The peace of their rest day was a cup of sweet water drawn from a deep well, but it could not quench the relentless thirst of their purpose. The memory of Valac was a ghost that walked with them in the dappled light of the Supple Stone Forest, and Master Jin, it seemed, had decided it was time to give that ghost a voice.
Their new task was deceptively simple. The master led them to a different part of the clearing, where a large, flat disc of obsidian, polished to a mirror sheen, lay embedded in the mossy ground. It was about ten feet in diameter, and its surface was so pure it reflected the petrified canopy above with perfect, cold clarity.
"This is the Echo Stone," Master Jin announced. "It does not reflect light, nor force. It reflects essence. Intent. Memory." His gaze was heavy as it settled on Shuya and Kazuyo. "You have learned to resonate with a flower and silence a command. Now, you must learn to face the echoes of your own failures. The Stone will show you what you carry within. To master the Dao, you must first master the storms in your own spirit."
He gestured for Shuya to step onto the obsidian disc. "You first, Sun-Bearer. Stand in the center. Do not resist. Listen."
Apprehension coiled in Shuya's gut. He glanced at Kazuyo, who gave a slight, encouraging nod, then stepped onto the cold, glassy surface. For a moment, nothing happened. He saw only his own reflection, looking small and uncertain amidst the towering stone trees.
Then, the obsidian beneath his feet seemed to liquefy, not in a physical sense, but in its reflective quality. His image wavered and vanished, replaced by a scene that slammed into his senses with the force of a physical blow.
He was back in Silvervein. Not the cleansed, hopeful town of their victory, but the moment of their absolute defeat. The air was thick with the oppressive weight of Valac's presence. He saw himself, golden light flaring around him, unleashing his Calm Dominance. He saw it splash against the Blood Epoch's chest, not with purifying power, but with the pathetic impotence of a child throwing a pebble at a mountain. He heard Valac's voice, silken and contemptuous: "A child's notion of 'truth.'"
The scene shifted. He felt it—the cold, invasive touch of Valac's fingers on his forehead. Not a physical attack, but an ontological one. The feeling of his own inner sun guttering, not from lack of fuel, but from an imposed, absolute belief in its own insignificance. The despair was a physical coldness flooding his veins, the world greying out, his knees hitting the hard ground. He saw Kazuyo collapsing, hollowed out, a beautiful shell. He felt the weight of his own powerlessness, a leaden cloak that smothered every spark of hope.
"NO!" The cry was torn from Shuya's throat. On the obsidian, his reflection was now him kneeling, head bowed, light extinguished. He wasn't just watching the memory; he was reliving the spiritual evisceration. His own Resonance, the power he was trying to cultivate, began to spiral out of control, vibrating with the same frequency of despair that the Echo Stone was projecting. A flickering, sickly yellow light pulsed erratically around him, a visual manifestation of his shattered spirit.
"Shuya!" Kazuyo shouted, taking a step forward, but Master Jin held up a hand, his expression stern.
"He must face this. He cannot resonate with the strength of the universe if he is still resonating with the echo of his own defeat."
Shuya was drowning. Valac's words were not a memory; they were a current reality, a truth being carved into his soul anew. You are a single, stubborn note. He is the composer. His light sputtered, threatening to vanish entirely, to be swallowed by the grey nothingness of the Echo Stone's vision.
But then, through the torrent of despair, a single, clear note sounded. It wasn't from the stone. It was from the memory of the Salt-Folk elder, Anya, her voice the gentle crunch of gravel. "You carry a great silence with you. And a light that has forgotten how to burn."
The memory of the Singing Stone's patient endurance surfaced, the feeling of its deep, mineral stillness. He remembered the focus required to hear its single note.
I am not that kneeling boy, he thought, the words a desperate lifeline. I am the one who heard the song in the stone.
He stopped fighting the memory. He stopped trying to push the despair away with his failing light. Instead, he did what Master Jin had taught him. He listened. He let the full, horrific frequency of his failure wash over him, but he no longer resonated with it in panic. He observed it. He recognized its specific, bitter pitch.
And in that recognition, he found a tiny point of stillness, the way he had focused on a single crystal in the Salt-Folk's geode.
His breathing, which had been ragged, slowed. The sickly yellow light around him steadied, not into a blaze, but into a thin, unwavering golden thread. It was not a light of triumph, but of acknowledgement. He was not denying his defeat; he was accepting that it was a part of his song, a dissonant chord that did not have to define the entire symphony.
The horrific scene on the obsidian disc faded, reverting to a simple reflection of the canopy. Shuya stood in the center, pale and trembling, but on his feet. The golden thread of light held.
Master Jin nodded, a flicker of respect in his ancient eyes. "You have learned to differentiate the note from the noise. Good. Now, Null-Son. Your turn."
Kazuyo's face was a mask of apprehension. He had witnessed Shuya's torment, and the void within him, which had only recently begun to feel like Potential, now felt like a gaping wound waiting to be reopened. He stepped onto the cold obsidian.
His reflection stared back, all sharp angles and dark, haunted eyes. Then, the stone swallowed his image.
