After Dorian left the planet Luminus and returned to his homeworld, Astra Helion, he found himself living in a dark blue crystal skyscraper with his elder brother, Nairo Astra. When he arrived, his brother had already prepared a meal for him that smelled of home and memory, and Dorian devoured it with the gratitude of someone who has survived on synthetic rations and constant danger.
Once satisfied, he headed to take a bath. He walked down a hallway whose walls, though not made of transparent glass, reflected light in faint geometric patterns—a nod to the Helion aesthetic that revered precision even in domestic spaces.
Sliding open the door to his room, a sweet, gentle aroma enveloped him: it was the plant Nairo had gifted him cycles ago, a Helionian species with translucent petals that glowed softly in the dark and emitted a calming fragrance.
In the room, a large holographic screen floated inactive, its frame outlined in pale blue light. Dorian made a casual gesture with his wrist, and the screen lit up, displaying navigation reports, pending messages, and galactic news. But with a second gesture, he turned it off. With Omega integrated directly into his neural implants, filtering and organizing information in his mental field of vision, a physical screen was redundant. A luxury, perhaps, but an unnecessary one.
He removed the black compression set he still wore from Luminus. Though the form-fitting garment already outlined a powerful physique—broad shoulders, defined torso, efficient musculature—removing it revealed the body of a Helion warrior in its natural state.
It wasn't the grotesque exaggeration of a bodybuilder, but the functional anatomy of an elite predator: abs carved like armor plating, firm pectorals, arms where every muscle traced lines of pure force, a V-shaped back that spoke of years of bearing loads and tension, and legs that seemed like columns of controlled strain. It was the body of someone trained not for display, but for survival in the universe's most hostile environments.
He walked to the bathtub, whose door also slid open upon detecting his presence. Upon entering, the lights automatically turned on, bathing the space in a soft, bluish clarity. He stepped under the water stream, which fell first as a warm rain and then increased in pressure and temperature.
Steam rose in spirals, fogging the glass surfaces. Dorian closed his eyes and felt the water run over his scalp, down his shoulders, along his back, washing away symbolically not just the dust of Luminus, but the tension accumulated in every muscle fiber. The heat penetrated, relaxing knots he didn't even know he had.
After the bath, he dried off with a smart fabric towel that absorbed moisture instantly and dressed in clean clothes: a white pair of adaptive-fabric athletic pants and a long-sleeved black t-shirt with a crew neck, simple but made of a material that breathed and adjusted to his movements without restriction.
Leaving his room, he found Nairo still in the main living area, sitting on a minimalist floating sofa, reviewing something on a holographic tablet. He looked up and smiled.
"Now that you're finished, let's get started right away, little brother," said Nairo, his voice calm but with that spark of anticipation Dorian knew all too well.
"Alright," Dorian replied, returning the smile.
They headed to the apartment's private training room. Upon entering, the space seemed modest—a twenty-meter cube with gray walls and a self-repairing polymer floor—but Dorian knew that, with the right configuration, it could expand to simulate a battlefield kilometers wide or transform into any pre-programmed environment.
Nairo walked toward a section of the wall that opened as he approached, revealing a minimalist arsenal: training weapons, harmless energy shields, and several appropriately sized metal cylinders. He took two.
Meanwhile, Dorian positioned himself at the center of the space, taking a deep breath, feeling how his body, still relaxed from the bath, began to activate, to remember. His senses sharpened. The air smelled of clean ozone and neutral polymer.
Nairo threw one of the cylinders from the other end of the room. It wasn't a weak toss; it shot out like a projectile, spinning on its axis. Dorian raised his hand without haste and caught it mid-air, his fingers closing around the metal with a dry snap.
Nairo then approached, walking with a fluidity that seemed to defy gravity. His posture was relaxed but perfectly balanced, every muscle in place, every breath controlled. He said nothing. It wasn't necessary. This was a ritual repeated a thousand times: older brother evaluating, younger brother demonstrating.
Once face-to-face in the center of the room, they looked at each other. The silence was total, broken only by the faint hum of environmental systems. Then, almost in unison, they activated the cylinders. No energy blades or force fields sprang forth; instead, each cylinder extended to form a light metal staff, about one and a half meters long, with a matte finish that didn't reflect light.
