Auri wanted me to break all ten titanium planks, and after my first attempt, which made me feel like my hand had been introduced to the concept of fire by force, I was pretty sure she had set me up to die out of stubbornness.
The dojo had gone quiet in that specific way that made silence feel embarrassed to exist. The others had moved off to the side, and for a while, they did absolutely nothing except watch me stare at the titanium like it had personally offended me. My hand throbbed from the last hit, and every time I flexed my fingers, I could feel the ache climbing up my wrist like heat under the skin. I glared at the stack of planks, then at Auri, then back at the stack again.
"I don't think this is possible," I said.
Auri folded her arms. "It is."
"That thing is literally titanium."
"Yes."
"Ten layers."
"Yes."
"With one hand."
"Correct."
I stared at her, waiting for the punchline that never came. "How?"
"Find out."
That answer made me want to throw the entire stand at her.
I looked back at the setup, then made a frustrated noise through my nose and stepped up to the stack again. I tried punching it this time instead of chopping, because maybe if one angle failed, another would work. I drove my fist forward and hit the top plank with everything I had left.
Nothing.
The stack didn't even wobble.
My hand bounced back, and pain lanced through my knuckles so sharply that I immediately hunched over and hissed through my teeth. "Ow—okay, no, that's just rude."
Dorian, standing off to the side, let out a slow breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Tess covered her mouth. Rina looked away like she was trying not to smile. I glared at all of them.
"This is a scam," I muttered.
Auri's expression didn't change. "Try again."
"You can't just say that like it's helpful."
"It is helpful."
"It really isn't."
She tilted her head. "Then prove me wrong."
I opened my mouth, shut it, and looked at the planks again with the kind of hatred usually reserved for school exams and insects. My hand felt like it was still burning from the strike. I took a breath and tried again anyway, only for the result to be exactly as insulting as the first.
At that point, my pride was starting to get involved, which was usually a bad sign for everybody in the room.
I backed up a step, shaking my hand out, and looked at the stand like it had personally declared war on me. "I'm telling you, this is impossible."
Auri pointed at the nearest setup. "Watch."
She walked over to one of the titanium stands with the calm, almost lazy confidence of someone heading to the kitchen for water. The others shifted slightly, giving her room. She stopped in front of the planks, rolled one shoulder once, and without any flourish at all, drove her fist straight through the center of the stack.
All ten titanium boards split like they had been made of brittle clay.
I froze.
The room went quiet in the way rooms do when reality embarrasses you in front of witnesses.
Auri withdrew her hand, dusted it off once, and looked back at me like she had just solved a math problem.
I stared.
Then I stared harder.
"…What," I said very softly, "was that?"
Auri didn't even look impressed with herself. "A punch."
"No, no, no," I said, pointing at the destroyed setup, "that was not a punch. That was a murder."
"It was an efficient strike."
"It was titanium."
"Yes."
"Ten planks."
"Yes."
"With a fist."
"Yes."
I turned toward the others. "Tell me I'm not insane."
Rina shrugged. Dorian looked amused. Tess looked sympathetic in the way people do when they know a bad thing is about to become your problem and they can't stop it.
Auri crossed her arms again. "Now you know it can be done."
I just stood there, mouth open, because apparently the universe had decided to become rude in a more sophisticated way.
So I tried again.
If she could do it, then I could do it. That was how logic was supposed to work. I walked back to the stand, drew in a breath, and punched again with my fist instead of chopping. This time, I put more force into it. More of my weight. More of my body is behind the motion. The strike hit hard enough to jolt my shoulder, but the titanium still did not break. My hand, on the other hand, immediately exploded in pain.
I hit the ground a second later, clutching it.
"Okay," I groaned into the floor, "that one felt personal."
The others had little else to do during the long stretch that followed, so they started behaving like bored people trapped in a waiting room with an increasingly frustrated idiot trying to invent suffering by accident. Someone suggested finger games. Someone else brought up Rock, Paper, Scissors. Then charades happened for reasons I still don't understand.
At some point, Dorian and Tess started talking about some random story involving a misused training dummy, Rina and I got dragged into an argument about whether a spear could be considered elegant, and Auri sat in the corner watching me like she had all the time in the world and all the confidence in the universe.
I, meanwhile, was rapidly losing the will to live.
I lay back against the wall for a while and stared at the ceiling. My hand hurt. My pride hurt. My soul hurt. The titanium looked utterly unchanged, which felt like an insult on a moral level. I was this close to giving up entirely and deciding that perhaps I was destined to be the first angel in history to die from arguing with a plank.
