Year one. Real shitty.
There's no poetic way to dress it up. Just , shirtless on the coldest mountain in existence, trying not to freeze to death while channeling "life energy," whatever that ans.
The Trickster said it builds focus. The Sound God said it would awaken my divine core. ? I said it was hell.
Every morning I'd wake up with frost in my lungs, my skin cracked from the cold. Evermont Peak didn't care that I was supposed to be "chosen." It tore apart anyway. Wind sharp as blades. Snow that never stopped. Nights so quiet you could hear your own thoughts judging you.
I cried. I'll admit it. Not every day, but enough to know I still had sothing human in . The Trickster never said anything when I broke down—he just watched through the mirror of my mind, silently, like he was waiting for to crack completely or rise from it.
Turns out, I did both.
At first, I couldn't sit still. Couldn't breathe right. Couldn't even form the basic flow of energy through my body. The Sound God would whisper little corrections through my bones—"Relax your spine." "Still your mind." "The cold is your ally, not your enemy."
Screw that. The cold was a demon.
But the longer I stayed up there, the quieter the noise beca. My heartbeat slowed. My thoughts ca clearer. I could feel sothing shifting under my skin—not strength, not power, just... stillness.
The Trickster called it "becoming a mirror." Said if I couldn't calm my own chaos, I'd never control the chaos of others. I hated how right he sounded.
There was a mont—maybe midwinter—when it all clicked. The snow around stopped falling for just a second. Hung there in the air like ti had paused. I breathed, and it moved with . My energy pulsed through the stillness like a ripple in water.
And I smiled. Just a little.
That was the first ti I believed I might actually survive this.
So yeah—year one was real shitty. But I didn't die. That counts for sothing.
---
A week after that first mont of stillness, the Trickster said, "Let's see if your bones learned anything."
I was ditating when he said it, my body numb, my mind sowhere between dreaming and freezing. He pulled out of the trance like soone yanking a nail from wood.
I stood up, legs shaking a little. "What kind of test?"
"The kind that hurts."
Figures.
He didn't give a weapon. No warning. Just pointed to a spot on the snow-covered plateau where the wind didn't reach. A small circle of quiet surrounded by chaos.
"Step in," he said. "And survive for five minutes."
"Survive what?"
He smiled with that tilted grin that ant nothing good was about to happen.
I stepped in. The second my foot crossed that invisible line, the air exploded. Wind tore at from every direction. It howled with voices that weren't mine—echoes of things I feared, things I lost, things I didn't want to rember.
And the cold wasn't just cold anymore. It was alive. It clawed at . Bit through my thoughts. I wanted to scream, to run, to beg for it to stop—but I rembered what the Trickster said.
Beco the mirror.
So I breathed. Let it all in. Didn't fight it. Didn't resist.
One minute passed.
The pain dulled.
Two minutes.
The noise got quieter.
Three.
I felt warm. Not physically—sothing deeper, like a fire behind my ribs.
Four.
I smiled again.
Five.
The wind stopped.
When I opened my eyes, the Trickster was watching . He didn't clap. Didn't laugh. Just nodded once and said, "That's more like it."
I passed.
Barely.
But I passed.
And for the first ti, I felt sothing shift inside . Not power. Not divine strength. Sothing better.
Control.
Reviews
All reviews (0)