Tarak wore his vest.

  The same vest that strangled motion, that pulled at his joints with invisible threads of resistance, each strand a ward carved into fabric by the cruel precision of Midea’s hand. There were no weights, no stone, no complex exoskeleton. Just layers of hardened cloth and leather stitched with purpose, soaked in constraint. A thing not made to protect him, but to remind him—this is how much you’re holding back. Every twitch of his muscle was denied its full expression, every swing dulled by the arcane pull. He could feel the wards now, humming faintly on the vest, tightening as if excited by the prospect of movement. Like they, too, wanted to test him.

  It was the vest he and Tanya had worn during that phase of their training. The phase Midea didn’t name, didn’t explain, just pointed downward. Into the pit. And when the world opened its mouth, they fell.

  A gravity well.

  A pit that bent the very laws beneath their feet. There was no down, no up—only weight. Crushing, breaking, constant weight. He remembered the first breath he took down there. He remembered it because it hurt. Air shouldn’t hurt to breathe, but that place made lungs forget how to be useful. Standing was a trial. Moving was defiance. And yet, every moment they had clawed forward, sweat flaring into steam as their bodies learned a new version of strength. It was the kind of place that tried to change your definition of what was possible. Midea had called it training. Tarak had called it the closest thing to dying without dying.

  That vest still held the taste of that place that struggle. And that’s why he wore it now.

  Above, the seven suns roared.

  Not in sound, but in presence. They stared down at the world with their layered heat, stacked one above the other like the points of a celestial spear. No two ever agreed on where to shine. One bled pale green light, the kind that made skin itch. Another blazed pure yellow, sharp as knives. The violet one lingered just long enough to cast long double-shadows beneath Tarak’s feet, while the seventh—red and massive—pulsed like a heartbeat made of sky. Together, they lit the world in contradiction. There were no true shadows, no safe places, only layered heat and fractured light. Tarak’s crimson eyes shimmered beneath it, absorbing the fury of those seven cruel heavens without blinking.

  Then came the noise.

  Cheers, jeers, voices thrown like stones into the fire.

  “You’ve got this no problem, Tarak!” Hati’s voice rang out like the first drumbeat before a war march. She was standing atop a rock, hands cupped around her mouth, her eyes wide with excitement and belief. “Beat its ass!”

  Gasps fluttered through the nearby crowd, scandalized.

  “Don’t say that though—it’s a bad word!” she corrected quickly, pointing to no one and everyone with an exaggerated whisper, then going right back to screaming. “But beat it anyway!”

  From the opposite side of the arena, laughter cracked like thunder.

  “Do like your namesake and show us something badass!” bellowed Kofi, voice deep enough to rattle teeth. His arms were crossed over a wide chest, skin dark and weathered like old bark despite his young age, cloak swaying behind him like a banner. There was more than just cheer in his voice. There was expectation. Tarak didn’t know why it wasn’t as if this was a big deal. But he often found the habits of this village and the people in it to be foreign to him.

  Then the others piled on.

  “Brother of the reification is showing off!” a woman cackled, slapping the back of her friend who rolled his eyes.

  “Ain’t he just a kid though?” someone else asked, suspicious and awed all at once.

  Another voice cut in, thick with derision. “We still doing this? What kid can box an elder and come out alive, dumbass.”

  The crowd stirred. No one argued that point.

  “Muscle, muscle, muscle!” came the growling chant from the side. Two wolfmen—massive, grinning, and absurdly veined—pounded fists into their chests in rhythm. Their faces were drenched in shadow despite the fractured light of the seven suns, like reality itself refused to reveal them. One of them had blonde hair that stabbed skyward like lightning frozen mid-strike, the other’s jaw cracked with excitement, each tooth too white to be natural.

  Tarak didn’t respond. He didn’t nod. Didn’t smirk. Didn’t meet their eyes.

  Instead, he exhaled slowly, letting the energy of the crowd simmer against his skin. The warded vest clung tighter as if daring him to move.

  And he looked forward.

  Tarak stood at the training grounds, his breath slow, his chest rising and falling beneath the weight of his ward-threaded vest.

  The grounds themselves were a worn patch of sanctified chaos—an arena not meant for comfort, but transformation. The walls rose high, made of pale, green-blue wood veined with gold where sap once bled. That strange bark glimmered faintly, not quite alive but never fully dead, whispering in the wind like a warning or a challenge. They formed a jagged circle, enclosing the space like ribs around a beast’s heart.

  The ground was packed dirt, caked and cracked in places, flat in others, but always dry—thirsty. In the middle of the training yard, a sunken pit had been carved out, a rough-edged basin where those who wanted to prove themselves fought until the ground remembered their names. Around the perimeter of the pit, stone pillars jutted out at uneven angles, some worn down from repeated impacts, others sharp like the edges of old blades. The dummies stood beyond them, built of straw not yellow but blackened and stained, woven with bone and some rough fabric that smoked faintly under the suns. Each one was shaped like something half-human and half-else, built not just to be hit, but to learn your rhythm—then ruin it.

  But Tarak wasn’t facing any of that now.

  He stood before the obstacle course. The real one. The thing the village had rebuilt time and again after those who wanted to become warriors challenged themselves on it bleeding crying and screaming. But Tarak didn't scream. He’d never screamed, not even when he was born. Intense emotion of that sort he only felt once in his life and that waas the fight with Hathor While the gravity training was harsh he was aware he wouldn’t actually die. And he was aware he would overcome. He wasn’t afraid of this he did this for one reason.

  He did this for training. For strength.

  He always wanted to be strong. It wasn't new. The desire had lived in his bones long before the training grounds, before the vest, before even the pit. It was inherent it had existed since his birth. He wanted it for himself, for Surya, for Sol. He wanted to be strong enough to hunt, to bring back meat and victory and pride. To be strong enough to be free. To be unchained from whatever invisible leash this village and this world had wrapped around his neck since soon after birth. If he were stronger, Hathor would’ve never touched Surya. Would've never dared.

  If he were stronger, he could turn this world—this war-forged crater of survival—into a paradise. He could take Sol out of here, carry her past the walls and the memory of pain to wherever she wanted. He could move without guilt. Maybe then Surya wouldn’t suffer the cost of his fists or his pride or his choices. Maybe he wouldn’t have hurt those boys. Maybe no one would have suffered for it. Things would be easier.

  He couldn’t cultivate. Not yet. So he did what he could.

  And that meant he ran. He broke. He climbed. He trained.