Then Auri called my name.
"Zeke."
I tilted my head weakly. "I'm busy trying to smash through titanium."
A pause.
Then, "Come here."
I made an exhausted face and sat up. "That's not how being busy works."
"Come here."
So I dragged myself over to her, still muttering under my breath about tyranny and the abuse of power.
When I reached her, she didn't ask me to hit anything. She just pointed at the ground. "Sit."
I blinked at her. "What?"
"Sit down."
I looked around. The others were all watching now with varying levels of curiosity. I gave Auri a suspicious look. "This better not be another thing where I end up getting hit."
"It won't be."
That was not reassuring, but I sat anyway.
Auri lowered herself into a meditating position in front of me, and after a second of awkwardness, I copied her. She told me to close my eyes.
I stared at her. "Why?"
"Because I said so."
"Is that the whole reason?"
"Yes."
I sighed and closed them.
"Good," she said. "Now. Tell me how it feels when you put all your power into slamming your fist into a titanium board."
I frowned, eyes still closed. "It hurts."
"That is not what I asked."
"Then don't ask questions that involve titanium boards."
"Zeke."
I groaned quietly. "Fine. It feels like my body wants to use more force than it's actually letting me. Like my mind says, I can keep going, but my body keeps cutting me off before I actually get there."
Auri didn't interrupt, so I kept going.
"It's the same when I sprint," I said. "My brain keeps telling me there's more. Like I should be able to go faster. But I hit this wall where my body just… stops increasing. It feels like I'm trying to pull extra strength out of myself, and something inside keeps holding me back."
I swallowed and rubbed at my palm, still stinging from the earlier hits. "And when I punch the titanium, I really do try to use everything. But it feels like I'm barely using any of it."
Auri was quiet for a second.
Then she asked, "Do you know why?"
I opened my mouth, considered half a dozen possible answers, and then shut it again. "No."
"Good."
I frowned. "Why is that good?"
"Because if you knew, I'd have to call you arrogant."
I made a face even though she couldn't see it. "That sounds like a trick answer."
"It is."
That made me sigh.
Then she started talking in a different tone—quieter, calmer, the kind of voice that made the whole room feel smaller around us. "Every human knows the feeling you explained. Although you're an angel, your mind still thinks you are human. Your body still thinks you are human. Your soul still thinks it is supposed to protect you the way a human body protects itself."
I stayed still and listened.
"It's believed humans use 10% of their brain, but that is false. Humans don't actually use ten percent of their brain," Auri continued. "That part is nonsense. They use all of it. But they don't try to use more than they can survive using. That feeling of insufficiency is the brain trying to reach past the 100%."
I made a small sound of disbelief. "Okay, so humans can't use 200% of their brain. That's just not a thing."
"Yes," she said. "That is because it is impossible."
I opened one eye a fraction, then immediately closed it again when she made an annoyed noise. "That was a trick question."
"You're learning."
She let the silence hang for a second before continuing. "If a human brain tried to function above its limit, it would overwork. Damage would build. More damage. More strain. At a certain point, the brain would fry itself."
I frowned. "So what does that have to do with me not being able to break titanium?"
"Everything."
Her voice softened just enough that I knew she was getting to the part that mattered. "Your mind is still obeying human rules. It is deciding, subconsciously, that the effort should stop where human effort normally stops. It is protecting you from yourself."
I sat very still.
"Angels are different," she said. "The maximum brain power an angel can use is determined when they are born into it—when the soul crosses over, when the body is left behind, when the new shape of the self is formed. Some angels are built to attack. Some to defend. Some to support. And each one has limits."
I swallowed. "So you're saying I'm just weak."
"No," Auri said. "I'm saying you're still pretending to be human."
That hit harder than I expected.
"You are not human anymore, Zeke," she said. "But your mind has not accepted that. So it is pulling the brakes the moment you try to go too far. You hit the titanium with everything your human brain allows you to access, and then it stopped."
I frowned harder. "Then what was the point of making me hit it at all?"
Auri's answer came immediately. "Because if you do not feel the insufficiency, you will not understand it."
I opened my mouth again, then stopped.
That part actually made sense.
She kept going, voice calm and steady. "You need to know what it feels like when your power is not enough. You need to understand the gap. Otherwise, you will keep believing that effort alone is the answer."
I shifted in place, still not opening my eyes. "So what am I supposed to do with that?"
"Keep listening."
That made me quiet.
Auri's voice dropped even lower, and I realized the whole field around us had gone strangely still. "Close your eyes. Stay focused. Do not look around. Do not interrupt. Just move forward inside your mind."
