To climb the Abyssal Peaks was to willingly walk into the mouth of a starving god.
Two weeks had passed since Kaiser and Sir Kaelen left the slaughtered Iron-Spined Panther on the lower plateau. Time, however, had lost all meaning. There was no sun to track the days, only the eternal, freezing fog that clung to the jagged black stones like a burial shroud.
The environment had fundamentally changed. They were no longer in the lower ranges where the Blood Vanguard conducted their extreme conditioning. They had crossed into the Middle Peaks—a desolate, vertical wasteland where the ambient mana was so violently condensed it began to alter physical reality.
Kaiser walked with his head bowed, his hands wrapped in torn linen to prevent his skin from freezing to the hilt of his ironwood bokken, which he used as a walking stick to test the ground ahead.
Crunch. Squeak. Crunch.
The ground beneath his soft leather boots was no longer stone or dirt. To his Absolute Hearing, it sounded like he was walking on broken glass.
"Calcified mana," Kaelen had explained days ago, his own breathing ragged in the terrifyingly thin air. "The energy here is so stagnant and heavy that it crystalizes over the rock. It is razor-sharp. If you fall, the mountain will bleed you before the beasts even smell you."
Kaiser focused on his internal equilibrium.
The 'Anvil' technique—using the crushing external pressure of the mountain to condense his internal Aura flow—was no longer an active combat stance. It had become his baseline state of existence.
If he relaxed his focus for even a single second, the oppressive gravity of the Middle Peaks would shatter his collarbones. He had to maintain the highly pressurized, continuous flow of 'Ki' while he walked, while he ate, and, most agonizingly, while he slept.
His eight-year-old body was a canvas of exhaustion. His pure white hair was matted with dried sweat and frost. His cheeks were hollowed, the aristocratic baby fat completely burned away by the sheer caloric demand of his internal furnace. Yet, beneath the heavy dark-silk blindfold, his mind was sharper than it had ever been in two lifetimes.
"Halt," Kaelen's gravelly voice rasped from ten paces ahead.
Kaiser instantly froze. He didn't just stop his feet; he locked his joints and regulated his breathing, blending his acoustic signature perfectly into the howling wind.
"Do you hear it, young master?" Kaelen asked softly.
Kaiser extended his perception. He reached past the immediate crunch of the calcified crystals, past the howling of the freezing wind, and listened to the deep, tectonic resonance of the mountain itself.
He didn't hear a beast. He heard a vacuum.
A mile above them, the dense, heavy mana was suddenly being violently sucked upward, creating a terrifying low-pressure void. And physics dictated that a void must be filled.
"A pressure sheer," Kaiser stated, his voice devoid of panic, though he instinctively tightened his grip on his ironwood bokken. "An avalanche of raw gravity."
"An Abyssal Draft," Kaelen corrected grimly. "The mountain is exhaling. There is no cover here. Anchor yourself."
Kaiser didn't hesitate. He dropped into a wide, impossibly low horse stance, burying his boots deep into the razor-sharp calcified crystals. He brought his ironwood sword up, holding it vertically with both hands, and drove the blunt tip directly into a deep fissure in the rock beneath the crystals.
He closed his eyes beneath the blindfold and pulled the absolute maximum amount of heat from his core. He didn't just route the Aura through his meridians; he pushed it outward, extending his internal equilibrium to encompass the wooden sword, fusing his body and the weapon into a single, immovable structural pillar.
Ten seconds later, the Draft hit them.
It was invisible, but its physical impact was like being struck by a charging locomotive.
BOOM!
The wind didn't howl; it roared with the deafening frequency of a jet engine. A localized hurricane of hyper-dense mana and jagged ice shards washed over the sheer cliff face.
Kaiser screamed internally as the sheer force of the Draft slammed into his small frame. The fabric of his coarse linen gi instantly tore at the seams. The razor-sharp crystals kicked up by the wind scoured his arms and cheeks, leaving dozens of microscopic, bleeding cuts.
Hold! Kaiser commanded his trembling vessel.
He visualized himself as a boulder sitting at the bottom of a raging river. He let the violent, chaotic mana wash over him, pressing against his Aura, using the Draft's own terrifying pressure to further condense his internal energy.
But his anchor was failing.
The ironwood bokken, wedged into the stone, began to shriek. The wood was incredibly dense, but it was still just wood. It was acting as the conduit between Kaiser's explosively condensed Aura and the apocalyptic pressure of the mountain.
Crack.
Kaiser heard the microscopic fracture form deep within the grain of the wood.
