Evan was still sitting on the bench in the common training area when Ren, Keira, Lyra, and Dain finally reached him. The hall had begun filling by then, the quiet of the early morning gradually giving way to the sounds of trainees arriving, instructors preparing their groups, and equipment being moved into place. Evan took another drink from his waterskin before setting it beside his bag, his muscles still carrying the pleasant heaviness of the session he had finished before the others had even arrived.
Ren was the first to look him over properly. His eyes moved from Evan's damp shirt to the bag at his feet and then toward the partition separating the common floor from the construct section.
"You've been here since before we arrived again, haven't you?" he asked, though there was more amusement than surprise in his voice. "I know you like getting extra work in before the rest of us show up, but you look like you've already finished an entire session."
Evan nodded. "I did."
Ren gave him a skeptical look. "Your usual conditioning?"
"Most of it."
Lyra had already taken note of the answer. She glanced toward the construct section, then back at Evan. "Most of it?"
Evan rested his forearms against his knees for a moment before answering. "I started with my usual conditioning, then spent the rest of the session with Grade Zero."
That earned a little more attention than his earlier admission had.
Keira tilted her head. "This morning as well?"
Evan nodded again. "Valor said I could use it after conditioning in the evenings, and if the area is free, during the morning sessions too."
Ren stared at him for a second before looking toward the construct section again. "He actually gave you permission to use it twice a day?"
"Provided I keep up with everything else," Evan said. "He made that part very clear."
Lyra's expression shifted into quiet understanding. "That makes sense. You're still catching up on foundations we started working on much earlier." She glanced briefly at the floor before adding, "Grade Zero was part of our training too, a long time ago. I barely remember how long we spent with it."
"A few months," Keira said. "At least for me."
Ren laughed softly. "You say that like it was some distant historical era. I still remember Grade Zero making me repeat the same transition until I was convinced it had something against me personally."
"You probably gave it a reason," Lyra replied.
Ren looked offended. "I was a child."
"You were twelve."
"Exactly. Basically a child."
That drew a quiet laugh from Keira, while even Dain's expression softened slightly.
Evan listened to them with a faint smile, though the information settled somewhere deeper as well. They had all gone through this stage years before he had even begun training properly. The difference between them was starting to make more sense. Their greater strength, cleaner movement, and easier control were built on foundations that had been reinforced throughout childhood and adolescence, while Evan was still trying to establish those same foundations in a matter of weeks.
Dain glanced briefly toward the construct section before looking back at Evan. "And after two sessions?"
Evan thought about it for a moment. "I understand the point better now. Yesterday I was mostly trying to keep up with what it was showing me. Today I started noticing how much was hidden in the smaller movements."
Ren gave a quiet laugh. "That's how it gets you. You think you've figured out the exercise, then you realize you've been doing three things wrong the entire time."
Keira nodded in agreement. "It took us a while to stop treating Grade Zero like something we simply had to imitate and start paying attention to why it moved the way it did."
Ren leaned back with a grin. "I still blame the construct for exposing how bad I was at the beginning."
"You were twelve," Keira reminded him.
"Exactly. I was twelve and therefore entitled to be terrible."
This time Evan laughed along with them, the sound coming more easily than it might have a few weeks ago.
Before the conversation could drift any further, Valor's voice carried across the training hall. "If you're finished reminiscing about Grade Zero, you can put that knowledge to use. Positions, everyone. We're starting."
A chorus of resigned groans answered him from multiple groups.
Ren sighed dramatically. "There it is. Happiness lasted almost twelve seconds today." He adjusted his training gloves and started toward the conditioning lanes, muttering something about instructors possessing unnatural timing.
Evan followed with the others, but as he walked, he noticed something that hadn't been true yesterday. His feet seemed to settle into each step with a little less impact, his weight transferring more smoothly instead of dropping into place at the end of each stride. He caught himself adjusting his pace once before realizing he had done it without conscious thought. The difference was subtle enough that the others continued walking without giving him a second glance, and Grade Zero would probably still have found plenty to correct. Even so, it was his first unmistakable proof that the lesson had followed him beyond the training circle.