Helionian alloyed iron: lighter than titanium, stronger than synthetic diamond. For this training, Helion would not be used. Only the physical: strength, speed, agility, endurance, pure reflexes. The raw combat of two warriors raised in the same discipline since childhood.
Dorian moved first. Not a dramatic leap, but a controlled explosion from his calves that carried him across the distance in an instant. His staff traced a straight, precise line—a thrust aimed at Nairo's solar plexus.
His elder brother didn't retreat; he merely leaned his torso, letting the tip pass centimeters from his body. Dorian's motion didn't stop; he pivoted on his front foot, the staff changing trajectory in a lateral arc toward Nairo's head.
Clank.
Nairo had raised his own staff to block, the impact echoing in the sterile room. But he didn't just defend; at the moment of contact, his staff slid along Dorian's and counterattacked with a low strike toward the ribs. Dorian was already retreating, his body bending backward in an impossible curve while his feet executed a backflip that carried him two meters away. He landed in a crouch.
He propelled himself again, but this time adding a spin. He jumped, his body rotating in the air like a top, the staff gaining centrifugal momentum before descending in a crushing vertical blow. Nairo raised both arms, his staff horizontal above his head, blocking.
The impact didn't sound like metal on metal. It sounded like contained thunder. The force didn't dissipate; the physical pressure was so dense that the floor plates under Nairo's feet gave way with a crunch, sinking several centimeters into a perfect small crater. The air compressed and burst out in a wave that lifted the polymer dust.
Nairo didn't fall to his knees. His legs, anchored in an impeccable stance, absorbed and redistributed the force. But his green eyes shone with something that wasn't surprise, but pride.
"Hahahaha, you've improved quite a lot, little brother," he said, and his voice sounded genuinely impressed, not condescending.
"It's thanks to your training and my skill," Dorian replied, not lowering his guard, knowing that Nairo's compliments were often the prelude to a demonstration.
And then. Nairo didn't attack with the staff. He took a step forward so fast he seemed to teleport, and his right foot slammed into Dorian's abdomen. It wasn't just any kick; it was a movement that began on the ground, traveled through his hip, and released all the rotational power of his body into a point the size of a fist.
Dorian was sent flying. He flew backward as if struck by a giant, crossed half the room, and slammed into the wall with a blow that shook the entire structure. His training allowed him to contract his abdominal muscles in the microsecond of impact, absorbing the worst of it, but the air left his lungs with a dry sound.
"But it's still not enough," Nairo murmured, and this time his tone was that of an instructor, not a brother.
He lunged toward Dorian, who was barely peeling himself off the wall. Nairo raised his staff in a descending arc, a blow that would have split an armored vehicle in half. Dorian, with reflexes sharpened by the constant danger he had lived through, dodged it by spinning to the side.
It wasn't enough.
Although the staff didn't touch him, the friction of the weapon moving at hypersonic speed through the air seemed to cut space itself. A thin, precise line opened on Dorian's right cheek. There was no immediate pain—only an intense sensation of cold—and then his Helionian blood, a darker, denser red, welled up.
A single crimson thread began to slide down his face, tracing a path from his cheek to his jawline, like a stream descending a mountainside.
Dorian touched the wound with the back of his hand, looked at the blood, and then at Nairo. A wide, almost wild smile spread across his face.
"That was close. Is that how you treat your little brother?" he asked, his tone playful but his green eyes shining with challenge.
"What are you talking about, little brother? You know very well I love you," Nairo replied, and his smile mirrored Dorian's: affectionate but relentless.
Nairo pivoted on his axis, his leg describing a perfect circle. The kick impacted Dorian's side, sending him flying across the room again. This time, Dorian controlled the fall, rolling and coming up into a crouched position, but before he could fully stand, Nairo was already in front of him. Another kick, this time directly at his chest. Dorian dodged it by millimeters, and Nairo's foot struck the wall behind him.
The impact wasn't a blow; it was a localized disintegration. The wall—reinforced, designed to withstand energy impacts—exploded in a blast of pulverized polymer and fist-sized fragments. A cloud of gray dust expanded, and the smell of burnt ozone and ionized particles filled the air. This was no longer casual sparring. This was Helion training: brutal, realistic, on the verge of causing permanent damage.
