A crash followed by a sharp crack rang out in the middle of the forest. Birds scattered from the branches in a frenzy of wings, fleeing the explosive echo of the impact.
A young man staggered back violently, his feet tearing up the earth in a desperate attempt to slow his montum. His soles sank into the soft ground, carving deep grooves before he finally skidded to a halt, panting.
"You really trying to kill , you bastard?" he spat. His brown skin glead with sweat, his bare back burned under the sun, and his locked braids were hastily tied at the back with what looked like a strip of liana.
That young man was Dylan. He still clutched a wooden stick — his training weapon — already splintered from the previous clash. Facing him, Julius remained unbothered, barely acknowledging the mishap.
"Co on, baby. If you don’t attack, I’ll co to you," Julius taunted, his voice dripping with mockery. The two-ter giant relished every second of what he called training, though it looked far more like torture in disguise.
He rested his own wooden stick on his shoulder like a sword at ease, and fixed Dylan with a challenging stare, a predatory grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Dylan clenched his teeth, frustration tightening his features. The broken stick felt pitiful in his hands. With a sharp movent, he tossed it to the ground and charged straight at Julius, fist first, determined to wipe that grin off his face.
But the colossus didn’t wait. Julius swung his own stick like a baseball bat and struck with surgical precision. The blow cracked through the clearing, brutal and rciless. Dylan was snatched mid-charge and hurled backward like a ragdoll.
An atrocious snap followed the impact. His arm twisted grotesquely, and even from a distance, the sound of bone breaking was unmistakable. He crashed into the bed of leaves, agony flooding his body like a white-hot blade.
"Fuck..." he gasped, breathless, eyes rolling with pain.
Julius stood unmoved, his stick still slung over his shoulder, as calm as if nothing had happened. Amusent curled his lips, as though he’d rely batted away a ball instead of shattering an arm.
Dylan pushed himself up slowly, teeth grinding, his arm dangling in a grotesque, almost macabre angle. The joint looked like it might pop clean off his shoulder. Then, suddenly, the stigma etched into his back ignited with a dull glow, spreading into his arm. Flesh shuddered, bones cracked, and in a series of jerking spasms the limb snapped itself back into place. A sickening pop sealed the process.
He sucked in ragged breaths, still trembling, and lifted his eyes. His gray pupils locked on Julius with a blend of resentnt and defiance. But the other man, unbothered, regarded him with the sa serene nonchalance one reserves for a stubborn child. Nothing Dylan did seed enough to earn even a flicker of seriousness.
Julius stepped closer, stabbing his stick into the dirt like an improvised cane. His voice cracked out, hard and scornful:
"Two days. That’s all it’s been. Two days, and the rules are simple: hit in the face. You haven’t managed it once."
He paused, gaze boring into Dylan, then added with a cold, razor-edged smile:
"And you think you can join a war where even the Awakened aren’t safe?"
A short, joyless chuckle escaped him.
"Don’t make laugh."
"I crossed the Western Forest. I’ve seen horrors," Dylan shot back, voice tight but tinged with pride, twisting his lips into a cocky grin. "It’ll take more than humans to scare ."
Julius stared at him, impassive. The silence pressed down like an anvil before he finally spoke, each word clipped and cutting:
"Whether you did or not... that’s your business. And yours alone."
He stepped forward again, his hulking shadow engulfing Dylan, and leveled his stick at him like a sentence passed.
"All I see in front of is a stupid kid. Stubborn. Charging headfirst into whatever crosses his path."
His eyes narrowed, his voice dropping lower, graver, colder.
"And even if you fought through horrors, even if you clawed your way past them... do you really think you can compare them to human cruelty? To human intelligence?"
A silence followed, heavy as stone, sharpening the weight of his words. Then Julius delivered the final blow:
"You’d be insulting those beasts."
Dylan stood frozen, his arm still numb from the regeneration, fists clenched until his knuckles whitened. Julius’s words drove into his skull like rusted nails.
A lieutenant. A kid. Nothing of war understood.
The silence stretched, suffocating, until even the wind in the trees seed to hush to witness his humiliation.
He wanted to explode, to hurl his story at Julius’s face: the flas devouring his neighborhood, the children’s screams buried under rubble, the nights spent hauling still-warm bodies into mass graves. Julius hadn’t seen that. Not that. Dylan had grown up in war the way others grew up in hos: hunger, fear, death — woven into the fabric of his days.
And now, to be lectured like so brat... it burned his throat raw. But no words ca out.
He just stared at the ground, gray eyes shadowed, choking down the bitter bile of resentnt. This was one of those monts that would etch itself into mory forever — not because Julius was right, but because Dylan had just tasted a humiliation sharper than any physical wound.
And deep down, Dylan knew: he’d rember this for the rest of his life.
Julius studied him in silence for a long beat, weighing the weight of it. Then he barked a laugh, dry and cutting, cracking through the air like a whip.
"There it is. Finally, you shut up."
He stepped closer, pinning Dylan with his pale eyes. His voice softened, just barely, but stayed sharp as a blade:
"You think I’m trying to humiliate you? No. I’m trying to teach you. Because the day you face a real opponent... he won’t wait for your whining before crushing you."
The stick smacked against his shoulder with a sharp tap, impatient.
"So grit your teeth, swallow your pride, and strike. Because right now, standing before ... you’re no soldier. You’re just a kid still trembling before his ghosts."
Dylan slowly raised his head. His gray eyes, darkened by mory, kindled with a new fla: no longer sha, but a cold, controlled anger straining to break loose. His fingers twitched, aching for a weapon he no longer held.
He drew in a deep breath, shoulders rising inch by inch, as though every lungful forged him anew. Pain, humiliation — all of it roared inside him, compressed, ready to shatter.
Julius’s mouth curved into a thin smile, sensing what was building.
"There it is. That’s what I want from you. Show more than your scars."
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