  Tarak exhaled, his body shifting as muscles coiled beneath the cursed vest. He flexed—hard—and the wards resisted, tightening like ropes made of ideas. His arms didn’t move freely. His legs didn’t swing wide. Every gesture was a negotiation with the magic sewn into the wear.

  And still—he moved.

  He rushed forward, clawed feet slamming into the dirt, sending up a small plume of dust. Ahead of him loomed the first obstacle. The one that broke most newcomers. The stone blades.

  They weren’t fake. They weren’t dulled. They were ancient, massive cleavers suspended from warded rope engraved with wards of wind and tension, stone with metallic veins running through them. Each blade swung in a pattern that didn’t repeat. They came from above, from the side, from behind. And none of them waited.

  A blade whooshed down toward him like a god’s hand. He didn’t flinch.

  He turned on his heel, spinning just slightly to let it pass beside his ear. Another came sweeping from the right, low and fast like a predator's tail. He leapt—not high, but precise—just enough to clear it, his vest dragging his legs downward mid-air, testing him. His eyes, slitted and burning with focus, tracked a third blade from the far left, moving slower but heavier.

  They didn’t come in lines. The blades were arranged in a circle, a chaos ring, and their movement was never just one at a time. Each swing came from different angles, different speeds, designed to break rhythm and punish assumptions.

  Tarak dropped to a crouch, limbs coiled like a beast, just as a blade cut through where his ribs had been a second ago. Another came almost instantly, vertical this time. He bent back—far back—lowering his spine until his horns scraped the earth with a hiss. Dust kicked into his nose. His breath didn’t hitch. His back muscles screamed under the tension of the vest, but he rolled upward, back to his feet, never missing a beat.

  He spun.

  His tail lashed out reflexively behind him—but no, no room for error. A blade passed close—too close—and he hissed, quickly wrapping his tail around his waist like a cord of muscle and warning.

  He advanced further, deeper into the whirling nightmare of stone.

  Here the blades were faster. Less predictable. Their rhythm was broken by an unseen magic that responded to speed, to aggression. The more you moved, the more they struck. It was a test of discipline, not just strength.

  Tarak’s breath came hard now, not from exhaustion, but from restraint. His body wanted to move bigger, swing wider, leap farther. But the vest punished excess. And the blades punished impatience. So he moved like smoke. Sharp smoke. A flicker of muscle and purpose and old, burning guilt.

  He ducked one, then twisted under another. A third dropped suddenly in front of him, and he halted—mid-step, frozen in tension—as it roared down past his face. He could feel the heat of its wind on his lips.

  He waited.

  One beat. Two. Then surged forward again.

  He was almost at the center now. The heart of the ring. Where the blades were no longer governed by gravity, but by some strange, cursed rhythm of cruelty. They didn’t just swing. They darted. They struck where you intended to be.

  He inhaled once. Deep.

  Then stepped into the madness.

  He advanced forward like that—moving and swaying—till he reached the center, where they came the fastest and the most randomly. He wrapped his tail around his waist to prevent any mistakes.

  “Good job, Tarak, at wrapping your tail around your waist—we’ve had more than one like tailless Tom over there—” Hati called out with a bark of laughter, cupping her hands around her mouth as her voice rang clear across the field.

  “Hey, fuck you!” shouted the aforementioned wolfman, arms crossed and ears flicking back in irritation. His tail, or rather the stump of it, twitched behind him like it still remembered what it used to be.

  Hati ignored him, the smug grin on her face making it clear she’d say it again. “—that lost their tail in the center of this part of the course!”

  Tarak sent a slow, lazy glance toward her—one eye half-lidded in acknowledment—but said nothing. That brief flicker of attention passed like a cloud’s shadow, and then he refocused.

  He moved.

  Not like a boy. Not like a trainee. Not even like a beast.

  He moved like something older. Like instinct refined to ceremony. Forward—then sudden back. A hard left pivot that shifted to a spin. Down into a crouch, up into a twist. His motion wasn’t wild. It was cold, precise—like a blade that cut the future before it could become present.

  The stone blades shrieked through the air like falling mountains, each one a gust of force heavy enough to flatten trees, but he moved between them like a whisper. The obstacle course was no longer an arena of danger—it was a stage.

  And he danced.

  Not like something delicate. But like something beautiful and violent. Something that knew where each blade would fall because it had decided so.

  Around him, murmurs rippled through the few spectators watching. A group of village hunters, arms crossed and brows lifted. A pair of wolfmen in gliding leathers perched atop one of the high walls, chittering quietly to each other. Even Kofi one of the more experienced warriors studied how he moved.

  “What the hell is that?” one whispered.

  “Looks like he’s dancing with death,” another replied.

  “Doesn’t even look scared…”

  It was true. Tarak’s expression didn’t show strain. His breath was steady. His features calm. He didn’t look joyous or angry or desperate. He just looked focused.

  His smooth brown skin shimmered beneath the seven suns, each one casting its own hue. The red sun turned his left shoulder molten; the silver sun draped his back in moonlight. Gold, green, violet—all bled across him as he wove through the gauntlet. His hair, abyss-black and falling in wild, weighty strands, flicked with each motion. The silvery-white tips of his hair caught the light time and time again, creating a faint halo every time he spun.

  The crimson gleam of his slit eyes remained locked forward, unwavering. There was dominance in them—not the shout of power, but the quiet demand of inevitability. The dark lines under his eyes, painted or born from something deeper, lent his gaze a kind of severity. A terrifying depth. They made him look like something innate. Like a creature who knew the world before it was it’s birthright.

  And then there were the horns.

  Those horns stretched wide and long from the nest of his thick hair, sweeping up and outward like carved ebony dipped in day. Their black-and-white contrast gleamed sharply under the light of the suns, lending him an animal majesty that demanded reverence, not pity. In that moment, he looked like a godling in disguise. Like something that could walk into the pit and survive anything it threw.

  But Tarak frowned.

  It wasn’t enough.

  His steps remained flawless, his body moving with impossible grace—but inside, he knew it wasn’t complete. There were limits. His body responded, but only barely ahead of the danger. He wanted more. He needed more. To move as if the course obeyed him.

  So, he closed his eyes.

  The world around him blurred into light and dust and noise. He could still feel the suns on his skin. Still hear the distant yells. Still taste the grit of kicked-up earth. But he turned it down. All of it. He honed in.

  His ears twitched.

  The blades sang. Each one displaced air when it swung, and that air had shape. It had volume. It had timbre. When the edge passed, it left behind a pocket of silence, like a skip in the beat of his hearts. Tarak listened for those gaps. For the whispers between the cuts. For the vibration in the ground when stone scraped against wind.

