Since their feet stepped onto the land of bending… the world no longer seemed familiar.
It was not just strange terrain, nor rare phenomena that could be explained by laws not yet discovered.
There was a deeper feeling.
A feeling that this place… does not like order.
Ares walked behind the Ancestor cautiously, his eyes moving without pause, trying to catch anything that might turn into a threat.
Then the first shock happened.
A rough scraping sound came from the top of a nearby rocky slope.
Ares turned quickly.
A rock the size of his body was sliding toward the edge.
It fell.
Or that was what should have happened.
But it stopped.
In the air.
No energy surrounded it.
No wind carried it.
Nothing.
It just… stopped.
Frozen there, two arm-lengths above the ground, rotating very slowly, as if it had forgotten the direction it was supposed to go.
Ares's heartbeat accelerated.
His instinct screamed:
This is wrong.
Not because the scene was dangerous…
But because the world should not work this way.
The Ancestor kept walking without giving the rock even a sideways glance.
As if this… were normal.
After a few steps, he moved off the path toward a patch of land that looked darker than its surroundings, its rocks bending inward as if an invisible force had been squeezing them for a long time.
He stopped.
Then turned to Ares.
He did not say "prepare."
He did not say "watch."
He simply… grabbed him.
And in one motion without any hesitation—
He threw him inside.
It was not a violent throw.
But the moment Ares entered that patch…
He understood.
The air vanished.
Or rather… it became so heavy that it no longer felt like air.
His body hit the ground, but the impact was not what shocked him most.
The pressure.
Everything was pressing on him at once.
The ground beneath him.
The air above him.
Even the space inside his lungs felt as if it were trying to close.
He tried to inhale.
Failed.
His fingers tightened into the dirt as he tried to push his body upward.
At the edge, the Ancestor stood in silence.
His eyes steady… without urgency.
He finally opened his mouth and said one word:
"Stand."
No explanation.
No instructions.
No mercy.
Ares clenched his teeth.
His arms trembled as he tried to lift half his body.
One second…
Then he fell again.
The pressure was not just weight.
It was rejection.
As if the place itself did not want him to stand.
A faint echo sounded inside his body.
Cracking.
Not a break…
But close enough to awaken a primitive fear deep within him.
At that moment, the cold voice appeared inside his awareness:
[Warning… pressure has exceeded the safe limit.]
[Probability of skeletal damage is increasing.]
The voice faded… but its meaning remained.
Ares lifted his head with difficulty toward the Ancestor.
He found no cruelty on his face…
Nor mercy.
Only calm certainty.
As if the outcome — whatever it might be — was acceptable.
The truth slipped into him without words:
Clans do not raise the weak.
Ares closed his eyes for a moment.
If he tried to resist the pressure directly… he would be crushed.
His instinct whispered something else.
Do not resist.
Understand.
He slowed his breathing.
Felt the weight of gravity crawling over his skin… slipping into his muscles… embracing his bones.
He tried to gather it.
To guide it.
To make it revolve around a single point inside him.
But the moment he reached his awareness toward it—
Everything flipped.
The pressure suddenly doubled.
His knees drove into the ground.
His voice choked before it could escape.
This is not energy you can grab…
It is an ocean.
And you… are just a small body at its bottom.
His vision shook.
The sky bent.
Sounds drifted away.
Then—
The energy core inside him trembled.
He froze.
It was not the trembling of fear.
Nor collapse.
It was… a response.
As if something deep within him had opened its eye for the first time.
In that brief moment, he felt the pressure around him change.
No… it did not disappear.
But it became less hostile.
Closer to…
a cautious acknowledgment.
But suddenly the gravity multiplied many times over. It did not only press on Ares's body, but also on his awareness and his soul.
The Ancestor's pupils shrank.
Something invisible passed through the field for a fleeting instant… and vanished.
Yet he did not move.
Did not interfere.
Said nothing.
Ares's body finally fell.
Darkness crawled from the edges of his awareness until it swallowed him completely.
Silence returned to the land of bending…
But the place was no longer the same as it had been moments ago.
Because — for the first time —
Gravity…
noticed his presence.