He was in the grand throne room of the Null Court, but it was not the place of quiet power he remembered. It was a mausoleum. His father, the Stilling King, sat on his throne of basalt, but he was a fossil, his eyes empty sockets, his hand still resting on Kazuyo's shoulder from the day he had bestowed the Nullification gift. The touch was no longer empowering; it was a chain. The weight of a thousand years of tradition, of silence as a weapon, of emotion as a flaw, pressed down on him, suffocating him. The courtiers were statues, their silent judgments etched in stone.
The scene shattered, replaced by Silvervein. He felt Valac's hand on his chest, not as an attack, but as an unmaking. He felt the conceptual architecture of his power—the careful, lifelong discipline of his nullification—being disassembled not piece by piece, but as a foundational concept. It wasn't broken; it was declared never to have existed. The resulting emptiness was not peaceful. It was a screaming vacuum, the terror of a soul that had lost its definition. He was not the Null-Son. He was nothing. A zero. A silence that meant nothing, because there was no sound to give it meaning.
On the obsidian, Kazuyo's reflection was him falling into an infinite, grey abyss, his mouth open in a silent scream. His body began to shudder, and the nascent control he had gained over his Potential shattered. A wild, uncontrolled null-field burst from him, not as a precise tool, but as a raw, panicked rejection of existence itself. The sound of the forest vanished. The light dimmed. The very air grew thin, as if the clearing were gasping for breath.
"Kazuyo!" Shuya cried out, his own hard-won calm fracturing. He could feel his friend's terror, a devastating resonance that threatened to pull him back into despair.
"Hold your center, Sun-Bearer," Master Jin commanded, his voice like a rock in a torrent. "He must find his own."
Kazuyo was lost. The void was not his friend; it was his torturer. He was defined by his absence, and the Echo Stone was showing him the ultimate, terrifying truth of that absence. To silence everything was to be alone in an infinite, soundless hell.
Then, through the screaming silence in his soul, a new sensation emerged. It was not a sound, but a presence. It was the memory of Shuya's hand on his shoulder in the cabin of the Wind Dancer, not pouring in frantic light, but simply being a still point in the darkness. It was the feeling of the uncarved block—not empty, but full of a patient, waiting peace. It was the shared focus across the stream, the harmony of their successful, silent effort.
He was not just the Null-Son. He was the one who had walked with a Sun-Bearer. He was the one who had orchestrated a river. He was the one to whom a friend had spoken in the dark.
The abyss on the obsidian did not vanish, but its nature changed. It was no longer a vacuum of meaning. It became… space. Potential. The blank parchment.
He remembered Master Jin's words. "You are a librarian, placing a single, unruly word in temporary stasis."
With a monumental effort of will, Kazuyo did not try to suppress the terrifying echo. He did the opposite. He focused his Power of Potential on the memory of Valac's unmaking touch itself. He could not erase the event, but he could, for a single, breathtaking moment, suspend its emotional truth. He placed the terror, the despair, the feeling of nothingness, into a state of conceptual stasis.
It was not deletion. It was filing it away.
The wild null-field snapped off. The sounds of the forest rushed back. The grey abyss on the obsidian solidified back into his own, weary reflection. Kazuyo stood panting, his clothes soaked with sweat, but his eyes were clear. They held a new, profound understanding. His silence was not a prison. It was a sanctuary. A place where even the most painful echoes could be held, examined, and their power to harm temporarily suspended.
For a long moment, the only sound was the clinking of the stone leaves. Both young men stood on the black mirror, having faced the worst of themselves and not been broken.
Master Jin approached the edge of the disc. "The Echo Stone does not lie. It shows you the music your soul is currently playing. Shuya, your song was one of defiance crumbling into despair. Now, it is a single, steady note of endurance. Kazuyo, your song was the scream of a void fearing its own nature. Now, it is the quiet hum of a space being prepared."
He looked from one to the other. "You now understand the flaw in your souls. Shuya, your pride makes your light brittle. It must become supple, able to bend without breaking. Kazuyo, your fear makes your silence chaotic. It must become discerning, able to choose what to hold and what to release."
He gestured for them to step off the stone. "This was not a test of power. It was a test of spirit. The Blood Epoch attacks the spirit. He does not break bones; he breaks wills. He does not shatter armor; he shatters truth. Now that you have seen the cracks in your own, you can begin the true work of sealing them."
As they walked back to the center of the clearing, the uncarved block seemed to watch them, a silent, knowing witness. They had not learned a new technique. They had not increased the raw output of their abilities. But they had undergone a fundamental alchemy of the self. The memory of Valac was still there, a cold scar, but it was no longer a ghost that controlled them. It was a note in their song, a part of their history whose resonance they were learning to manage.
The path ahead was still steeped in shadow, and the Blood Epochs were still out there, pieces of a Demon Lord whose power dwarfed their understanding. But as the eastern stars began to pepper the sliver of visible sky, Shuya and Kazuyo felt, for the first time, that they were not just building a fortress against the storm. They were learning to become the unshakable ground upon which the storm would break.