  There was pattern here. Somewhere.

  He inhaled—slow, deep. Let it sit in his lungs. Then exhaled.

  His body shifted. Not visibly, not in the way outsiders could see, but he felt it. His hearing sharpened. His skin tingled, reacting to the smallest shifts in wind pressure. Every inch of him became an antenna. A radar. A blade.

  He didn’t just dodge now. He read the heartbeat. He heard the conversation between gravity and violence. Between stillness and motion.

  Shwoo!

  The sound sliced the air like a whip crack as a massive blade surged past his face. Tarak leaned left—not jerkily, not with panic, but with precision, with the kind of smoothness that made it look easy, even though it wasn’t. The blade whooshed past him, the wind curling around his cheek like a lover’s caress made of rock and death. The grind of stone against gravity hummed behind his ear.

  More followed. They came with no rhythm and no warning. Stone edges cleaving through the air from above, below, the sides. Death swirled around him in chaos, and each time—barely—he slipped through the path of least resistance.

  He staggered once, then caught himself.

  Another blade nearly took his leg, but he twisted—awkward, rushed.

  Yelps shot up from the crowd like flares in a storm.

  “Shit!”

  “Move!”

  “Watch your six, Tarak!”

  Their worry echoed across the field, but he tuned them out. Let their shouts become background noise—unimportant. He couldn’t hear them. He wouldn’t. He only needed to listen to the heartbeat of the blades. Not to mention their worry was unfounded. Even if he did get hit the blades would utterly fail to injure him in any capacity. He shook his head.

  The stone blades were talking.

  He was listening.

  Every swing had a sound, a pressure shift, a vibration. Air moved in certain ways when death wanted you dead even if the force in question was lacking. And his body learned fast. Faster than any wolfman.

  His skin felt the wind change. His ears caught the rhythm. His joints moved before his brain had the chance to think. From one dodge to the next, he stopped being a boy caught in a storm of spinning blades and became something more.

  His body learned.

  And then it adapted.

  He stopped dodging like a drunk in a tavern brawl, stumbling and ducking and praying. Now he swayed like a dancer in temple procession, a priest of motion, feet light on the dirt. Every breath came in rhythm with the danger. He leaned into it. Slipped through it. Moved with it.

  And all this—

  With his eyes closed.

  The warded vest he wore, threaded with gravitational and restrictive charms that dulled his mobility and compressed every movement into a labor, was not meant for such grace. It was forged by Midea to crush arrogance—to simulate struggle that other beings went through in their movements. Unlike him and his sister who had been born with grace and born with power.

  Even so, with that vest hugging his frame, Tarak danced.

  The crowd didn’t speak now. They watched.

  Because anyone with even a glimmer of sense could see: this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t natural.

  With the vest off, Tarak’s body alone was already monstrous—he could wrestle a low-shackle, second-layer cultivator with fists and fury alone. This course was made for those of the first layer at the end of the day. But one must acknowledge he had restrictive clothing on. And not only that no one had ever done this with their eyes closed. Despite having more power than average for those who did this course he was still doing something exceedingly impressive here. Especially when one factored in his age.

  He emerged from the forest of blades like it had always been a matter of time. The final swing carved the space inches behind him as he stepped free. Dust rolled across the ground from the force of it, carried on the wind that followed him like a herald.

  He opened his eyes.

  Red. Gleaming. Calm.

  He looked to the side—and there was Kofi, sitting proud with his cloak aflair, short-cropped hair slicked with sweat and dark eyes wide with something between disbelief and glee. His fists pumped like the beat of war drums.

  “That was bullshit but I like it!” Kofi roared, throwing both arms in the air.

  From the other side, Hati grinned wide, flashing all her sharp canines. She leaned on the rail with arms crossed behind her head like this was all just a casual day at the fair. “That’s my kid!” she called out proudly, voice carrying like thunder.

  Lennix, lounging lazily nearby and chewing on what might’ve been a root, wrinkled his nose and snorted. “Since when do you lay eggs, woman?” he drawled. His shaggy blond hair bounced slightly as he tilted his head, the expression on his face so exaggerated it seemed carved for comedy.

  A burly wolfman craftsman not far off raised a grease-stained brow and nudged his companion. “Oi, Ran, since when could we wolfmen lay eggs?”

  Ran scratched the back of his neck, snorted once, and leaned forward with mock-serious contemplation. “I don’t know, Dan. But just look at her. Right weird, ain’t she? Freak of nature that one is. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Dan nodded, solemnly. “Too right.”

  Their tones were theatrical, as if this was the first laugh they’d had all week.

  “Could you two get a life!” Hati bellowed, pointing at them as she leaned over the wall. “Why the hell are you even here?!”

  The pair immediately scattered like kicked dogs, scrambling with startled yelps and exaggerated curses, laughter trailing behind them.

  Tarak tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable, before turning back toward the course with quiet determination. The next challenge loomed ahead—a wide pit, shadowed and sun-drenched all at once, filled with movement. The moment he neared the edge, it came alive with slithering bodies and rhythmic hissing.

  Serpents. Dozens of them.

  Their scales shimmered with oil-slick iridescence under the full glare of the seven suns, some black, others greenish, and a few gleaming with coppery-red bands across their thick bodies. They coiled and writhed atop one another like a carpet made of teeth and muscle. Some were thick as tree trunks, others thinner, faster. All of them looked hungry.

  One, bolder than the rest, raised its head above the others. Its forked tongue flicked the air as it glared at him with lidless, obsidian eyes. A sound like boiling sand escaped its mouth.

  Tarak’s crimson gaze sharpened in response. He didn’t snarl—he didn’t need to. He simply tilted his head back toward the creature and bared his fangs. Slowly. Deliberately. His lip curled in the quiet declaration of a being that was not prey and had never known fear.

  The serpent locked eyes with him—and whimpered. Not hissed. Whimpered. Then, with a frantic twitch of its body, it dove back into the pile like a coward seeking cover in the crowd.

  Tarak blinked lazily, as if disappointed, and let out the barest sigh through his nose. “Tch.”

  He stepped forward, now looking at the true test—the narrow path of podiums over the pit. There were no safe bridges or handholds. Just jutting bulbous columns of wood and carved stone, none of them flat, each one slicked with some kind of syrupy sap that glistened like amber under the suns. Some of it dripped slowly into the pit below, thick drops splattering against scales and drawing momentary agitation from the serpents beneath.

  The scent was strong, too. Bitter, vaguely spicy. Not toxic, but sharp enough to make the footing treacherous. The sap acted like nature's oil, liquefying balance.

