Solar Clone watched him go and rubbed his forehead. "Since when did I become such a braggart?" he muttered.
Then he exhaled and let the irritation fade. "Forget it. He's still stuck on that space element… let him struggle a bit." With that, he turned his attention away from the glowing fire circle, deciding not to think about Vyuhas for a while.
He left the training ground, walked back through the quiet tunnels, and slipped into Ankit's room.
The moment his head touched the pillow, exhaustion crashed over him and he fell asleep almost instantly.
By evening, Solar Clone woke up, washed his face, and sat cross‑legged on the floor to practice the Law of Still Mind.
Thoughts rose and fell, then slowly calmed until his breathing and heartbeat settled into a steady rhythm.
When he finished, he opened the door and followed the faint sounds of clinking plates to the kitchen, where his family was already gathered around the table, eating dinner.
He joined them without fuss, taking a seat and sharing the simple meal. Sacral Clone was there as well, chatting idly with Sanya while Kamal and Neelam talked about household matters.
After dinner, they all moved to the underground garden and sat together, looking up at the rough stone ceiling that sealed them away from the true sky.
Solar Clone raised his hand and, just using raw elements instead of any proper formation, began to play with the light.
A small red sun of condensed fire element bloomed above the fortress and slowly drifted toward the horizon, its glow softening as he carefully weakened the energy.
As the red sun dimmed, he let darkness element spread around the fortress like a curtain, cooling the air and deepening the shadows.
At the same time, he pinched tiny beads of light element into existence—small, glowing "stars" that shimmered high above before lazily drifting downward like slow, luminous snow.
Kamal, Neelam, and Sanya leaned back on the stone benches, faces turned upward. The fading red light washed their features in warmth, while the falling star‑motes painted their hair and shoulders with a soft, shifting glow.
It wasn't a finished sky‑formation, just a simple elemental trick, but for the first time in days there was no training, no pain, no laws—only the illusion of a peaceful evening.
"Ankit, I want to go to the surface," Neelam said at last, her voice gentle in the unreal starlight. "I need to buy some things… and I just want some fresh air."
Sanya immediately chimed in, eyes bright as the falling motes. "Yes, Brother, let's go! We haven't seen the real sun for so many days!"
Kamal gave a small nod of agreement. He didn't say much, but the way he watched the dimming red disc made it clear he missed the true sky as well.
Solar Clone and Sacral Clone exchanged a glance and understood. No matter how pretty an artificial sunset he created, their family was still human; they needed crowds, sunlight, and a world that wasn't just stone walls and training platforms.
They quickly came to a decision: Sacral Clone would accompany them to the surface, while Solar Clone would stay below to continue experimenting with runes and ideas for future Vyuhas.
That night, everyone except Solar Clone went to sleep according to their usual schedule.
Once the rooms grew quiet and the last of the star‑motes faded from the air, Solar Clone returned alone to the empty cultivation ground.
Standing in the center of the platform, he looked down at the scarred stone where he had carved and erased his early attempts.
Yesterday, in this very spot, those clumsy tests had finally given birth to his first true formation—a stable fire‑training array that gathered heat and held it under strict control.
The faint marks of that success were still etched into the floor.
He closed his eyes for a moment, replaying the pattern in his mind: the inward spiral that pulled fire element in, the restraining ring that capped the temperature, the thin channels that bled off excess heat before it could turn wild. It was simple, but it worked on its own, just as he had wanted.
Now that his body was rested and his mind had already walked this path once, the next step came far more smoothly.
Using the Flameforge Vyuha as a template, he began sketching a new pattern on the stone—this time not to burn, but to freeze. In just three focused hours, a second, mirrored design took shape beside the first.
Solar Clone named it Frostforge Vyuha. Where Flameforge gathered and stabilized heat, Frostforge did the opposite: its runes drew in cold from the surrounding elemental field and stripped warmth from anything standing within its ring.
The core spiral pulled ambient cold element inward, compressing it into a focused chill, while a containment ring locked the minimum temperature so it never dropped far enough to shatter flesh or freeze blood solid.
Thin escape channels at the edges vented surplus cold back into the ground whenever it crossed the safe threshold, keeping the formation in a narrow band between painful, bone‑deep cold and truly lethal frost.
Together, the two Vyuhas formed a pair—one to temper the body with controlled heat, the other to harden it in merciless cold.
By stepping between Flameforge and Frostforge, his family would train the Law of Heat and Cold in a way no ordinary environment could ever match.