If the sword snapped, the sudden loss of structural support would send Kaiser tumbling off the cliff face into the lightless abyss below. He couldn't lessen his Aura, or the wind would crush him. He couldn't increase it, or the sword would instantly explode.
Flow, Kaiser thought desperately. Bleed the pressure!
Instead of trapping the kinetic force within the sword, Kaiser manipulated his meridians to act as an open circuit. He drew the chaotic, freezing mana of the Draft into his own body through his hands, passed it through his heavily reinforced core, and violently expelled it out through the soles of his feet into the mountain.
He became a living lightning rod for pure gravity.
The pain was transcendent. The foreign, chaotic mana tore at his internal pathways like liquid frostbite. He tasted copper as blood welled up in the back of his throat.
But the shrieking of the wood stopped.
For two agonizing minutes, the eight-year-old boy stood against the wrath of a godless mountain, redirecting a natural disaster through his own flesh and bone.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the Abyssal Draft dissipated.
The heavy, crushing baseline gravity returned. The howling wind settled back into its monotonous, mournful cry.
Kaiser didn't move. He couldn't. His muscles were locked in absolute rigor mortis. He slowly, painstakingly released his grip on the ironwood sword.
The moment his hands left the hilt, the bokken—which had survived Kaelen's strikes, the Cave-Stalker, and the Iron-Spined Panther—finally surrendered. It crumbled into fine, grey sawdust, its cellular structure completely annihilated by the sheer volume of energy that had just passed through it.
Kaiser dropped to his knees on the sharp crystals, coughing violently. He spat a mouthful of bright red blood onto the white frost.
Footsteps approached. Sir Kaelen stepped into Kaiser's sensory range. The veteran assassin had survived the Draft by anchoring himself with his Aura-coated steel cane, though even he was breathing heavily, his leather cloak shredded.
Kaelen looked down at the pile of sawdust that used to be the young master's weapon. Then he looked at the boy, kneeling in the freezing dirt, bleeding from a dozen superficial cuts, yet entirely alive.
"You routed ambient chaotic mana through your own core to save the wood," Kaelen stated. It wasn't an observation; it was an accusation of absolute lunacy. "That is a Mage's suicide tactic. If your core was not already acting as a pressurized furnace, that raw mana would have frozen your heart solid."
"The wood was the only anchor," Kaiser rasped, wiping the blood from his chin with a trembling, linen-wrapped hand. "If it broke, I fell. Calculated risk, Sir Kaelen."
Kaelen knelt beside the boy. For the first time in their years of training, the assassin reached out and placed a surprisingly gentle hand on Kaiser's bruised shoulder.
"It was not a calculated risk, young master. It was a king's gambit," Kaelen murmured, his voice laced with profound respect. "You have outgrown the wood. Your internal flow is now too dense, too heavy for natural materials to contain."
Kaiser slowly stood up, his legs shaking, but his posture instinctively returning to its flawless, aristocratic straightness. He turned his blindfolded face toward Kaelen.
"I need a sword, Master," Kaiser said quietly. "A real one."
"I know," Kaelen replied, standing up and gazing further up the treacherous, crystal-coated incline. "And we are almost at the place where you will earn it."
Kaiser expanded his hearing, tracking the direction Kaelen was looking.
About two miles ahead, the steep incline of the mountain suddenly plateaued. But it wasn't an empty expanse. Kaiser's Absolute Senses painted a massive, terrifying structure carved directly into the black rock of the Upper Peaks.
It was a fortress. But it was ancient, ruined, and completely devoid of human life. The architecture was wrong—the angles too sharp, the doorways too large. It hummed with a dark, suffocating frequency that made the hairs on Kaiser's arms stand on end.
"What is that place?" Kaiser asked, a rare flicker of unease entering his voice.
"The Vanguard calls it the 'Cradle of the First Knights'," Kaelen answered, his aura tightening defensively. "But it is a tomb. It was built centuries ago by men who sought to master the chaotic mana of the abyss. They failed. They were corrupted by it."
Kaelen turned to Kaiser, his scarred face grim.
"The Vanguard is strictly forbidden from entering the ruins. The beasts that nest inside... they are not animals anymore. They are amalgamations of steel, bone, and cursed mana. But deep within the armory of that tomb lie blades forged in the primordial era. Blades designed to handle the exact pressure you now possess."
Kaelen rested his hand on the hilt of his own sword.
"We camp here, young master. You heal your meridians tonight. Tomorrow, we cross the threshold. You will walk into the tomb empty-handed. If you are truly worthy of bearing the Warborn name, you will walk out with steel."