  Tarak's eyes moved across each platform. They weren’t all evenly spaced—some jutted out wide, others were set deeper into the pit, forcing awkward angles and jumps. The designers clearly meant for the challenge to not be the serpents themselves, but the fear of them, paired with the difficulty of movement. The fear of falling into the mass of scaled hunger.

  But Tarak wasn’t afraid.

  He bent his knees slightly and launched forward, a blur of coiled strength. His foot landed on the first bulbous podium, the sap instantly making him slide—but he’d expected that. His claws extended slightly from his bare feet, digging into the wood with a high-pitched scratch. His tail whipped out like a cord and lashed around the bottom of the structure, anchoring him with the ease of someone born in gravity wells and forged through pain.

  He didn’t pause. There was no room for it.

  The next leap came immediately—clean, crisp, controlled. He twisted his torso midair, adjusting the angle of his landing. Another podium met his claws, and again the sap tried to betray him, but it was like watching a dancer on water. His muscles didn’t even tremble. A low growl of satisfaction rumbled in his throat as he launched again, skipping a podium entirely this time and landing with a crunch onto a much farther one.

  Gasps broke from the crowd.

  “Did he just—?”

  “He skipped that one! Skipped it!”

  “I can’t even balance on the first, damn it!”

  “Look at that! He’s not even using his hands!”

  But Hati was louder than them all. “Show off!” she shouted, practically buzzing with pride.

  Tarak ignored them all. His eyes were fixed forward, burning with intent.

  He twisted again, using the full torque of his body to carry him in a spiraling leap across a wide gap, his shadow dancing over the serpent pit. The movement was almost absurd in its ease. And yet, every part of it was earned—his time with Midea, dodging the jaws of the viernes man traps, had taught him how to control momentum in impossible environments. This was easier in comparison. Predictable. Manageable.

  The final podium trembled beneath him as he landed on it, then hopped casually onto solid ground, claws retracting. His tail flicked free from behind him with a soft whap, its tip brushing the edge of the platform as he stepped away.

  A brief silence settled over the field.

  Then came the noise.

  “Son of a—he cleared it like it was nothing!”

  “Why do we even try anymore?”

  “Because we’re not damn freaks, that’s why!”

  But Tarak just rolled his shoulders, eyes already scanning the next challenge. The cheers and shouts rolled off him like the sap had rolled off those platforms—useless, external, irrelevant.

  Tarak kept moving, his stride unbroken, the clamor of cheers and muttered awe trailing behind him like dust in the wind. His crimson gaze shifted to the next obstacle, and his pace only slowed when he stood before it, eyes narrowing slightly in that familiar way of his—that quiet mix of curiosity, instinct, and something colder. The next challenge was a pillar. But not just any pillar.

  It was a towering stone monolith, rising a good thirty-five meters into the air, weathered by the wind and stained by time. Thick, grey, and old, it cast a long shadow over the training grounds, standing like a lonely fang jutting out of the earth. Around it, scattered across the dirt, were stone discs—dozens of them—each one large and worn, as if passed through many hands and seasons.

  Tarak’s eyes fell on a small wooden sign nailed into a stump nearby. It was scrawled with rough, blocky handwriting.

  “Take it to the top.”

  That was all it said.

  Tarak snorted quietly through his nose. The instructions were clear enough.

  His attention returned to the stone discs. They were thick—about a foot thick and well over a meter across—solid slabs of granite darkened by age and scuffed from use. Most bore small chips and scars, and a few had moss creeping along their edges. They were cumbersome, wide enough to make handling them awkward, especially for someone like Tarak—still young, barely five feet tall. But awkward didn’t mean heavy. Not for him.

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  He reached down toward one, his arms flexing under the black-warded training vest. The disc was clumsy in his grip, just a little too wide to hold comfortably, but he managed. His clawed fingers dug into the edges, and he grunted—not from effort, but from the inconvenience of the shape.

  Then, after a brief pause, he tilted his head, frowned, and decided he didn’t like how it felt.

  Crack.

  He slammed his head forward, and the edges of his two frontal horns—black and white, gleaming in the light—pierced the granite like it was soft bread. The stone didn’t shatter, but split cleanly in one place and clung to his horns as he stood back upright, the disc jutting from his head like a bizarre war decoration. It swayed slightly but held fast. Balanced.

  He reached down again, grabbing another disc with both hands. This time he hoisted it up in a swift, clean motion and turned toward the pillar.

  The climb began.

  His feet found the stone with practiced ease. Claws extended from his toes, digging into the pillar’s ancient surface like tiny anchors. His tail coiled beneath him for a moment—then spikes burst along its length with a slick, clicking noise. It lashed upward, embedding itself in the stone as well, providing balance and leverage as he climbed.

  His body moved smoothly against the sheer rock face, barely hindered by the disc speared on his horns or the one he carried. His muscles worked in perfect concert, lean strength moving under smooth brown skin. The wards in the vest fought him, dragging every movement, but he’d long since learned how to account for their pull—how to move despite them, not around them.

  The pillar, meanwhile, had become a point of focus for everyone watching.

  “Is he...?” someone murmured.

  “He’s gonna climb it with that thing on his head?”

  “By the seven suns...”

  As Tarak reached the top, he balanced easily on the narrow edge and dropped the disc from his hands into place with a low thud. Then he twisted his neck, slowly dislodging the one on his horn, letting it slide off and fall next to the other. Two down.

  He turned.

  More remained.

  A dozen? No—more. He blinked. Twenty? Thirty?

  There were fifty-six.

  He didn’t pause. Not once. Up and down, he moved like a metronome made of muscle and intent. Every ascent was smooth, clean, and swift. Every descent was calculated. He carried the discs in his arms, on his back, balanced across his shoulders. At one point he had two gripped under each arm, one hooked by his tail, and another wedged between his upper and lower back with part of his long tail like he was hauling his own grave marker. Still he climbed.

  The crowd didn’t know when the awe set in. But they felt it.

  Even Lennix, usually quick with a joke, hesitated. His brows furrowed. “Wait, Tarak, you know you only need to do o—”

  But Hati’s hand shot out across his chest, firm and final.

  “Let him cook,” she said.

  Lennix blinked. “...What?”

  She didn’t answer.

  By the time the suns had shifted in the sky just slightly, Tarak stood at the top of the pillar. Not just with a few discs. Not just with a dozen. But all fifty-six. They were stacked in perfect order, symmetrical and clean, each disc resting snug atop the last. The final slab balanced flat on the crown, a granite halo placed by the boy who wasn’t able to cultivate.