As they moved toward the conditioning lanes, Evan found his thoughts returning briefly to the construct platform itself. Standing within the training circle had felt different. The sensation was difficult to describe. The runic array beneath the platform did not transfer knowledge or guide his body directly. Instead, it established a faint synchronization between the trainee and the construct's movement cycle, allowing subtle shifts of balance, timing, and force to be perceived with unusual clarity. It was less like being taught and more like standing beside a perfectly tuned instrument.
Every mistake in his own movement became easier to recognize because the construct introduced none of its own. Human instructors, no matter how skilled, inevitably carried tiny personal habits accumulated over years of experience. Grade Zero possessed no habits. Only the standardized movement pattern it had been created to preserve.
That same perfection also explained why trainees were introduced to the constructs only after building a little foundation first. Beginners lacked the awareness to distinguish between their own mistakes and the construct's example, often becoming overwhelmed by details they were not yet ready to perceive.
The conditioning drills, movement exercises, and countless repetitions under instructors like Valor developed that awareness first. Only then did Grade Zero become truly valuable. It exposed every unnecessary habit a trainee had unknowingly cultivated, refusing to accommodate them or compromise its standard even slightly. It was an uncompromising teacher, patient enough to repeat the same lesson forever, and that was precisely why those who endured its instruction emerged with movements cleaner than any human demonstration alone could usually provide.
By the time those thoughts faded, Evan had already joined the others in the conditioning lanes. The morning session began much like every other, weighted holds giving way to controlled transitions before flowing into movement drills. Yet something had changed in the way he experienced them. Each instruction from Valor now connected naturally to something he had witnessed inside the construct circle.
"Keep your weight centered" was no longer an abstract correction. He could picture exactly how Grade Zero settled before every step. "Relax your shoulders" immediately brought to mind the effortless stillness of the construct's upper body. It was as though the lessons from conditioning and the lessons from the construct had finally found each other, each explaining the other in ways they never had before.
Valor noticed his subtle improvements almost immediately. During one of the directional transition drills, he paused beside Evan only long enough to watch three consecutive repetitions. There was no praise, only a small nod before he continued walking down the line correcting other trainees. That single gesture, however, told Evan enough.
The fundamentals he had spent weeks building were no longer isolated exercises performed for their own sake. Grade Zero had begun weaving them together into a single, coherent system of movement. For the first time, Evan could see why Valor insisted that fighting started long before anyone threw a punch. A body that could not move correctly could never truly learn combat, no matter how many techniques it memorized afterward.
The rest of the morning unfolded with an almost surprising sense of clarity. Exercises that had once seemed unrelated now revealed the purpose behind them. The weighted stance holds reinforced the same stable posture Grade Zero maintained before every transition. The endless lateral shuffles taught the body to move without sacrificing balance. Even the conditioning circuits, which Ren complained about with unwavering consistency, suddenly felt less like endurance for its own sake and more like preparation for maintaining precise movement after fatigue inevitably set in.
Evan still made mistakes. Plenty of them. But instead of becoming frustrated, he found himself identifying them sooner. Each correction felt less like starting over and more like removing another thin layer of imperfection from movements that were slowly becoming his own.
When the morning session finally ended, Valor called everyone together for a brief cooldown. His gaze swept across the trainees before resting on Evan for only a heartbeat. "Remember this," he said, addressing the group as a whole. "The purpose of repetition is not to perform the same movement a thousand times. It's to perform a thousand slightly better movements." He let the words settle before continuing. "If today's repetition looks identical to yesterday's, you weren't practicing. You were exercising."
Evan found himself glancing unconsciously toward the construct section across the hall. For just an instant, the silent figure standing within its training circle seemed less like a machine and more like a measuring stick, one that would patiently reveal every flaw until there were none left to find. This evening, he would stand before it again, and the process would begin anew.