"Inside my mind?" I repeated.
"Yes."
"How?"
"Force your way through."
That was the most Auri answer imaginable, and I hated how little I had to pretend to be surprised by it.
I sat there for maybe thirty seconds doing absolutely nothing useful.
Then I said, "Nothing is happening."
Auri did not sound irritated. "Keep going."
I did.
Another minute passed.
My body relaxed before I realized it had. My breathing slowed. The pain in my hand blurred into the background. My head dipped slightly without my permission, and I started to drift in that awful half-asleep state where your mind floats away from your body but doesn't quite let go.
"Wake up," Auri said suddenly.
I jerked. "I wasn't asleep."
"If you fall asleep, I'll kick you in the nuts."
I snapped fully awake so fast it nearly hurt. "That is not fair!"
"Keep going."
I muttered something under my breath and forced myself to focus again.
Then it happened.
Not all at once. Slowly, like the world was dissolving in a bowl of water.
The edges of everything started turning grey.
I stiffened. "Everything's turning grey."
"Quiet," Auri said instantly. "Do not talk right now or you will do it all over again."
That shut me up very quickly.
The grey wasn't a solid color anymore. It started stretching and thinning into clouds, mist, smoke, something soft and drifting. I pushed at it in my mind without understanding how I was doing it, and the clouds moved apart. Space opened. The grey made way for me.
A strange thought occurred to me then: it felt less like I was seeing something and more like I was remembering how to enter it.
The clouds widened until I was standing in a huge light-grey space tinged with blue. The ground beneath me looked like foggy water—flat, reflective, soft in a way that made no sense. I could see swirls of grey and bluish smoke moving through it like currents under ice. I looked down at my own feet and realized I was standing on the surface of it.
That was unsettling enough to make me pause.
I took a few cautious steps forward and looked around.
Then Auri's voice appeared in my head, calm and precise. What do you see now?
I froze.
Inside my head, I answered instinctively, then realized immediately that I could no longer hear my own voice in the air. I was thinking the words, not speaking them. The strange part was that Auri responded perfectly anyway, like she could hear every thought I had as if it were spoken aloud.
I told her what I saw.
Good, she said. Keep moving forward.
So I did.
About fifty meters later, I bumped into something invisible.
I reached out again.
A wall.
I frowned and pushed against it. "I can't move on."
Did you feel the wall yet? Auri asked.
"Yes."
Break through it.
That seemed simple enough, so I drew back my fist and punched it with all I had.
The wall vibrated.
The impact echoed through the grey space with an awful metallic howl, like iron screaming underwater. My knuckles stopped hurting almost immediately, which was even stranger. I hit it again.
Same sound.
Same result.
I tried harder.
Nothing.
I could feel the frustration rising in my chest. I punched twice more, then three more times, each one heavier than the last. The wall still refused to break. It just rang out that horrible, unholy sound every time my fist connected, like I was making a giant machine angry instead of forcing open a barrier.
I stepped back and stared at it.
Then, because my brain is apparently a terrible roommate, I thought: What if I sneak up on it?
I turned away, took two dramatic steps like I was abandoning the wall, and whipped back around to punch it like it had insulted my family.
The wall, predictably, did not care.
The sound was so awful that it made me want to curse at the air itself.
A few more minutes passed like that. Me punching. Me failing. Me muttering ridiculous thoughts. Me wondering if I was supposed to body-slam the invisible wall like a lunatic. Me trying to outsmart a thing that had no face, no mind, and no patience for my nonsense.
At one point, I actually asked myself if maybe I was supposed to threaten it first.
"Listen," I muttered in my head, glaring at the blank grey barrier, "if you do not move, I will punch you again. And I swear I'll mean it this time."
Nothing.
I walked in a circle inside it, then stopped and narrowed my eyes.
Maybe there was some dramatic nonsense answer waiting for me if I kept acting like an idiot long enough.
I went to one area, then another, then tapped it with the side of my fist and immediately regretted it when the same awful sound rang out again. I started to laugh a little in pure frustration, because the whole thing was becoming so stupid that it almost felt ceremonial.
I stood there in the grey space waiting for something dramatic to happen again.
Nothing did.
The wall just sat there, silent and smug, like it was laughing at me without having a face. I frowned and pushed harder, then harder still, until my shoulder started to burn from the strain. There was no pain in my fist this time, which somehow made it even more annoying. It was like the wall had decided that instead of hurting me, it would simply refuse to acknowledge my existence.
"Okay," I muttered. "Fine."