  He stood beside them, tail flicking idly, looking down at the training grounds from his perch like a king atop a broken mountain.

  Then came Hati’s voice, sharp and thunderous as always.

  “Good! Now you have to take the entire thing down from there!” she yelled up, grinning wide.

  Tarak looked down, the wind teasing strands of his dark, silken silver tipped hair as it drifted against his brow. Below, far beneath the edge of the thirty-five-meter pillar, stood Hati, her hands cupped around her mouth as she shouted up at him. Her eyes were wild with unfiltered excitement, glowing almost ferally beneath the light of the seven suns. She was beaming like a wolf who’d spotted blood on the horizon.

  He didn’t return the smile. He just blinked once, slow and heavy-lidded.

  Then, turning, he faced the stack—the tower of stone discs that now loomed in front of him. It was ridiculous from this close. Fifty-six stone slabs, each over a meter across and a foot thick, all balanced one atop the other. The total height of the tower actually surpassed his own by several times over, and it sat there now like a silent monument, waiting to be moved again.

  Tarak inhaled.

  His body shifted.

  He stepped forward and bent, claws scraping stone as he dug his fingers beneath the stack with careful precision. His knees bent low, tail lashing slightly as his balance locked in place. The vest clung to him like a parasite, its ward-threaded fibers dragging against every motion, adding invisible resistance to his already titanic effort.

  Then came the exhale.

  And the lift.

  He grunted—just once—as the weight surged against his body. His muscles rippled beneath his skin like tidal waves, cords of strength bulging across his frame as the stone began to rise. It was slow. Measured. But it rose. The discs shook slightly as he adjusted the angle, centering them with raw instinct and feel alone.

  A chorus of gasps and shouts rose up from below.

  “No way—”

  “He’s actually lifting it—he’s actually—!”

  Roars of disbelief and scattered applause echoed across the training yard, but Tarak heard none of it. His face was fixed forward, stoic and focused, lips set in a thin line, fangs just peeking out between them. Sweat pearled across his brow, shimmering in the seven colored glow of the suns. His crimson eyes gleamed with a silent fury, not at anyone or anything, but simply against limitation. His body was straining now—finally straining.

  He could feel it. The tearing. The microscopic shredding of muscle fibers in his shoulders, in his arms, the slight microfractures of internal pressure as his frame bore the ridiculous weight. But with every tear, his body pulsed in return. The pain was met by an immediate, subconscious response—his cells swelling, fibers stitching, veins thickening. He was adapting in real time.

  But it wasn’t enough to keep up.

  Not completely.

  The vest made sure of that.

  The enchantments within it pulsed, shimmering just beneath the cloth’s surface like a web of living resistance. Its function wasn’t to make things hard—it was to make them impossible. And yet, here he was, standing with a stone tower pressed above his head like a child holding a bowl of water.

  He couldn’t hold it forever. He knew that. But he would be stronger for it. That made it worth it.

  He adjusted his grip slightly, looking down the sheer face of the pillar beneath him.

  Then, in a moment of utter stillness—he jumped.

  It wasn’t a jump so much as a descent born of madness. A meteor fall. His form sailed through the air, a blur of dark skin, silver-lined hair, and gleaming horns trailing a spire of granite behind him. The weight didn’t slow him—it dragged the heavens down with him. And when he landed, the impact was cataclysmic.

  BOOM.

  The earth didn’t crack—it cratered. Dust exploded outward in a ring as the stone discs remained stacked, balanced with uncanny precision. Tarak crouched beneath them, muscles locked in place, tail plunged into the soil for additional support. His knees were slightly bent, the earth beneath his feet visibly crushed into layered sediment.

  He rose slowly, his back straightening, breath heavy but controlled.

  The soles of his feet throbbed slightly from the force transfer, but nothing more. No bruised ribs. No shattered joints. No organ trauma. That was the nature of his people—uniform durability, a body so complete that no part could be damaged before the rest. But his arms… his arms were burning. The jump had sent a cascade of pressure through every tendon and ligament. He could feel the tearing more acutely now. The swelling. The hot pulse of pain.

  And still his body fought to repair it—it was sudden, not commanded but rather instinctual, natural. The shift had already begun.

  He stood in silence, the stone still above him.

  The crowd erupted again.

  “Holy—! That’s insane! How can he even lift that much?” Lennix exclaimed, hands on his head, his blonde hair tousled from the force of the landing.

  “Muscle! That’s how!” one of the two comically massive wolfmen bellowed, hitting a dramatic flex. His biceps ballooned as he struck a proud pose, his face somehow even more obscured by shadow than before.

  “With no cultivation… isn’t that impossible?” Kofi said, his eyebrows rising as he looked up at Tarak with something between disbelief and awe, fully ignoring the posing duo.

  “Even with cultivation,” Lennix said, still staring slack-jawed, “Numen reinforcement boosts strength and durability, sure—but it’s built for striking strength. Killing force. It’s not made for lifting like that. That's why combat techniques exist. Defense techniques. Durability boosts. You’re not supposed to just tank the world raw. Numen at least at the first layer doesn’t give a body like that. He’s even more powerful than a greatbeast! ”

  “We’ve all done this before,” Joan said, his voice caught somewhere between awe and mild existential dread. He staggered forward into view like a man who’d just watched his life’s work casually turned into a warm-up. His mouth hung open so wide a passing bird might’ve mistaken it for shelter. “My max was like five of those things at once. Five. Garran’s the strongest out of all of us—elders not counting—and even he only managed to get up to nine of them at one time.”

  His brown wolfish eyes were saucers, his fuzzy ears pointed straight up toward the stone tower still balanced in the boy’s arms like it belonged there and didn’t absolutely dwarf him. Tarak didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as glance at the crowd. He simply moved forward, as if lifting an entire tower were just one more weight in a set.

  Hati scoffed. Loudly. “Just ‘cause you can’t doesn’t mean he can’t,” she said, arms folded with confidence that bordered on smug. “You’re just steeped in your own weakness. You see a mountain and sit down to cry about it. He sees a mountain and throws it over his head. Take this as inspiration. Something to fire you up, not drag you down.”

  Joan opened his mouth, but Lennix cut in with a raised brow and a lopsided smirk. “Didn’t you only manage six, Hati?”

  “Ahem,” she coughed primly into her hand, looking off to the side. “That’s not the point. The point is, if he can do it, you can. Use this. Let it slap you awake. The world’s bigger than you thought. Get stronger.”

