After weeks that could have been centuries, after the violent play of thunder and the supple lessons of wind, the void changed its voice again. A weight settled over Krish, not malicious but inevitable—like the gravity that keeps a planet from shattering. The sensation pooled in his chest and traveled to his feet, grounding him with a seriousness that made the hair on his arms stand up.
The earth stirred.
It arrived without spectacle—no tremor, no roaring—just the quiet assertion of matter. Stones might have formed beneath him if stones existed here. The feeling was of roots finding purchase and a spine growing straight. It settled into him like a second skeleton, a framework that gave his fluid potentials something to hang upon.
Earth reformed his balance from the inside. Where wind had taught movement and thunder impulse, earth taught endurance and resistance. When he envisioned a step, the void offered land. When he imagined a stance, it gave him mountain. The element thickened his limbs and turned breath into ballast. He tested it by standing still, then by pushing against his own center. The ground did not yield. That immovability proved more useful than some weapons; it was a promise: stand, and you will remain.
RC's diagnostics chimed with higher cadence, then softened. "Structural reinforcement detected. Musculature density elevated. Bone-lattice resistance augmented."
"Good," Krish said. There was a practical tone to the word. For all the poetry of awakening elements, survival was fundamental. Without earth anchoring thunder and wind, their combined force could have torn him asunder. With earth, his center held.
Silvia's voice uncoiled like a silver ribbon through the quiet. "Foundation is given to those who would build forever," she intoned—an old proverb that felt like prophecy. The dragon's presence warmed the new element in him, as if approving construction.
He walked then—careful, tentative—feeling the sensation of steps where there had been none a moment before. Each footfall settled like a declaration: I am here; I will not move until I choose to.
Krish practiced integrating the three elements together. Thunder gave the strike, wind the delivery, and earth the hold. In combat terms it was crude; in survival terms it was perfection. He could launch a lightning-driven kick that shattered illusions and then root himself like a bastion immediately after. This gave him options, and options became his currency.
He spent long cycles building that currency. He structured stances, choreographed attacks, then set them aside and refined them until they were not a sequence but a reflex. The void provided the practice field; RC supplied analysis; Krish did the labor.
When he rested, the silence of the void no longer felt empty. It felt like a room that had been furnished to his specification. Thunder still pulsed. Wind still hummed. Earth steadied it all like impressive frameworks under a cathedral.
And beneath all of it, there was the low, satisfied rumble of power beginning to make sense.
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