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Chapter 7 - Chapter 7: Echoes in the Blood

The training ring had once been a sacred ground.

Now, it was cracked stone and dried mud, ringed with curious onlookers — elders, miners, even children balancing on fence posts. Word had spread like wildfire: the Pōwehi was going to spar.

Tavin stood shirtless at the center, trying not to look as nervous as he felt. His muscles ached, his stomach twisted, and his brand itched like it had something to say.

Across from him, Kaelara adjusted the wraps around her hands, flexing her fingers.

"Try to keep up," she said, smirking.

"Try not to break me in half."

She didn't respond.

She just charged.

Kaelara moved like falling stone—pure force. Tavin barely raised his arms before she was on him. Her first strike clipped his shoulder, sending him spinning, the next drove him into the dirt.

Cheers and gasps erupted from the crowd.

Tavin groaned, spitting dust. "Ow."

"You're not using it," Kaelara said, standing over him.

"Using what?"

"The space. The pull. Your advantage."

He rolled over and winced. "I don't exactly have a manual."

"Then improvise."

She reached down to help him up.

Tavin grabbed her arm and focused.

Collapse. Fold. Redirect.

The moment her fingers closed around his, he bent the space beside them — a flickering ripple that pulled her momentum sideways. Kaelara stumbled, eyes widening as she was yanked into empty air and landed hard on her side.

The crowd gasped.

Tavin stood, panting.

"Did… did that count?"

Kaelara grinned from the ground. "You're learning."

They reset. This time, she came in lower, and he reacted with instinct. Space bent, her foot passed through where he was—but not where he would be. His counter was clumsy but effective. She parried, he adapted. It became a dance.

Each exchange triggered something faint: the mark on his arm shimmered, and something under Kaelara's skin pulsed in response.

Niah, watching from the edge of the crowd, felt it too.

Resonance forming: Inert potential detected. Gravitic signature aligning.

Then came the break.

Kaelara surged forward, faster than before, her entire body sinking downward—

BOOM.

Her foot struck the ground, and a pulse of gravitational force rippled outward like a shockwave. Tavin's knees buckled, and he was driven flat to the dirt, like the world had decided he should kneel.

The villagers gasped again—but not in awe. In fear.

Tavin didn't move. His face was pressed into the soil. He tried to breathe, but the pressure was immense.

Kaelara stepped forward, her voice calm.

"You think power is about control," she said. "But it's also about weight. If you can't carry it, it crushes you."

Tavin's fingers clawed into the dirt. He could feel the Gate humming through the ground. It was responding to her now—recognizing something buried in her blood.

His mark flared in pain.

Resonance Conflict: Unbound Priestess Detected Name Match: [Kaelara, Blood of Skotos] Stabilization: Pending...

Tavin's knees buckled under Kaelara's gravitational pulse. The dirt swallowed him, breath caught in his lungs like air refused to obey.

Then, something flared in his mind—not a voice, but a memory not his own. Not words... but regret. A man staring at the same obsidian door. A trembling hand that never touched it. A decision not to act.

He saw an image: a younger version of his grandfather, standing in the old farmhouse basement, eyes full of fear as the Gate shimmered… and was left unanswered.

Tavin gasped.

The pressure vanished.

Kaelara rushed forward. "Tavin?"

He looked up at her, dazed. "He didn't go through."

"Who?"

"My grandfather. He was chosen. The Gate opened for him—but he didn't answer it."

Ema'Tari, standing just beyond the crowd, exhaled.

"That would explain it," she said softly. "The Gate never closes... it only waits. And when it called, he turned away."

"Then why me?" Tavin asked.

Ema'Tari met his eyes. Walking slowly in his direction.

"Because the Gate does not forgive. But it remembers."

Gate Pulse:

At the edge of the village, where the cracked black stones of the Skotos Gate lay dormant, the sigils flickered faintly. Not enough to open, not again. But they shimmered like old eyes blinking for the first time in years.

Deep in the jungle, water slithered through roots.

And far beneath the Wodr capital, a chamber filled with steam and silence whispered its warning:

The Pōwehi is awakening.

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