Shad sat cross-legged under the blue-leaved tree, three smooth stones resting in the dirt in front of him.
They were still warm, even in the bitter morning air. Fray crouched a few feet away, slit pupils watching them closely.
He picked one up. Nothing happened no glow, no sound, just a heavy, steady warmth radiating into his palm. He pressed it to the blue-leaf bandage wrapped tight around his left arm, and almost instantly, the deep ache in his muscles began to dull.
'Heat source,' he thought. 'Or something else.'
He stood to test it properly. He set the first stone at the far edge of his half-circle perimeter. The second he buried shallow near the tangled roots of the tree. The third he kept in his hand.
By nightfall, he checked on them. The perimeter stone was cold stripped of its heat by the open air. But the one near the tree roots was still warm, and stranger, the small blossoms at the base of the trunk had turned, leaning inward toward where he'd buried it, like they were stretching for sunlight instead of the sun.
"They feed on it," Shad muttered. "Or it feeds them."
He didn't know which yet. But it was a start.
He slept that night with the last stone held tight in his fist.
Over time, the valley stopped feeling like a cage and became home. But in a place like this, home was just another battlefield.
Shad couldn't leave anyway. The croc was still out there somewhere, he had no proper tools, and Fray needed him. So he stayed, and he used the time.
Year one, year two. Pure survival and intense training, running, jogging, push ups, sit ups, squats and many others and he didn't forget to trained his Flow as that is what he nows calls it for simplicity sake, he treated it like a job.
He learned the valley the way he'd once learned extraction routes every tree, every flower patch, where the water pooled after heavy rain, which fruits didn't fight back going down, though there are still places far deeper in the forest he dared not go.
After two years of exploration in the Valley he came to terms with the fact that the forest is far bigger than he originally thought which greatly limited his exploration of valley and awe him at same time.
He twisted vines into cordage until his fingers bled, then kept twisting. He flaked obsidian until he stopped cutting himself doing it. Small things came up from the lake at night sharp teeth, long claws, nothing that talked, nothing that hesitated and he killed what he could and ran from what he couldn't, and slowly the ratio tipped in his favor.
He came out of those two years with more scars than he'd started the fight against the crocodile with, and something harder sitting behind his eyes and also a reward.
The reward was that he had become far much stronger than what a human is supposed to achieve. To put it simple he now feels almost or superhuman at best with an ability related to cold.
With what he would term as Flow sea. Which in a nutshell is the quantity of Flow he has. And he calls it layers.
"at this point my former fellow colleagues and instructors are nothing but child's play to me now."
'of course they are.' one of his mental identity spoke.
Year three, year four, more and more training, the control of his Flow has gotten much more better. He is now better at using and controlling it.
Also he has made a second breakthrough in the last four years it be was stressful and strained him to the core but it was worth it.
He now feels far much stronger and faster far above his already superhuman capabilities with a new ability .
The second ability is snow related which till now he doesn't now why or on what basis does he have an ability.
"well guess I would have to keep surviving and experimenting to get answers."
Though he had no name for ranking it yet nor did he fully understand how it works, with enough hardwork, insight and understanding he should be able to better understand.
so he decided to train, study and understand the new abilities and push his mind and body far beyond his current level.
Letter the day he took the mysterious stones then noticed something strange and new. They reacted to him, to Fray, and most of all to blood and The Flow, though it took him half a season to notice that pattern and another to confirm it. He built his territory around what he'd learned: dormant stones buried east to coax the food-flowers along faster, reactive ones staked west as a tripwire, warmth flaring the instant something living crossed too close. He mapped the a significant potion of the valley by hand, root by root, and marked one place on that map he never revisited the dark, oily pool in the ravine, circled twice, no notes beside it. Some things you didn't need a reason to leave alone.
And once in a while he goes back to the huge tree that had first sheltered him.
Year five, year six. Bigger things started coming for the lake, drawn by six years of prey-scent he could no longer hide even if he'd wanted to considering he is now stronger and as such more alluring.
He met them with everything he had the tail-spear, vine traps, flower pollen he'd learned to weaponize instead of avoid, the stones' heat turned offensive instead of defensive. He lost fights. He broke a rib against something with too many legs and disproportionate body with a face similar to that of a baby and spent eleven days flat on his back under the tree, Fray standing guard the whole time and refusing to hunt without him. Every time he got back up, he came back harder to put down.
He trained much harder and pushed himself far much than he did in the last four years.
He comes to understand that the higher rank he ascends the tougher it is to move on so he needed to push even harder and smarter.
The third rank was a bit weird and not clear at first but later on it became apparent what the effect of the third rank was.
One his mental identity then spoke as if it had new all along 'so the first rank turns you into a superhuman with and gifts you an ability the second just further enhances your already superhuman capabilities to a much higher state and also gifts you another abilities while the third boost the subsequent ranks and elevates it'.
'hmm, not bad' the pondering fighter identity says.
Fray also was making lot of progress the same as him. What surprises him the most about fray was that he now has a human Like appearance which he suspected to be the effect of the third rank on him.
He apears to be a rather competent young man with gray hair, almost golden like reptilian eye instead of his original green reptilian eye.
Year seven, year eight. The valley was his. At least some part of it.
The smaller beasts gave his perimeter a wide, permanent berth. The lake was his water source in every sense that mattered. The tree was less a landmark now than a home address. Fray had grown massive scarred pale across the shoulders, carrying a stillness in his now that hadn't been there in year one, the kind of quiet that came from having killed enough things to stop being surprised by it.
Shad had changed with him. He was leaner than he'd been on day one, corded rather than bulked, a jagged scar tracking from his left elbow clean up to his shoulder like a signature he'd never asked to sign. He moved without sound now, out of habit rather than effort, cataloguing every shift in the brush the way he used to catalogue exits in a room. Eight years of killing things in a place that had wanted him dead since the hour he'd landed in it, and he was still here, and it wasn't.
The croc never came back.
Not yet.
When night fell, Shad sat under the blue leaves with his spear resting across his lap, looking quietly over the dark surface of the lake.
Eight years down.
And he was just getting started.