  Kofi shot her a deadpan look, one hand resting on his hip, the other gesturing at Tarak like a man pointing out a thunder god wearing a child’s skin. “What kinda bullshit is that?” he asked flatly. “Me and you were born in the same pack. Same bloodline, same bones. That kid—he’s not just stronger, he’s ten rungs higher on the fucking food chain. You think all it takes is ‘inspiration’ and some motivational speeches?” He gestured wildly. “If shit were that simple, then the little pipla crawling on the ground’d be ripping through boulders like candy.”

  Hati didn’t back down. “So what? Just roll over and die? You got two choices: sit in your weakness and whine, or chase after what you saw. We’re adults. We can’t let them outdo just yet. We can still fight.”

  The argument simmered, hanging thick in the air as the crowd watched Tarak approach the next challenge. Even the wolfmen—one with the strange spiked blonde hair and the other with a bushy dark beard—had paused their chants of “Muscle!” and turned toward the new test in contemplative silence.

  Joan’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if speaking too loudly might spook the moment. “I wonder…” he muttered, his eyes wide as saucers again. “Can he get past the next one with that much weight…?”

  The next obstacle yawned before Tarak like a silent dare.

  A pit.

  Deep, narrow, and unforgiving.

  Filled to the brim with long, wicked spikes—each one jagged and uneven, glinting in the sunlight like predatory teeth wooden pikes tipped in snavine spines. Unlike the snake pit, there was no illusion of mercy here. If you fell, you died. There was no writhing danger, only cold geometry—nothing living, yet still more threatening. The only way across was a path of narrow stone platforms, but they were thinner than the ones from the earlier pit. Thinner… and far more treacherous.

  Each one looked like it had been rigged. Their surfaces were uneven, tilted slightly to trick the balance. Some trembled visibly with the wind, creaking under their own weight. None of them were built to withstand the load of fifty-six stone discs stacked atop one another. Not even one. Hell, even he might break them just by stepping on them wrong.

  The sign next to the obstacle was simple, carved in old script:

  Carry the weight. Don’t fall.

  Kofi narrowed his eyes. “Those things are rigged. I’ve done this part before. Hell, even barehanded, it’s a bitch to cross. Now he’s got a whole tower on his back.”

  Lennix rubbed the back of his neck, watching the boy approach the edge with no hesitation, no pause for breath, as if this were just the next stretch of road. “That’s a suicide run…” he muttered.

  “He’ll do it,” Hati said, voice calm but brimming with absolute confidence. Her eyes gleamed. “He’s not just walking over it—he’s showing it who’s boss.”

  Almost as if summoned by her certainty, two voices rang out from the training grounds.

  “MUSCLE!”

  “MUSCLE!!!”

  The two hulking wolfmen flexed in unison once more, their shadows seeming to grow darker, obscuring even their grins, like war banners of muscle and nonsense.

  All eyes returned to Tarak.

  He didn’t look at the crowd. He didn’t bask in their awe. He simply walked to the edge of the spike pit, the mountain of stone still carried in his arms with seeming ease though that wasn’t the reality.

  Tarak looked on, lips curled in faint annoyance, a dull throb pulsing through his forearms and into his shoulders. His arms hurt. Not in the way a wound would sting, but in that slow, grinding ache that came from pushing against limits no one was meant to flirt with. The vest wasn’t helping. Every movement was like swimming in half-solid air, the threads of warded restriction woven deep into its fibers humming ever so slightly, almost like a hum of resistance in his ears. He could feel it—those ancient binding runes pulsing with quiet rejection against his every twitch.

  And the jump. That damn crater-leaving meteor drop he’d made earlier, tower of stone in tow? That didn’t exactly help either. His regeneration was taxed—not overwhelmed, never that, not for him—but it was strained. He could feel his body struggling to knit together the micro-tears in his muscles even as he demanded more from them. It was like asking a man fixing a house to keep adding floors at the same time. Construction was a curious thing. He’d learned about it from Surya who said that some of the infrastructure in the village was horrid whatever that meant. He shook his head.

  Still, he could move.

  Tarak shifted, stepping slowly, steadying the massive stack of stone discs that loomed over him like a ridiculous monument to ego. His claws adjusted their grip, nails digging into the edges as his head tilted slightly to peek around the side of the pile. Just a glance. Just enough to take in the pit before him.

  Rows of spikes. Serrated and uneven, jagged with cruelty. The sun gleamed off their blood stained edges, casting long, warped shadows across the stone—shadows that danced whenever a wind passed through, as though the spikes themselves were alive. And the platforms? Thin. Cracked. Barely supported their own weight, let alone his.

  There was no way to cross with this kind of burden. Not by foot. Not the traditional way. Not without snapping the platforms like dry bark and ending up impaled through the chest by three dozen very unfriendly snavine spine pikes. Even he’d be injured from that though he wouldn’t die.

  So, Tarak crouched.

  The air trembled.

  The earth groaned beneath him like it knew what was about to happen. Small stones rolled away from his heels. A hush fell across the training grounds as even the chatter faded. Tarak’s muscles bunched beneath his glinting skin, his tail unfurling, long and sinuous yet thcickly plated, coiling like a serpent preparing to strike. Every ligament in his body compressed in tandem, all tension and potential energy waiting for release. His claws dug into the dirt. His toes curled. His spine arched just slightly.

  He was imitating.

  Not just a movement. Not just a technique. But a man. A demon, really.

  Midea.

  The way he moved when he fought. That sudden burst of velocity. That staggering, abrupt shift from stillness to violent speed. The martial art was his—Midea’s. Something he'd demonstrated once, maybe twice, in a flurry of motion Tarak had never forgotten. The key, Midea had explained, wasn’t simply raw power—it was elasticity. Compress the body, the bones, the muscles, the tendons—draw them inward like a bowstring pulled taut—and then, in a single moment, let go.

  It was a suicidal maneuver without the proper structure. Even with numen, the move was inherently damaging, like stretching a muscle past its limits and hoping you didn’t rip it off the bone. Midea had used numen to buffer it. Tarak didn’t have numen.

  So he substituted something else.

  Will. Well that and a great deal of physical might.

  Tarak wasn’t sure his muscles and bones matched the demon’s in structure or function. He suspected they didn’t. But his tail? That long, dense appendage was, pound for pound, the strongest muscle in his body. He brought it to bear now, coils tightening against the earth as if trying to snap the planet in two.

  His breathing slowed.

  One breath in.

  One breath out.

  Steam curled from his mouth like mist, despite the heat of the day. His skin radiated warmth. His body tensed, muscles humming like drawn cords, and then—

  He jumped.

  The world exploded beneath him.