The group dispersed soon afterward, conversations returning almost immediately now that training had officially ended. Ren was already lobbying for an early lunch, arguing that "the body can't distinguish between calories burned through exercise and calories burned thinking about how much exercise you just did." Lyra stared at him for several seconds before informing him that this was the worst excuse for being hungry she had heard all week. Ren remained unconvinced.
Keira smiled quietly and asked Evan whether the construct had truly spent nearly an hour repeating only the opening sequence. When he nodded, she looked toward the partition with newfound respect. "I always wondered why the older trainees spoke about Grade Zero the way they do," she admitted. "Now I think I understand. It isn't difficult because the movements are complicated. It's difficult because it never accepts 'close enough.'"
Dain fell into step beside Evan as they walked toward the exit. After several moments of comfortable silence, he spoke. "Don't rush it." Evan looked over. Dain kept his eyes forward. "People see the later constructs and want to reach them quickly. Then they spend months trying to unlearn mistakes Grade Zero would have removed in the beginning." He shrugged lightly. "It's boring." A faint smile appeared for just an instant. "That's why it works."
Before Evan could reply, Dain turned toward his usual route through the training grounds, lifting a hand in farewell. Evan watched him go, then glanced once more toward the construct section. Soon, the same silent teacher would be waiting. And somehow, the thought of working through the same movements all over again no longer felt tedious. Each repetition seemed like another opportunity to refine something he had missed before.
After parting ways with the others, Evan made his way toward the library at an easy pace, letting the bustle of late morning settle around him. Dornhaven was already deep into the day's activity. The broad avenue carried a steady stream of pedestrians, delivery carts, and compact mana-driven vehicles that glided almost silently over the stone roadway, while elevated walkways carried foot traffic between the taller buildings lining the district. Above the streets, enormous signs shifted through advertisements in softly glowing script, and somewhere farther ahead the deep chime of a transit station announced another departure.
Evan found himself paying closer attention to the way he moved through all of it. A step landing with slightly more force than necessary. His shoulder tightening as he turned around a passing pedestrian. His weight settling onto one leg for a fraction longer than the other whenever he paused to let a cart cross. The differences were so small that he doubted anyone else could have noticed them, yet Grade Zero had given him a new awareness that made them increasingly difficult for him to overlook. More than once, he caught himself making a small adjustment without consciously planning to do so, shifting his weight more smoothly or relaxing a muscle that had tightened for no reason. He wondered how long it would take before those corrections became as natural as breathing.
The town provided endless opportunities to test that awareness. A courier in a fitted travel coat passed him at a brisk pace, boots landing with barely a sound as a faint blue glow from the mana conduits along his belt pulsed in time with his steps. Two children hurried past carrying paper-wrapped pastries, arguing over which arena fighter had the better record, while an elderly woman nearby used a small hand-held device to check the schedule of a public transport route before continuing toward a crowded market street. Beyond them, the rooftops stretched toward the distant skyline, where towers of glass, stone, and metal rose among older buildings whose carved facades still carried the marks of older architectural traditions.
Dornhaven was enormous, yet life within it seemed to move through countless small routines. People stopped at familiar stalls, exchanged brief greetings with workers they recognized, crossed the same intersections each day, and followed paths that had probably become instinctive long before they ever thought about them. Evan found the idea strangely familiar now. Even here, movement and habit shaped far more of daily life than he had initially understood.
By the time the library came into view, Evan had reached an unexpected conclusion. Grade Zero's lessons did not end when he stepped off the platform. They followed him into the most ordinary parts of his day. Walking through the streets, opening a door, shifting around someone in a crowd, sitting down, standing again, carrying a bag over one shoulder, each action gave him another chance to reinforce cleaner mechanics.
Valor's description of the construct made more sense to him now. Grade Zero was teaching him a foundation that came before fighting an opponent. Before he could truly learn how to fight someone else, Evan had to learn how to move his own body with precision and efficiency. The more he understood, the more obvious it became that fighting began with mastering his own movement first. Everything that came afterward would be built upon that foundation.
The thought stayed with him as he approached the library doors, already wondering how much more he would begin noticing once he had spent enough time practicing.