standing," he replied.
I waited.
He waited longer.
Minutes passed. My legs started to ache. My ribs reminded me they were still broken in places that didn't show on the skin.
"Breathe," Hoshino said.
"I am."
"No," he said. "You're surviving. There's a difference."
He stepped closer and tapped my chest twice with two fingers. Not hard. Precise.
"You breathe like you expect the world to end mid-exhale."
That hit closer than I liked.
"Again," he said.
I tried to slow it down. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way I remembered doing it when panic crept in.
Hoshino shook his head.
"Wrong."
I frowned. "You just told me to-"
"I told you to breathe," he interrupted. "Not to force yourself to feel calm."
He reached down, scooped a handful of dirt, and let it fall through his fingers.
"Breathing isn't about peace," he said. "It's about rhythm. The body remembers rhythm even when the mind breaks."
I tried again.
In.
Out.
Slower.
My chest tightened halfway through the second breath, like something inside me resisted the pace. The pressure rose, familiar and uncomfortable, the same feeling I'd had in the field.
Hoshino's hand snapped out and grabbed my wrist.
"Stop," he said sharply.
I sucked in air, pulse spiking.
"That feeling," he continued, releasing me, "is where people hurt themselves."
I swallowed. "That's just fear."
"No," he said. "That's you pulling too hard on something you don't understand."
He straightened. "You don't reach for it yet."
I didn't ask what it was.
We spent the rest of the morning like that.
Standing.
Breathing.
Stopping when it went wrong.
Every time I pushed, he cut it short. Every time I tried to control it, he corrected me. My legs shook. Sweat soaked into my shirt despite the cold.
At some point, I realized my hands had stopped trembling.
Not because I was calm.
Because I was tired enough that fear didn't get to speak first.
Hoshino watched that change and said nothing.
When the sun finally cleared the fog, he handed me water.
"Again tonight," he said.
"Tonight?" I asked.
"That's when it matters."
I nodded.
As he turned back toward the forge, a familiar pressure brushed the edge of my awareness. Not strong. Not urgent.
Present.
I froze.
Hoshino glanced back. "What is it?"
"I don't know," I said.
The pressure faded.
Nothing erased. Nothing moved.
Just a reminder.
I exhaled slowly and followed him back.
Training hadn't given me strength.
It hadn't given me answers.
But it had given me something worse.
A sense of where the edge was.
And the understanding that one day, I'd be expected to step past it.
I tried again that night, long after the forge had gone quiet.
The village slept lightly. Doors barred. Lamps dimmed. Fear pressed into the spaces people pretended were safe. I sat with my back against the cool outer wall of the forge, knees drawn up, listening to the night breathe around me.
Insects. Wind through grass. Something moving far away that I refused to name.
I closed my eyes.
In.
Out.
Slow.
The way Hoshino had shown me.
At first, nothing happened.
That was worse.
On the third breath, the pressure arrived.
Not sudden. Not violent.
Relentless.
It settled behind my sternum like a weight I hadn't agreed to carry. My lungs resisted the rhythm, tightening halfway through the inhale, forcing the breath shorter than it should have been.
I pushed past it.
Immediately regretted it.
My head swam. The world tilted, not physically, but in a way that made distance feel unreliable. I tasted iron on my tongue and opened my eyes before I could lose track of where I was.
The village was still there.
That didn't reassure me.
I waited until the dizziness faded, then tried again.
In.
Out.
The pressure surged harder this time, like something reacting to being noticed. My shoulders tensed. My jaw clenched. The rhythm broke apart before I could finish the second breath.
I sucked in air the wrong way and doubled over, coughing silently into my sleeve.
"Fine," I muttered. "That's fine."
It wasn't.
Every attempt after that ended the same way.
Sometimes the pressure spiked so hard my vision darkened at the edges.
Sometimes my hands went cold, fingers stiff and uncooperative, like they belonged to someone else.
Once, I felt the unmistakable sensation of slippage — that wrongness I'd felt in the field, the moment just before something was erased.
I stopped immediately.
Heart hammering.
Waiting.
Nothing happened.
But the fear lingered.
This wasn't like fighting.
This wasn't like panic.
This was my body doing exactly what it had been trained to do, and something deeper rejecting the effort outright.
Like two rules trying to occupy the same space.
I leaned my head back against the wall and stared up at the stars.
They looked the same.
That made me angry.
Breathing was supposed to be simple.
Human.
Natural.
And yet every time I tried to hold it steady, something unseen pressed back, flattening the rhythm into something jagged and unsafe.
Not punishment.
Correction.
I laughed quietly, the sound rough and humorless.
"Of course," I whispered. "Why would it let me have this?"
I didn't try again that night.
I just sat there, breathing shallow and imperfect, letting exhaustion take what fear couldn't.
When Hoshino woke me before dawn, my chest still felt tight.
"You practiced," he said, not accusing.
"I tried," I replied.
He nodded. "Trying is when people get hurt."
I didn't tell him about the pressure.
Didn't tell him how something inside me seemed to recoil every time I breathed the way he wanted.
Because I already knew what he would say.
Whatever I was fighting wasn't the night.
And it wasn't the demons.
It was something that didn't care how humans learned to survive.
I tried again when Hoshino wasn't watching.
Slow. Careful. Just breath.
In.
Out.
The pressure came immediately.
Not pain.
Resistance.
Like pushing against a current that didn't want to be shaped.
My vision blurred at the edges.
I stopped.
Swallowed.
Tried again, even slower.
This time, the pressure didn't spike.
It slid.
Uncomfortable. Present. But not fighting me.
Something shifted deep in my chest, like two opposing rhythms failing to cancel each other out.
[System interference detected.]
I froze.
Waited for the familiar snap.
It didn't come.
The pressure settled instead, heavy but contained, like it had found somewhere to sit.
I exhaled shakily and opened my eyes.
Nothing had erased.
Nothing had moved.
But I knew, with quiet certainty, that something had changed.
Not because the Void accepted the breath.
But because it had stopped trying to reject it.
....
Thanks for reading chapter 4.
Feel free to drop any power stones or anything, though I don't mind because the games gone and I'm doing this for enjoyment because I cant find anything good to read.
.....