Dane drifted in and out of consciousness. Heat and cold blurred together until he couldn't tell if his body was burning alive or buried beneath ice. Each breath was a challenge. In his moments of lucidity, he saw that Draka was surprisingly tender in her care. But when he fell back into his dreams, shadows stirred in the edges of his mind, long and reaching, tentacles that wouldn't let him go.

  He tried to move, but the tentacles tightened in response. Dane lost track of time; it could have been months, years, or centuries. With nothing else to do, he ran through previous battles in his mind. He noticed that his skills improved in response to the mind training.

  If he got out of his mind prison, the only weapon he had on him was his dagger, so he focused on working his temporal flow style into small weapons. The Fang of the Megalodon began to resonate with him. The longer he trained, the more he wanted to differentiate it from his Ax style. He wasn't trying to be like water; instead, the Fang demanded more animalistic movements.

  He focused on non-choreographed moves that seemed random. Dane added time fire to the dagger so that it would appear as if he had lashed out with multiple strikes. The freeform spell became an integral part of the style. He just hoped that it would be considered a passive spell because he wanted to use it during the rite.

  Small Weapons:12/25 (Common) upgraded to Echo Fang Style: 24/25 (Epic)

  You have specialized in using the bones of your enemies as a weapon. You receive +10% Damage when using weapons made from animals that you have hunted.

  Between moments of combat training when he had nothing to do, he saw Rebecca, standing on the horizon, but her face shifted; he never saw her the same. Sometimes she was an old woman, other times she was a little girl.

  The fever eventually broke. He woke choking on bile as hands forced him under, submerging him in ice. He felt a pain in his chest, and he began gasping. That's when he realized he was under some fluid. It was thicker, and an iron taste clung to his tongue. When he thrashed, rough claws pinned his shoulders beneath the surface. Once he called down the hands, let him back up.

  Draka loomed above him, scaled arms glistening, her expression hard as tempered steel. "You could have hurt someone," she said, her voice flat. "Do not mistake restraint for mercy. If you lose yourself again, I will end you."

  The surface boiled. A column of black gas wrenched itself from his mouth. It clawed skyward before the elders' chant dragged it down into the pool. The fluid swallowed it whole and went still.

  Dane didn't know how to respond. He remembered fighting with Draka, but it felt like he was watching himself from third-person when it happened.

  The medics eventually left him alone; their questions were less of a wellness check and more of an interrogation.

  "You move like a beast," Draka said, voice low and sharp.

  Her hand dropped, striking his sternum with two claws that tapped hard enough to sting. "Your mana channels are a mess. Like a child formed them."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The shame cut deeper than her words, but something in her tone carried no mockery, only a raw, unflinching truth. He nodded, and with a dry throat. "Then teach me."

  Draka's expression shifted, fierce light softening with approval. "Good. That's the first correct thing you've said since I met you." She stood, rolling her shoulders, then offered her hand. "Get up. We need to go into your soul space."

  He hesitated. "Into… my soul space?"

  "Yes," she said, as if naming the sky. "Every warrior worth the title must know the terrain within as well as without. That is where your spirit body rests. That is where your true channels flow. You cannot continue until you reform how your mana flows inside."

  Dane took her hand. The moment her grip closed around his, heat flooded him. It wasn't painful, but he felt the intent. Draka's mana wrapped around his, and the world around them bled away. The tent, the sand, even the faint wind fell silent, until nothing remained but a vast, endless black.

  A spark lit in the distance. Then another. Soon, the dark was webbed with faint strands of pale blue light, like veins cut across endless sky.

  Draka's voice came from beside him, though he could not turn his head. "This is you. These are your channels."

  The strands were jagged, broken in places, leaking droplets of light that fell and vanished into the void below. Dane stared, heart tightening. "Where's the beach?"

  "I cannot see inside your mind's eye. We are at your core." Draka said. "Your mana was left to carve its path through your body, like a river that hollows out a gorge, beautiful in its way. But, like a river that doesn't care if it washes away diamonds, the mana did not care about your meridians."

  Her claw tapped one broken strand, and the entire lattice shuddered. "I will show you how to reshape it and mend them. But the labor will be yours. And so will the pain."

  The void quaked, and Dane felt the first ripple of fire trace through his veins. His spirit body began to stir in the depths below.

  Draka's voice cut through the rising blaze. "Look for the shards, that is the only way to restore what once was."

  The soul space shifted as Draka's voice echoed around him. The white fog thickened, then parted into a path of faint, pulsing light.

  The air grew sharp with tension, like a storm on the verge of breaking. Ahead, a low growl rippled through the void. Dane's chest tightened as his eyes fixed on the glow at the heart of his being.

  A shape stirred there, massive and hunched. The closer he drew, the clearer it became: scales of obsidian, eyes burning with his opal hue, but it had a single feral line drawn through it, like a horrible reflection rather than a monster.

  Between its claws lay a heap of fractured crystals. Dane could feel the resonance; they were his shards, the scattered pieces of himself.

  The beast lifted its head, lips peeling back to reveal teeth jagged like broken glass. Its voice rumbled not from its throat, but from the space around him. "Mine."

  The shards pulsed, answering the claim. Dane felt the thrum in his chest, a tug pulling him toward the creature, as if it wasn't hoarding the fragments at all. Instead, it felt like they were part of them.

  Draka's voice, steady but distant, wove through the pressure. "There it is. When you incorrectly channel your mana into your muscle, this is what forms. The animal that's claimed your strength for itself. If you want those shards… you'll have to tame it."

  With one deliberate step forward, Dane extended his senses, letting instinct, time, and control flow together. The moment of reckoning had come, and the beast would either yield… or consume the shards and take everything anchored to them.