I stepped back and kicked it.
The same horrible metallic sound exploded through the space, ugly and hollow and way too loud for something that wasn't even real. I jerked my hand back and glared at the wall like it had insulted my family. Then I squared up again and hit it from another angle. Same sound. Same nothing. I tried the other hand. Same result. I tried a straight punch, then a hook, then even a stupid upward strike that made no sense at all. I was basically just experimenting at that point, like maybe if I offended the wall in enough different languages, it would eventually break out of spite.
It didn't.
I walked around it again, staring at it like a predator circling prey. Maybe if I found the weak spot, I could hit it there. Maybe it had a seam. Maybe a crack. Maybe some tiny invisible sign that said this side is the one that breaks first. I pressed my ear close to it and listened, because for some reason I had the insane thought that maybe walls in the mind had heartbeat noises or breathing. They did not. Naturally. That would have been too convenient.
So I did the next logical thing, which was to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and ram my forehead toward it like a lunatic.
The impact did not help.
The wall simply vibrated again with the same cursed metallic tone, and I stumbled back, clutching my face while muttering, "That was a bad idea."
I tried again anyway.
At some point, I started talking to the wall.
Not because I thought it would answer. I was just running out of dignity and ideas at the same pace. "Listen," I told it in my head, pointing at it like I was giving a formal warning, "I know you're trying to be difficult, but I've already had enough of that today. So if you could just let me through, that would be great."
Nothing.
"Okay, rude."
I put both hands on it this time and shoved with all my weight. I leaned into it until my shoulders shook. I gritted my teeth and tried to force my way forward through pure stubbornness alone, because that had worked for me exactly zero times before, but I was apparently committed to the bit. The wall didn't budge even a little. It just stayed there, cool and endless and impossible, as if it had no idea I was even trying.
My breathing started getting weird after a while.
Shorter.
Faster.
I told myself to stay calm, but the more I pushed, the more trapped I felt. I tried to turn around, just to see if I could move away from it and maybe come at it from another direction, but the strange thing was that I kept feeling like I was facing the same wall no matter which way I turned. I spun once in place, then twice, then stopped because I was starting to feel ridiculous and a little panicked. The grey space seemed too large and too small at the same time. Every direction looked the same. Every stretch of it felt like I could walk for hours and end up back where I started.
That was when I tried to wake up.
I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated as hard as I could on the idea of my body. On the idea of the dojo. On the idea of my own hand on the titanium stack. On Auri's voice. On the others watching. I tried to force myself back out of the grey place the same way someone rips a hand free from mud.
Nothing happened.
I tried harder.
Still nothing.
I clenched my jaw and focused so hard my head started to hurt, even though I wasn't even sure how I could feel a headache in my own mind. "Wake up," I muttered. "Wake up, wake up, wake up."
No response.
I opened my eyes again and found myself exactly where I had been before. Same grey ground. Same wall. Same awful silence.
That was when the panic really started to creep in.
I turned in a slow circle, trying to find literally anything familiar, anything that might prove this was still a dream I could leave if I just pushed hard enough. "Auri?" I called, but the word felt strange here, muffled and too small. "Auri, I'm done. Let me out."
No answer.
I swallowed and looked around more frantically now. "Hello? Anyone? Can somebody wake me up?"
Still nothing.
My chest tightened. I pressed a hand to my face and realized that even though I was not physically moving, I was somehow still sweating. Or at least I felt like I was. That was not reassuring. Nothing about this was reassuring.
Then it hit me.
Not a thought at first. More like the shape of one. A slow, creeping realization that slid into place and made my stomach go cold.
I was not standing in some random, strange space.
I was inside my own brain.
That thought should not have been as horrifying as it was, but the second I understood it, the whole grey place suddenly felt smaller. Colder. More intimate in the worst possible way. It wasn't just a room I had gotten lost in. It was me. This was mine. My own head. My own thoughts. My own walls. Which meant I wasn't just trapped in a place.
I was trapped in myself.
I stopped moving for a second, genuinely stunned by that realization.
Then I laughed once, but it came out thin and nervous. "That's horrible."
I turned back toward the wall and pointed at it again, now irritated on a deeper level because apparently my own mind had decided to become my enemy. "So this is your fault too, huh?"
The wall remained deeply unhelpful.
I tried something stupid next, because apparently I had not yet exhausted the category of things that make no sense but might work if I believe hard enough. I backed up, crouched slightly, and sprinted toward it. Maybe momentum would do something. Maybe if I hit it fast enough, I could break it by surprise. Maybe the wall had not expected me to commit to the bit with that much violence.
