No clock marked the hours passed, for clocks are merciful liars, and here mercy had long since departed, for it had become a cell. His sweat, iron warmed, mixed with the sour remnants of a protein bar devoured in haste.
Tavo lay upon the mat like a warrior between charges, blanket discarded, shoes flung. One under the bench, the other near the wall, laces loose.
The lights burned low. Time here did not flow; it crawled, measured in breaths, in falls, in the stubborn scrape of palms seeking balance on cold steel.
In the low light, Tavo gripped the bars again. His arm answered, his shoulder locked into reluctant obedience, his back curved into something approximating defiance. The legs remained traitors, silent, trembling, as though the very marrow remembered too well the childhood when stairs had been mountain ranges and streets oceans.
His body screamed rest. He answered with another pull.
He gripped the bar. Pulled. Rose halfway. The left knee buckled. He caught himself, forehead striking metal with a dull clang. No cry escaped, only breath hissed through teeth, his vision blurring.
Barkhad stood in the shadows, vast as a tree, arms folded across a chest that could have stopped a bull. He merely watched.
"Again," he said at last.
Tavo's jaw set. He pushed once more. This time the foot found the floor with no grace, just contact. It quivered. Held, for three heartbeats. Four.
Then gravity reclaimed its due.
He struck the mat hard. Breath exploded from him. Yet he did not lie still. One fist drove into the padding. He hauled himself up again, slower, eyes fixed on the bar as though it were an enemy to conquer.
Barkhad took one step closer. "You fight like a man who has no choice."
"I have no choice," Tavo rasped. "Not anymore."
The giant's lips curved, just a fraction. "Then fight harder."
The door opened. Sky stood on the threshold, headphones unleashing music in full fury.
He offered no word, no glance; merely paused, waved once, closed his eyes and smiled, letting the voices spill forth. A medley from the early 21st century, voices in chorus, claiming the journey to the stars as birthright.
He turned on his heel and was gone. The door clanged shut. But the echo remained, swelling like the war cry of a fallen race.
It burrowed into Tavo. As fire in altered sinews.
He gripped the bar again. Tested it. Then pulled.
Hard.
The metal shrieked. The bolts holding it to the wall didn't fail, they tore, ripping free with a sound like something essential breaking.
Gravity reclaimed him again. He hit the mat, the bar still in his hands, bent where his grip had been.
He stared at it.
I didn't mean to…
The thought died unborn. Because beneath the shock, something deeper stirred. Not power. Not yet. Just the faint, molten awareness that his body was no longer asking permission from the world.
It was demanding.
The bar lay twisted in his hands. No crutch now. No excuse.
Barkhad's eyes flicked to the twisted bar. Then to Tavo. His face didn't change, but something in his posture shifted.
"You do not know your own strength yet," Barkhad said quietly.
Tavo looked up at him, still breathing hard, still holding the broken metal like evidence of a crime.
"No," Barkhad continued while taking it from Tavo's grip. "But you will."
The voices dug deeper, igniting the primal form etched in quintessence. Fists pressed to ground, curled as if channeling unseen meteors from a hero his DNA knew without ever meeting.
Spine lengthened, unbidden. Adopted the stance passed silently through generations, stories of bronze saints whispered against the bans, now reborn in remade flesh. Hips aligned, defying not just gravity but the void that claimed those stellar protectors. Knees locked with the decisive click of ancient resolve, a people born for the stars.
He rose. Slowly. Trembling to the point of breaking. Fists and teeth clenched, arms poised as if raising an invisible bar. Sweat fell in rivers down his back. The chorus in his chest proclaimed it: humanity was forged for the stars, not chains.
For two breaths the form held. Then the body, still apprentice to its new fire, yielded. He fell again. From the mat he caught his reflection in the mirror: fists still poised, ready for the next attempt.
"…yet," Tavo whispered.
Barkhad watched, sentinel from older shores, eyes watering, hiding his smile in shadow.
**
Mrs. Puyana spoke before Lord Reid could draw breath to thunder.
"Lord Reid. My condolences."
There was silence, the silence of a lion caged. Thick and furious.
"Cut the pleasantries," he snapped. "Tell me we have a plan."
Her lips, made to command nations, curved. No warmth. Just steel.
"Yes," she said. "I do have one."
A pause, slow as the Magdalena river.
"And with all due respect, it does not require you."
Lord Reid's breath caught. She heard it across the network, the tightness in his silence.
"You failed," she continued. "I warned you Sky would convince Nekyia to fall. You dismissed it as impossible."
This time, the silence was shorter, sharp.
"Impossible," she said, "is now written in headlines for all to read."
He made no reply. He needed none, she heard the rage coil in the space between breaths.
"My father told me stories," she drew a slow breath. "Not of generals. Not of kings. But of a boy."
A creak, his chair, perhaps.
"A boy with no title, no money, no institutions at his back. Who sat opposite a grandmaster and made him uneasy. Simply by refusing the rules laid before him."
She leaned back. The leather of her chair sighed.
Her voice remained level.
"You attempted to overpower him," she said. "I shall replace the conditions that permit his existence."
Lord Reid's voice returned, low, dangerous.
"And how, precisely, do you intend to accomplish that?"
No answer.
Her finger pressed the button on her console.
And the world answered.
Phones rang across the world. A legion summoned. Directors snatched receivers mid-sentence. Department heads froze over ledgers. Research leads silenced debates in radiant labs. Think tanks hushed. Defense bureaus paused. Simulation chambers froze mid-calculation. Cognitive suites went silent. Network vaults lit up. Quantum halls trembled. Even the neon dens of esports tacticians fell quiet.
Mrs. Puyana regarded the gathering. As subjects.
Lord Reid's voice returned, stripped of bluster. "What madness is this?"
Her lips parted in the faintest of smiles.
"I will alter the game," she said. "And you are no longer a player."
The assembly upon the screens leaned forward. They merely obeyed, as all things must.