"There are as many combat styles as there are ways to die," Titus began, his tone shifting into something colder and sharper. "Some fight like fire:relentless, devouring everything in their path. Others fight like stone:unyielding, waiting for their enemy to break themselves against them. Some are like water, adapting, flowing around force, striking where there is none. And then…" he paused, his gaze locking onto Norlan's,
"There are those who are like the void. They do not oppose. They do not evade. They simply erase. They erase with overwhelming might and strength"
Norlan swallowed, his fingers twitching at his sides. "And what am I?"
Titus didn't respond. He looked at Norlan's eyes.
"Attack me."
"What?"
"Attack me. As hard as you can. With everything you have." Titus spread his arms wide, open, inviting. "Don't worry about hurting me. You won't. Just come at me like you came at those beasts. Let your instincts guide you. Let your power flow."
Norlan hesitated. Everything in him rebelled against the idea of striking someone who stood defenseless, someone who was quite literally his ancestor, someone who..
Titus moved.
One moment he was standing ten feet away, arms spread, his expression patient. The next, his palm was an inch from Norlan's face, stopped just short of impact.
The wind of its passage ruffled Norlan's blood-matted hair.
"That hesitation," Titus said softly, "would have killed you. Against me. Against anyone who actually wanted you dead. You hesitated because you thought. You thought about who I am. You thought about whether attacking was appropriate. You thought about consequences. In that gap, I crossed the distance and ended you."
Norlan's heart hammered in his chest. He hadn't seen the movement. Hadn't sensed it. One moment,then the next,with nothing in between.
"Again."
This time, Norlan didn't hesitate. His body exploded forward, all the accumulated power of his bloodline, all the raw energy from three hundred and forty-seven kills, channeled into a single devastating strike aimed at Titus's center mass.
Titus wasn't there.
Norlan's fist passed through empty air, and then something caught his ankle, and the world spun, and he was on his back with the breath driven from his lungs and Titus's knee pressing gently against his throat.
"You telegraph," Titus said conversationally. "Before you move, your body tells me you're going to move. Your shoulders tense. Your weight shifts. Your eyes focus on where you intend to strike. All of this happens before your fist moves. Against beasts who can't read such things, it doesn't matter. Against anyone who can, you're dead before you start."
He released Norlan and stepped back.
"It doesn't matter what kind of combat style you use or you were using with the beasts. I am going to mold you. I am going to mold you into another me. I am going to create a monster in close combat and a behemoth in swordsmanship. Since you can already cross levels to fight due to your high human bloodline,I am going to make you into a Grimblade able to cross two. Expression or not!"
Norlan felt his blood boil
"Again."
They went on for hours.
***
Norlan attacked, and Titus evaded. Norlan struck, and Titus wasn't there. Norlan poured everything into each assault: Speed, power, the raw overwhelming force that had slaughtered hundreds,and Titus simply... moved. Not fast, exactly. It wasn't speed that let him avoid each strike. It was something else. Something Norlan couldn't name.
He was there. Then he was somewhere else. In between, nothing.
"You're still thinking," Titus said, dodging a punch that should have been impossible to dodge. "I can see it in your eyes. You're calculating. You're predicting. You're trying to figure out where I'll be and strike there instead of here. Stop."
"Then what do I do?"
"Stop trying to hit me."
The absurdity of the instruction almost made Norlan laugh. "If I stop trying to hit you..."
"Then you might actually hit me." Titus circled him, loose and relaxed, his ancient body moving with a grace that belonged to something younger. "Your problem is that your mind is in the way. Your mind wants to win. Your mind wants to prove itself. Your mind is so focused on the goal that it can't see the path. Let go of winning. Let go of hitting me. Just... move."
Norlan closed his eyes.
The world fell away,the blood-soaked ground, the distant pulse of the portal, the weight of exhaustion that pressed against every muscle. He focused on nothing. On everything. On the space between. He was too exhausted to think. And maybe,that was exactly what Titus had in mind when he told him to fight the beasts alone.
Titus moved.
Norlan didn't see it. Didn't sense it. But his body shifted, six inches to the left, and Titus's passing strike cut air where Norlan's head had been.
"Good!" Titus's voice carried genuine excitement. "Again!"