I slammed into it shoulder-first.
The wall made the same unholy metallic sound, even louder this time, and I bounced off and nearly toppled over. I spun around immediately, annoyed and winded even though I had no idea whether winded was supposed to apply in a mind-space prison. "Okay," I snapped, "that one was offensive."
I tried to punch it from underneath. I tried to punch it with a twist. I tried punching it and then pretending to be done punching it and then punching it again while imagining that the second punch would count as a surprise attack. I even tried closing one eye because I had the weird thought that maybe the wall was only visible in stereo. That didn't make any sense, but by that point I was trying to brute-force my way through logic itself.
At some point I sat down in front of it and stared at it in silence, breathing hard.
Maybe I was approaching it wrong.
Maybe I was still trying to dominate it the same way I had been trying to dominate the titanium. Maybe the problem was that I kept thinking I had to destroy whatever was in front of me. Maybe that was exactly why this thing wasn't breaking. Maybe it wasn't meant to be smashed.
I got up again, annoyed with the thought because it felt suspiciously wise.
"Fine," I muttered. "If you want me to be weird about this, I can be weird too."
I walked toward the wall again, more slowly this time, and instead of winding up for another punch, I just stood there with my hand half-raised. I stared at the surface. The grey haze around it. The invisible edge. The pressure of it. It felt less like a barrier now and more like a test of whether I could stop treating everything like it had to be wrestled into submission.
I exhaled.
Then I took another step.
Nothing happened.
So I took another.
Still nothing.
I pressed my palm to the wall instead of striking it. I waited. I breathed. I tried not to think about force at all. I tried to feel the shape of the space around me instead of attacking it. The grey seemed to shift faintly beneath my hand, like mist moving under glass.
That got my attention.
I frowned slightly and leaned in. "What are you doing?"
The wall did not answer, but for the first time it felt less solid. Not softer. Just less absolute. Like maybe I had spent all this time trying to break something that was waiting for me to stop trying to punch my way through it.
I pulled my hand back, staring at the spot where I had touched it.
Then I shook my head and laughed a little under my breath. "No way that's the answer. There's no way it's that stupid."
Still, I pressed my hand to it again.
And this time I felt it.
Not a crack. Not a break.
A response.
A tiny shift, so small I almost missed it.
The wall didn't want force.
It wanted permission.
That thought landed in my head and made me pause so hard I forgot to breathe for a second. I looked at the barrier, then down at my own hand, then back up again. I had been hitting it like a problem. Like an enemy. Like something that had to be conquered.
Maybe that was the mistake.
Maybe I didn't need to rip it open.
Maybe I just needed to stop treating it like something that could only be beaten by violence.
I took one more breath, slower this time, and rested my hand against the wall with both palms flat. The space around me was silent enough that I could hear my own thoughts moving. I closed my eyes and let myself lean forward just a little.
No punch.
No wind-up.
No drama.
Just a push.
And the wall gave.
Not fully. Not yet.
But enough.
A crack of light flickered through the grey.
That was all it took to wake me back up.
The moment it happened, my leg jolted, and I snapped awake in the dojo.
I blinked hard.
The room came back all at once—floor, light, voices, the smell of the place, all of it slamming into me at once like I had been yanked out of a dream by the collar. I was still kneeling near the titanium setup, only now all five angels were staring at me in silence, waiting.
Auri looked confused, like she had been expecting a different result entirely.
"…Did it work?" she asked.
I blinked at her, then looked down at my own hands like they might have an answer. "I think it did."
Auri's gaze flicked over me, then to my nose, then back. "You didn't even bleed."
I stiffened. "Why did you say that like you were disappointed?"
She blinked once. "I wasn't disappointed."
"That absolutely sounded disappointed."
Dorian made a noise that might have been a laugh. Tess looked like she was trying not to smile. Rina had her face half-turned away, but I could see enough to know she was amused, too.
I pushed myself up, stared at the titanium stack, and exhaled. "I'm trying again."
Auri stepped back. The others straightened a little.
I walked over to the planks, raised my hand, and the entire group seemed to hold its breath with me. Even the air felt tense. I took a deep breath, set my stance, and brought my hand down with everything I had.
The next second, I was on the ground again, clutching my hand and making a noise so close to a scream that I was proud of myself for not actually screaming.
But this time—
One plank had broken.
Just one.
Auri stared at the stack, then at me, and the look on her face was a mixture of disappointment, confusion, and something almost too small to be called surprise.
"So…" she said slowly. "Weak."