The room smelled of old wood, medicine, and ash.
Midarion lay still, listening to the unfamiliar quiet. The Black Post had a sound to it—metal shifting, distant voices, the low hum of life pressed into stone. Now there was only the faint crackle of a dying fire somewhere beyond the walls and the measured rhythm of another man's breathing.
Theomar hadn't moved.
He stood near the bed, arms crossed, posture rigid in a way Midarion recognized. Not battle-ready. Holding something together.
"You should've been dead," Theomar said at last.
It wasn't accusation. It wasn't relief. Just a fact stated carefully, as if naming it too sharply might break something fragile.
Midarion swallowed. His throat burned. "I figured."
"The venom entered your bloodstream within minutes," Theomar continued. "By the time I reached you, it should've stopped your heart. Elhyra said the same. Every healer said the same."
He finally looked at Midarion directly. "You didn't survive because of luck."
Midarion shifted slightly, pain flaring through his leg and chest. He hissed under his breath. "Then why?"
Theomar didn't answer.
Instead, another presence filled the doorway.
Ren.
He hadn't been there a moment ago—or perhaps Midarion had simply failed to notice him. The man stood with his arms loose at his sides, expression unreadable, eyes sharp and assessing. He looked less like a visitor and more like a verdict.
"Because his body adapted faster than the venom could kill him," Ren said. "And because something inside him refused to shut down."
Midarion frowned. "That's not an explanation."
Ren stepped closer. His gaze dropped briefly to the bandages, the faint discoloration still threading along Midarion's thigh. "It's the only one that matters."
Theomar's jaw tightened. "The Hand won't like mysteries."
"They already know," Ren replied.
That snapped Midarion's attention fully awake. "Know what?"
Ren finally met his eyes. "That you lived."
Silence stretched.
Theomar spoke slowly. "The Hand issued an order this morning."
Midarion felt it before the words landed—the subtle shift in the air, the same pressure he'd felt every time something beyond his control reached down and rearranged his path.
Ren continued, voice flat. "You're to be removed from jungle training indefinitely."
Midarion stiffened. "What?"
"You're to undergo sword style training," Ren said. "Directly under me."
Theomar turned sharply. "He's barely standing."
"And that," Ren said without looking at him, "is exactly why now."
Recovery was not dramatic.
There were no revelations, no sudden surges of strength. Midarion spent days barely moving, drifting in and out of sleep as his body fought to repair damage it didn't fully understand. The venom had left scars—not just in flesh, but in rhythm. His heartbeat stumbled sometimes, his breath lagged when he pushed too hard.
Elhyra had stayed for a week.
She never spoke about how close he'd come to dying. She sat beside him, changed bandages, hummed quietly when the pain spiked. When she left, she pressed her forehead to his once, eyes shining with something unspoken.
"I'll come back," she'd said.
He believed her.
Selina never came.
Reikika was gone too—out on E-rank contracts, Selina's name stamped on the authorization. Midarion heard fragments through passing guards, half-finished conversations in the corridors.
"She cleared another one." "Clean work." "Fast learner."
The Black Post felt colder without them.
On the eighth day, Ren returned.
"You're standing," he said.
Midarion was leaning against the wall, breath shallow but steady. "Barely."
"That's enough."
Ren turned and walked.
Midarion hesitated—then followed.
The training yard was empty.
No banners. No observers. Just stone beneath their feet and a rack of weapons against the far wall. Ren ignored every blade of steel and reached instead for something simple.
Wood.
He tossed it at Midarion's feet.
A wooden sword. Unpolished. Scarred from use.
Midarion stared. "That's it?"
Ren's gaze was sharp. "You're not touching steel."
"For how long?"
Ren stepped closer. "Until you stop thinking you deserve it."
Midarion clenched his jaw. "I've trained for two years."
"And almost died because you thought that meant something."
The words landed cleanly.
Ren circled him slowly. "No Kosmo. No Aura. No instincts you borrowed from the jungle. Just footwork. Balance. Breath."
Midarion lifted the wooden blade. It felt wrong—too light, too honest.
Ren struck.
Not fast. Not hard. Precise.
The blow caught Midarion's wrist, knocking the sword aside. Another hit followed, then another, each one exposing a flaw Midarion hadn't realized was there.
"Your feet are late," Ren said. Strike. "You lean when you commit." Strike. "You think speed compensates for form." Strike.
Midarion stumbled back, heart racing. "I'm still recovering."
Ren didn't slow. "So learn while you're weak."
Frustration flared hot and sharp. Midarion attacked, movement rough, power forced.
Ren disarmed him in two motions.
The wooden blade clattered against stone.
"Again," Ren said.
They trained until Midarion's legs trembled.
Then Ren sent him away.
The days that followed stripped him bare.
No variation. No praise. The same drills, repeated until the movement lost meaning and had to be rebuilt from scratch. Ren corrected everything—how he stood, how he stepped, how he breathed between strikes.
Midarion hated it.
He hated how small he felt. How slow. How every instinct he'd honed in the jungle was being dismantled piece by piece.
"You fight like someone who expects the world to move around him," Ren said one evening. "It won't."
Midarion wiped sweat from his eyes. "You think I don't know that?"
Ren met his glare evenly. "I think you learned how to survive. Not how to stand."
The words stayed with him.
At night, he lay awake listening to the Black Post breathe, thinking of Reikika moving through the world without him. Of Elhyra gone. Of Selina somewhere beyond reach.
Parallel lives.
Missed timing.
He was always catching up—or being left behind.
On the tenth day, Ren changed nothing.
He simply watched longer.
Midarion noticed it during a drill—Ren's eyes tracking his feet instead of his blade, his breathing matching Midarion's cadence. It unsettled him more than criticism.
When they stopped, Ren spoke quietly. "You survived something that should've erased you."
Midarion stiffened. "So everyone keeps telling me."
"That doesn't make you special," Ren said. "It makes you unfinished."
He stepped closer. "The Hand didn't assign me just to make you strong. They assigned me to see you complete, which means wielding a weapon."
Midarion's grip tightened on the wooden hilt. "And if I can't?"
Ren's answer was immediate. "Then you stop here."
Silence followed.
Midarion bowed his head slightly. Not submission. Acceptance.
"Then teach me how to start over."
Ren studied him for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Tomorrow, you learn how to be bad again."
When Midarion returned to his quarters that night, exhaustion settled deep into his bones. He sat on the edge of the bed, wooden blade resting across his knees.
It didn't hum. It didn't respond.
And yet—when he closed his eyes, he felt something faint. Not power. Not resonance.
Alignment.
He breathed in slowly.
Somewhere beyond the Black Post, Reikika was moving forward. Elhyra was answering a calling he couldn't yet touch. Selina was shaping things he didn't understand.
And here—here, he was being reduced to nothing.
He exhaled.
For the first time since the jungle, Midarion allowed himself a quiet thought:
Maybe this is where the bond really begins.
Not with strength.
But with humility.