I was still half asleep, my muscles sore from the previous day, when I heard Eldreich’s staff strike the ground.

  The sound was dry. Deep. Rhythmic.

  Each impact seemed to echo inside my chest, as if the earth itself were answering its master’s call.

  “Rise, apprentice.”

  He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

  I pushed myself up awkwardly, my body protested immediately. The stone beneath me still held the chill of early dawn, and the air smelled of damp rock and ancient dust.

  The calm from last night’s meditation still lingered in me…

  But so did the pain.

  I followed him without speaking.

  His steps were slow but steady, measured—as if he walked in time with something older than both of us.

  Behind him, I tried to match my breathing to the steady rhythm of his staff.

  “Eldreich… how many before me have you trained?”

  “You are the first,” he replied, “in a long time.”

  “And the one before?”

  A pause.

  “You will know soon enough.”

  I didn’t press further.

  The garden of luminous roots faded behind us. The change began in the air… The green, humid scent dissolved, replaced by a dry sharpness that scraped at my throat. The ground lost its color, hardening beneath our steps.

  Then the green vanished completely to be replaced by only rock, sand and silence.

  Not the patient silence I had felt beneath the sprouts, this one was absolute.

  No vibration. No pulse. No murmur.

  Only the brush of my clothing and the steady knock of his staff.

  We stopped before a stone wall, it was not natural. Ancient symbols were carved across its surface, glowing with shifting emerald light. The runes slowly rearranged themselves, forming constellations that unraveled and reformed before my eyes.

  Eldreich pressed his palm against the wall and the stone yielded beneath his hand like water. A low murmur rolled through the ground, and after a brief tremor, a dark threshold opened wide enough to enter.

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  The air that poured from within was dense, it smelled of mold, salt, iron… and time.

  “Today you will face your final trial,” he said. “The Cave of Silences will show you what you still do not understand about yourself. If you emerge… you will be ready.”

  Ready for what?

  He didn’t say.

  “If you still wonder what happened to my previous apprentice,” he added, almost casually, “you will stop wondering when you come out. If you come out.”

  I clenched my fists.

  I stepped forward—but his hand fell on my shoulder, heavy and firm.

  “It would be wise to take a few basic spells with you.”

  “Now?” I stared at him. “You choose now to teach me?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Argument over, I exhaled.

  “Do you remember the exercise of becoming an unmoving stone?”

  My legs remembered far too well.

  “Yes.”

  “Then root yourself.”

  I planted my feet, knees bent, spine straight.

  The air felt thick, like I was breathing mountain dust.

  “Close your eyes. Become a mountain. When you feel it, say ‘Bergfestung’ and open them.”

  I imagined mountains enduring centuries of storms. Stone resisting fire and rain. Granite roots spreading beneath my feet, binding me to the heart of the world.

  My breathing grew heavier… Deeper. The ground trembled faintly.

  “Bergfestung.”

  I opened my eyes.

  And took a stone straight to the forehead.

  The impact sounded brutal—sharp and solid—yet my head barely moved. The rock fractured on contact, as if it had struck metal.

  I blinked.

  He had thrown it.

  “Was that necessary?” I asked flatly.

  “There was no pain,” he replied.

  And there hadn’t been.

  Only a strange density beneath my skin. Solidity.

  “Defensive spell. For a time, your body will be as resilient as stone.”

  He nodded once.

  “Pain teaches what words cannot.”

  Before I could answer, he drove his staff into the ground.

  A crack split open several meters away. From it rose a floating boulder the size of a ram, suspended in a field of golden energy. Runes rotated slowly across its surface.

  “Strike it.”

  “With what?”

  “With your will.”

  Dust swirled around me, wrapping my arms.

  “Remember the root,” he said. “Strength is not in the muscle. It is in the bond.”

  I swallowed.

  Stepped forward.

  I remembered the sprouts, the patience, the pulse beneath my knees.

  “Bergfaust,” he murmured. The word ignited in my mind.

  “Bergfaust.”

  Energy surged from my shoulders into my fists. A dense, earthen glow covered them—brown-gold, heavy like hardened lava.

  I struck.

  The impact thundered. The floating stone exploded into luminous fragments that dissolved before touching the ground.

  Silence.

  “The Fist of the Mountain,” he said. “It will open the way when stone refuses to yield. Use it without purpose… and you become a landslide.”

  I nodded.

  Then he looked at me again.

  “Now,” he said calmly, “strike a living opponent.”

  I froze.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Me.”

  He barely had time to brace himself.

  I stepped forward and drove my fist into his solar plexus.

  He dropped.

  There was a brief and profoundly undignified moment in which one of the greatest earth masters I knew was on the ground, struggling for air.

  I stared at him.

  “Are you… alright?”

  He gave a strained thumbs-up.

  “Yes,” he managed between breaths. “You have… initiative.”

  I waited.

  He rose with as much dignity as he could salvage.

  “Perhaps… a warning next time.”

  “I assumed that was part of the test.”

  He held my gaze for a long moment.

  “Acceptable.”

  The glow around my hands began to fade, leaving a faint tingling beneath my skin.

  Eldreich turned back to the wall, the runes burned brighter now.

  “Your body knows resistance,” he said quietly. “Now your mind will learn its limit.”

  He struck the ground three times.

  The threshold widened.

  Darkness breathed from within.

  “There is no sound inside, no wind, no company. Only what you hide beneath your thoughts.”

  The cold air cut through my lungs.

  “Listen carefully, Maki,” he added. “Silence does not always remain silent. Sometimes… it screams.”

  He stepped back, Istepped forward.

  “Go.”

  The threshold swallowed the light behind me.