  The earth cracked, a perfect circle spiderwebbing outward as the sheer force of his leap launched him like a missile. His tail drove downward like a battering ram, hurling him into the air with the mountain of discs still perfectly balanced in his arms. A high arc. A clean vault.

  The pit stretched below—fifty feet of death lined with spikes—but it might as well have been a puddle. Tarak soared.

  Time slowed.

  The light of the seven suns gleamed off his horns. His shadow passed over the pit like a stormfront, the tower of discs casting a massive silhouette as onlookers craned their necks, jaws dropped. Even the wind held its breath.

  Then he landed.

  The impact was thunderous. A cloud of dust surged upward. His feet skidded against the stone, carving twin trenches in the training ground. The discs in his arms wobbled once—twice—but held. His knees buckled slightly, and pain flared through his legs like fire. But it wasn’t enough. It never was.

  He was a Tyrannius. He was tougher than he was strong, and he was strong enough to carry towers.

  His feet stung. His arms screamed. His regeneration clawed to keep pace, patching microtears, reinforcing muscle fiber even as it tore again. His tail twitched with residual tension. And still, he stood.

  “That’s fucking awesome, dude!!” Kofi shouted, nearly leaping into the air, fists punching the sky.

  “You got it, Tarak!!” Hati cheered, slapping her thigh with pride, grinning like a lunatic.

  “In one leap,” Lennix muttered, rubbing his face as if trying to scrub the disbelief from it. “That’s just… insane.”

  Tarak exhaled, his breath coming out in huffs, sweat beading down his chest, his brow. The glistening warmth of effort shone on his skin like molten bronze. But he didn’t complain. He didn’t speak. He simply looked forward.

  There was only one part left.

  A final task.

  Simple in theory, brutal in practice.

  Rep the weight.

  Lift it.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  For as long as you could.

  For as long as your spirit endured.

  Tarak stepped forward.

  And the ground trembled beneath him.

  “Now for the finale! The bench event! Go to your max! Go beyond!” one of the muscular wolfmen boomed, his voice like a warhorn, echoing over the training ground. His grin stretched wider than it reasonably should have, his sharp canines gleaming as he slammed a fist against his own chest for emphasis.

  Tarak’s hands trembled slightly as he shifted under the crushing weight. Fifty-six stone discs—each over a meter wide and a foot thick of solid granite—rested atop a platform that had been constructed for this very moment. His bare back pressed against it, the dense wood creaking beneath his mass. He could feel the full, searing resistance in his limbs as he moved into position. The restrictive vest clung to him like a parasite, threads of suppression humming with intent, resisting his every twitch.

  And yet, he began.

  The first rep was slow. Grinding. His arms shook under the sheer density. But the discs rose, inch by inch. And then down. He found his rhythm, teeth gritted, a faint snarl on his lips as the first wave of damage hit his muscle fibers.

  The burn wasn’t foreign. The pain wasn’t new.

  He embraced it.

  Heat seared through his arms and chest, but it was followed almost instantly by that familiar shifting. That numbing chill that only a Tyrannius knew—regeneration knitting his fibers mid-strain, microtears being sewn shut as fast as they opened. That was his adaptation kicking in. The ancient instincts of a race that grew only through suffering, pain, and pressure. And so he pressed on.

  Ten.

  Twenty.

  Thirty.

  The crowd had grown silent—less shouts and more stunned breath-holding now. The wolfmen who had once cheered with bravado now stared with their jaws slightly open. The craftsman who’d joked earlier said nothing, not a peep, as Tarak’s back flexed under the weight of the heavens.

  Sixty.

  Eighty.

  His breathing turned ragged, but the plates continued to rise. Sweat painted his brow, ran down the sides of his face, past his neck, trailing his collarbone like slow-moving rain. Each breath was steam. His hands were locked onto the base of the crude granite bar, claws digging slightly into the surface to hold on.

  One hundred and ten.

  By now, there was no noise at all. Just the creak of stone. The occasional grunt. The shifting of his bones against strain. Tarak’s vision blurred slightly, and the edges of the world fuzzed as blood and heat competed for priority in his head.

  Two hundred and thirty.

  His arms screamed. His nerves pulsed with electricity. And then… finally… there was nothing more to give. His regeneration had grown strained under the continued assault, and even his adaptability couldn’t outpace the rate of destruction anymore. He was out of slack.

  So he let go.

  Thunk—CLACK—CRASH.

  The entire pile dropped.

  Like a miniature landslide, the discs tumbled off the makeshift bench in a chaotic cascade, crashing down and splintering the earth as the boy beneath them vanished from sight. One disc split on impact as it slammed into his horn, snapping clean in half, tumbling to the side.

  Tarak didn’t even move.

  He lay in the crater of stone and weight, shadows cast across his face. His vision had gone dim. Not unconscious—just… unwilling to bother. He simply did not feel like getting up. He didn’t have to. He’d done what he came to do. And if the world wanted to bury him in stone for a moment, that was fine.

  “Tarak!” a voice rang out.

  High-pitched. Feminine. Urgent.

  Hati.

  There was shuffling, quick boots and heavier steps as several figures rushed across the training grounds to dig him out. Hands pulled away the stones—familiar ones. Lennix, Kofi, Joan… and then, him.

  That man again. The grinning one. The massive wolfman with the too-shadowed face and bizarrely bright blonde hair. His presence always felt slightly off, but he was the first face Tarak saw.

  “Nice going, young Tarak,” he said, voice deep and warm, dragging the boy from the pile like he weighed nothing. “Your muscles are truly excellent.”

  Tarak blinked blearily at him, expression unreadable but vaguely annoyed.

  The man’s grin widened impossibly.

  “Remember,” he said, pointing a clawed finger at the boy’s chest, “there is truth in the body. And the body is the avatar of truth. A strong body is representative of a mighty mind—and a mighty soul.”

  Tarak, despite himself, was curious.

  He knew that physical development increased his strength. That much was obvious. A larger muscle could push more. Could resist more. But… was muscle size truly meaningful? Was it a measure of something deeper?

  “A more cut and powerful and large body…” the man continued, voice now rich with something almost reverent, “...means a body capable of bearing the weight of all things.”

  The words didn’t land like thunder.

  They landed like truth.

  Tarak’s crimson eyes, still dappled with the lingering haze of exertion, shimmered faintly. Not with tears, not with sentimentality, but with resolve. There was a shine in his gaze now—a quiet gleam that had nothing to do with the suns or his race’s inherent majesty. A boy’s fire, perhaps. Or something deeper.

  Because he did want to bear the weight. All of it.

  The weight of pain.

  The weight of guilt.