Nairo advanced through the dust, his silhouette barely visible. He spun his staff with fluid movements that created swirls in the debris mist. Dorian blinked, and when he opened his eyes, Nairo was in front of him.
What followed was a symphony of controlled violence. Clank-clank-clank-clank! The staffs met in a sequence so fast the sounds merged into a single high-pitched whine. Each block, each strike, each deflection released concussive waves that cracked the floor beneath their feet. The cracks branched like spiderwebs, and then, with a dull roar, an entire section of the floor—three meters in diameter—collapsed, sinking half a meter.
Nairo raised his staff over his head and brought it down with the force of a war hammer. Dorian crossed his own to block. The impact was so massive that Dorian's hands went numb and his feet sank even deeper into the fractured floor, up to his ankles. But he didn't yield.
With a grunt of effort, Dorian twisted his wrist, deflecting Nairo's staff to the left. In the opening created, he released his own staff with his right hand and launched a straight punch directly at Nairo's abdomen. The blow connected with a hollow sound, like a giant drum being struck.
Nairo took a step back, surprised. A moment of silence.
Both dropped their staffs at the same time. The metal cylinders hit the destroyed floor with two nearly simultaneous clunks. The weapons had only been a prelude. Now was the time for pure reflexes, for hand-to-hand combat, for what Dorian had truly refined since childhood: instinctive survival.
They squared off, two meters apart. The dust was still settling. The room was wrecked. And then, without a signal, the second round began.
Nairo attacked first: an uppercut that rose from the floor like a missile. Dorian dodged it by moving his head back, but the pressure of the punch, the air compressed moving faster than the fist itself, cut another fine line on his chin. Fresh blood mixed with the already dried one.
What followed was an exchange too fast for an unaugmented eye to follow. Punches, kicks, blocks, deflections. Dorian didn't fight as he had before Luminus. He had incorporated improvised movements, strange angles, the instinct of someone who has fought beasts that don't follow martial patterns. He struck to incapacitate, not to score. He dodged to survive, not to show off.
But Nairo was Nairo. When Dorian threw a hook to the liver, Nairo didn't block it. He caught Dorian's arm in mid-flight, his fingers closing like steel clamps. With his other arm, he grabbed Dorian by the neck.
Then, in a movement that was pure applied physics, he hooked a foot behind Dorian's ankle, unbalancing him, and using the momentum, lifted him—not with apparent effort, but with perfect technique—and slammed him into the floor.
The impact resonated throughout the room. The circular training platform, already damaged, split in two with a thunderous crack. The cracks in the floor spread to the walls. Dorian lay in the crater of his own forced landing, the air completely expelled from his lungs.
For a second, there was only silence and the faint crackle of damaged electrical systems.
Then, a hand appeared in his field of vision. It was Nairo, offering to help him up. Dorian took it, and his elder brother pulled him up with ease.
"Good training session after eating," Nairo said, his breathing barely accelerated. "How do you feel, little brother?"
Dorian straightened up, feeling every bruise, every cut, every muscle protesting. But he also felt the familiar warmth of shared effort, the knowledge of having been pushed to his limit by someone who wanted to see him improve. A wide, genuine smile lit up his bloodied face.
"Hahahaha, you're right," he replied, dusting off his clothes.
"Good. Now, if you want, you can go rest or do whatever you want," Nairo said, his tone returning to the usual domestic calm.
"Then I'm going to sleep," Dorian decided.
Nairo nodded and walked over to a control panel on an intact wall. He pressed a sequence. Immediately, a hum of nanomachines filled the room. The cracks in the floor began to close like living wounds, the polymer flowing and solidifying. The shattered wall reconstructed itself layer by layer, the fragments being reabsorbed and reorganized. In less than a minute, the training room was once again pristine, as if the violence of the past few minutes had been a dream.
They left the room. The light illuminating the space gradually faded behind them, plunging the room into absolute darkness, as it no longer detected signs of life inside.
In the hallway, Dorian paused for a moment, looking at his elder brother.
"Thanks, Nairo," he said, without needing to explain why.
Nairo placed a hand on his shoulder, a brief gesture but one loaded with meaning.
"Always, little brother. Now go rest. There's more tomorrow."