Norlan's eyes remained closed. He didn't think about where Titus would strike. He didn't calculate trajectories or probabilities. He simply... existed. And when attack came: From left, from right, from above, from below,his body moved.
Not fast. Not slow. Just... appropriately. Six inches here. A foot there. A lean, a duck, a twist that bent his spine in ways that should have hurt but somehow didn't.
He wasn't dodging. He was simply not being where the attack arrived.
"You're doing it," Titus breathed. "You're actually doing it."
Then Norlan thought about what he was doing, and the state shattered.
Titus's palm caught him in the chest, not hard enough to injure but hard enough to send him stumbling backward, gasping.
"You thought," Titus said. "You felt yourself doing it, and you thought about feeling yourself doing it, and the gap opened again."
Titus chided, but he was smiling,a wide, genuine smile that transformed his weathered face. "That was remarkable, my boy. Most remarkable. You truly are my descendant. I spent years trying to touch that state for a single moment Yet you found it in hours."
Norlan bent over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "I... don't... understand..."
"You will. With practice, you will." Titus approached, placing a hand on Norlan's shoulder. "That state,the one you just touched,that's the foundation. When you can live there, when you can fight there without falling out, you will be something beyond mortal. Beyond awakened. Beyond anything this world has seen in millennia."
Norlan straightened, meeting Titus's ancient gaze. "How do I stay there?"
"You'll need to die." Titus's smile turned grim. "Not once. Not symbolically. You must die so many times that death becomes familiar. Boring, even. You must stand at the edge of annihilation so often that the edge becomes just another place to stand.
Every time you fight, you must push yourself to the limit and beyond. Every time you face an enemy, you must dance as close to their killing strikes as possible. You must learn, in your bones, that survival is not the goal."
"Then what is?"
"Nothing. Everything. The fight itself is the goal." Titus released his shoulder and stepped back.
"You're insane! How can a human being not fight for survival when death looms?"
Titus shrugged," But you're not human anymore my lord. You're something more."
"When you stop caring whether you live or die, you become free to move as you must. When you stop calculating survival, your body can finally express its true potential. That's the paradox,only by accepting death can you transcend it. Only by coming as close to death as possible intentionally,can you survive certain death when abruptly"
Norlan stood in the fading light, coated in the blood of hundreds, and felt something shift in his understanding. He still didn't get it, but he still got something.
"The mutual destruction you mentioned," he said slowly. "Trading blows. Taking less damage than the enemy."
"Yes." Titus nodded. "That's the practical application. When you don't fear death, you can take risks that would paralyze others. You can accept a wound to deliver a killing strike. You can let an attack land if it means your counter lands first, or harder, or in a more vital place. But precision matters—you must take less than you give. You must walk the line between suicidal and invincible."
"How do I learn that?"
"You must bleed." Titus's voice carried no comfort. "You bleed, and you learn from bleeding. You take wounds and study them. You let enemies hit you,not because you can't avoid it, but because you need to understand what their hits feel like. You build a library of pain in your body until every sensation has a name, until every attack's trajectory and intent can be read from the moment of impact."
Norlan looked down at his hands. They were still covered in dried blood:his enemies', his own from micro-cuts he hadn't noticed. Three hundred and forty-seven kills, and he'd learned almost nothing from them. He'd been a hammer, not a warrior.
"When do we start?"
Titus laughed—that warm, genuine sound again. "We started hours ago, my lord. But if you're asking when the real training begins..." He gestured toward the peak, toward the portal that still pulsed with patient light. "The beasts will return. They always return. The portal calls, and they answer. When they come:and they will come,you won't just kill them. You'll learn from them. You'll let them teach you."
"But this time,you will face them down the mountain, somewhere far away that the portal's call doesn't affect their intelligence."
Norlan just nodded. He knew that this is what it would take. What it would take to ensure his survival and completion of his mission.
***
Far below, in the darkness of the mountain's heart, Williams sat in the spring that had grown deeper still. The spiritual energy of three hundred and forty-seven cores continued its slow drip from the spikes above, feeding the miracle below. He didn't know about the battle. Didn't know about the training. Didn't know that his breakthrough had been paid for in blood not his own.
He simply sat, and absorbed, and grew.