Awakening 137.
The taste of ash and brimstone. The groan of the earth. The grey, oppressive sky.
Kael opened his eyes. He was home.
He lay on a roughspun cot in a familiar barracks. Outside, the sounds of the quarry—the rhythmic clink of pickaxes, the rumble of carts, the barked orders of a foreman—were a morbid welcome. He was back in the Ashen Caldera, the place where it all began. He was seventeen, a rootless laborer, doomed to the pits.
For the first time in a hundred lifetimes, he felt a grim sense of satisfaction. Good. This was the perfect place to begin. This world of pain and pressure was the only forge suitable for the weapon he intended to become.
He swung his legs off the cot. The other boys in the barracks gave him a wide berth. There was something in his eyes—a stillness, a depth of age that didn't belong in a young man's face. He ignored them. He ignored the morning rations of stale bread. He ignored the foreman's bellowing summons.
He walked out of the barracks and headed towards the most dangerous, unstable region of the quarry: the Smoldering Heart, a section where the magma veins ran so close to the surface that the very air shimmered with heat. It was an area forbidden to rootless workers.
He found what he was looking for: a shallow pool of water, heated by the geothermal energy, thick with a black, metallic sludge. It was runoff from the Qi-rich magma, poison to a normal man. But Kael's library of failed lives held a memory from an alchemist in the Verdant Maze. This sludge, if one could survive it, contained trace elements that, when absorbed through the skin, had a petrifying, strengthening effect on mortal bone and sinew. The alchemist had deemed it too toxic, too painful to be of use.
Kael stripped off his tunic. This was it. The first lesson of his new scripture.
Adamantine Body Forging: Chapter 1. The Tempering.
He stepped into the pool.
Pain.
It was not the sharp, clean pain of a blade. It was a searing, consuming agony. It was the feeling of being boiled and frozen at the same time. The metallic sludge clung to his skin like burning acid, seeking to invade every pore. His body screamed at him to flee, to escape. His instincts, honed by 136 deaths, shrieked that this was suicide.
He clenched his jaw, the muscle bunching like iron. He focused on the pain, not as an enemy, but as a tool. It was the blacksmith's hammer, and he was the raw ore. He sank deeper, until the sludge was up to his neck.
This is the price, he thought, his vision blurring from the agony. This is the down payment for defying God.
He stayed in the pool until he passed out. He awoke on the bank, his body having convulsed its way to safety. He had failed. His skin was raw, blistered, and weeping.
The next day, he went back. He lasted ten seconds longer.
The day after that, twenty.
The other laborers thought he was mad. The foremen saw him as a dead man walking and didn't bother to waste discipline on him. He became a ghost in the quarry, his only purpose to visit his personal hell each day.
Weeks turned into months. His body became a roadmap of pain. Blisters formed, popped, and healed into thick, leathery scars. His bones ached with a fire that never went out. He was in constant, agonizing pain. But he was not breaking.
Something was changing. The pain was still there, but his tolerance for it grew. He could now stay submerged for half an hour. His skin, once raw, was now unnaturally tough, like hardened hide. He struck his fist against a rock, and a chip of stone flew off while his knuckles only felt a dull thud.
One evening, a routine tunnel collapse trapped a crew of workers, including a boy no older than twelve. A massive boulder, too heavy for the laborers to move, blocked the entrance. The lone cultivator guard on duty sneered, deeming it not worth his Qi to intervene for a few rootless. They would be left to suffocate.
Kael walked forward. He ignored the guard's dismissive glare. He placed his scarred hands on the boulder. It was immense, weighing several tons. He remembered the feeling of helplessness from his first life, the bitter resignation.
He closed his eyes and pushed.
He didn't use Qi. He didn't use a technique. He used muscle, bone, and sinew that had been baptized in agony for six straight months. He poured every ounce of his will, every memory of his 136 failures, into that single, desperate act.
There was a deep, groaning creak. Not from the boulder, but from his own skeleton. A seam of fire shot up his spine. His muscles screamed, threatening to tear from their anchors.
And the boulder moved.
It only shifted an inch, but it moved. The guard's sneer vanished, replaced by stunned disbelief. The other laborers stared, mouths agape.
Kael roared, a sound that was not human, but something forged and primal. He pushed again. The boulder scraped against the rock floor, inch by agonizing inch, until a gap was cleared. The trapped workers scrambled out, choking on the dust, staring at Kael as if he were a demon.
He collapsed, his body trembling, every fiber of his being screaming in protest. He had done it. It was a pitiful display compared to a true cultivator, who could have shattered the rock with a flick of their wrist.
But it was his.
He had not been given power. He had not stolen it. He had bled for it, screamed for it, forged it.
As he lay on the ground, the world spinning, he looked at his raw, trembling hands. This was not the end. This was not even the beginning of the end. But it was the end of the beginning. The victim was dead. The heretic had taken his first breath.