  The weight that came when Surya was hurt or when she stressed about the future and there was nothing he could do. When Sol was quiet for too long. When the world didn’t care what a child wanted and handed them struggle. He hadn’t experienced it much but Tarak was not stupid. He knew struggle would come. Surya and Midea seemed worried about something.

  And tarak? He wanted to bear that weight.

  And so he spoke.

  “Teach me,” he said simply.

  The words weren’t loud, but they cut through the heat and silence like a blade. The mans shadowed face grinned again—no, he beamed—and reached down, one thick-veined, clawed hand gripping Tarak by the shoulder and lifting him clean from the wreckage.

  The others—Kofi, Joan, Lennix, even the two craftsman from earlier—just stared. Even the hecklers from before didn’t have a word to say. A shift had happened. They all felt it.

  “Now…” the man said, his chest puffing, his shadow strangely vast for the shape he cast beneath the seven suns, “...SIDE CHEST!”

  With a rawk of movement, the man flexed. His arms folded in, chest rising to mountainous prominence. His torso exploded outward like an overpacked bag of stone and steel, his tunic giving a sickly rrrrippp as it tore off in several clean lines. Threads fluttered to the dirt like lost feathers.

  Tarak blinked once. Despite the weight in his arms, despite his exhaustion, despite the damage across his muscle groups, he copied the motion.

  A short boy. A child. Just over five feet tall.

  But when he flexed—

  His musculature shifted, pulled taut with power and potential. His form wasn’t bloated or overbuilt—no, his was the physique of something meant to become something extraordianry. He was compact and efficient, every muscle like it had been carved deliberately. Not a single ounce of excess.

  Defined shoulders. A lean chest. Powerful arms with tight insertions and faint vascular trails along his biceps. His abs, though not fully defined, hinted at a brutal core. Muscles that shouldn’t even exist on most humanoids stirred beneath his skin, quietly asserting their place in the world. He had groups no wolfman possessed, but the effect wasn’t grotesque. If anything, it was aesthetic—the symmetry too exact, the geometry of his frame built for a future that hadn’t yet arrived.

  Still… his was the body of a child.

  A young one.

  But a powerful one.

  “Side chest,” he echoed, breath catching, voice hardening just slightly. His tail flicked once, then wrapped back around his waist as he held the pose.

  The soldiers lost it.

  Hoots. Hollers. Shouts of praise and muscle-based madness rang out as if a war had been won. The other beefy wolfman—brother-in-bulk to the blonde lunatic—flexed right beside them, perfectly mimicking their pose in a glorious triangle of exposed deltoids and bared teeth.

  Hati had had enough.

  With a noise more growl than word, she exploded into the scene, blurring like a cannonball launched from pure maternal rage. Her body twisted in midair, legs stretching in perfect form, and with a resounding crash, she drop-kicked the blonde wolfman into a wooden wall with such force that dust, splinters, and a faint bird scattered into the sky.

  “Enough of that!” she barked, standing where he had been with one knee raised and her foot still outstretched from the kick. “We don’t need you corrupting the youth!”

  Laughter erupted in waves.

  Soldiers doubled over. Even Joan, whose mouth was so often wide with disbelief, now had it open in full-throated laughter. The wolfmen twins had collapsed into a bicep-hugging heap of cackling.

  Hati didn’t care.

  She turned, eyes sharp but gleaming with pride. She walked straight toward Tarak, brushing a bit of hair from her face and slowing only once she was beside him.

  And then, despite the sweat clinging to his skin like a second layer, she wrapped him in a hug anyway.

  “Good job, Tarak. I’ll definitely get you some rannhorn milk.” Hati leaned in and tousled his hair roughly, her claws gentle despite their size. She smirked, proud and smug as usual, but there was a hint of honest warmth beneath it. Tarak blinked at the affection but didn’t recoil, just tilted his head like a curious beast tolerating touch.

  “Hmm?” Hati’s expression shifted. Her nose twitched. She leaned in again, her brow quirking in subtle confusion as she took a deeper whiff. Her expression scrunched slightly as her snout crinkled, and she pulled back just a bit.

  “That’s weird,” she muttered under her breath, more to herself than anyone else.

  “What’s the issue?” Kofi asked, approaching from behind, his deep voice nonchalant but with a flicker of genuine curiosity. He glanced between the two of them, eyes narrowing slightly as he folded his arms across his broad chest.

  “He doesn’t smell like anything,” Hati replied, still half-frowning, half-squinting as she scratched the side of her face. “Except, well… granite. Despite being as sweaty as your unwashed balls.”

  Tarak blinked once, tilting his head at the comment. He didn’t really know how to respond to that, so he didn’t. He just kept blinking.

  Kofi froze, his expression cracking. “Oh my—you know what, forget it.” He shook his head, muttering something inaudible as he stepped closer to inspect the situation himself, sniffing lightly in Tarak’s direction. His eyes sharpened. “Yeah... I don’t smell sweat either,” he confirmed, tone edged with curiosity and just the slightest hint of unease. “That’s... odd.”

  “Just add it to the list of weird things about the siblings, eh?” Lennix said, his voice coming from behind them as he approached with hands resting behind his head, casually strolling in with that half-lazy, half-alert walk of his. His wolf ears twitched slightly with interest. “Y’know. Strange power levels. Unnatural speed. No cultivation. Doesn’t bleed properly. Doesn’t smell properly now either.”

  “Tyrannius,” Hati said absently, like she was still turning the thought over in her head. “That’s what Surya called them, right?”

  She turned her attention back to Tarak, eyes sharp now, glittering with something between curiosity and concern. “Do you know why?” she asked, cocking her head to the side, tone gentler this time—probing, not accusing.

  Tarak just shrugged.

  There was no defensiveness in the gesture. No awkwardness or evasion. He just didn’t know. His shoulders rose and fell once in a smooth motion like a wave passing through him. Then he turned, stepping away as his voice came calm and quiet, unaffected.

  “I’m going to find Sol,” he said simply.

  No elaboration. No hesitation.

  He moved with that familiar grace of his—not floating, not striding, but something in-between, like a panther with somewhere to be. The granite dust still clung faintly to his skin, and the light of the seven suns danced off the dried sweat that didn’t smell like anything at all.

  “Swing by later!” Hati called after him, hands on her hips now as her voice returned to that sharp edge of command-and-care that she so often wore. “I’ll have some milk for you. I gotta take these useless ones on patrol.”

  She flashed a grin that was more fang than smile.

  “Have fun.”

  Tarak nodded without turning back, his tail swaying slowly behind him as he went about his day.