When April 29th rolled around, I realized just how much time had passed since Seirath dumped me in that furnace of a desert and told me to climb dunes with a rock the size of a damn table strapped to my waist.
They were twenty-four mornings of dragging myself up shifting sand while the sun tried to roast me alive, and twenty-four afternoons of jumping rope like a school kid while a blind—or maybe not-blind—woman tried to sniff me out like a hawk.
Every morning was the same. Tie the rope, feel it glow, stare at the dunes that looked taller than mountains, and then begin the climb. At first, I hated it so much. It took seven hours to drag myself up and down just one dune. And then Seirath had the audacity to say:
"Good. Now go skip rope for another seven."
I swear, the only thing that kept me going in those first few days was pure spite against him and this entire system that thought it was funny to put a mage in a knight's boot camp.
But still, I climbed.
On the rope side of things, at least I had an edge. Skipping endlessly for hours was brain-numbing sure, but I leaned into the meditation techniques from my past world. They were ones I swore I would never use again because they reminded me too much of everything I lost back then. By the end of the first week, I felt the results. My Xana began to flow smoother, cloaking me with every swing and jump.
And I only ate a lot at dinner and breakfast before I started my day.
By the second week, things shifted. The dunes started giving me less of a fight, or maybe I just got stronger. I went from seven hours to six, then to five. One morning I shocked myself by finishing the climb in four and a half hours. I nearly cried tears of joy when I realized that meant four rope-skipping time instead of eight. My legs still felt like molten steel by the end but the progress was undeniable.
The training was still hell, though.
The dunes were merciless. Every time I ran faster, my feet sank deeper. Every time I tried to pull the rock harder, it buried itself like it enjoyed my suffering. My entire body was locked in this stupid tug-of-war with sand that refused to play fair. More than once, I screamed into the empty desert like a lunatic, because honestly, it felt personal at that point.
And then there was Nefira.
She kept watch during stealth training like some grim overseer with the patience of a saint and the sadism of a devil. Every afternoon she sat with her stopwatch, counting the hours and found new ways to torment me. One time it was food. Another time she decided to stir the air currents so the rope snapped louder with each swing, like she was testing if I would break. And she never praised me, not once. At best, she would say, "Still loud," or "Still sloppy." And yet weirdly, she kept me going.
But the thing about Nefira that really got into my head was her sight, or lack of it. I noticed it one evening. Around dusk, when the last sliver of sun dipped below the horizon, her blindfold was gone and her almond eyes were open. She didn't even hide it. She could see clear as day. And yet by dawn, she was blind again, relying on her airflow senses.
It didn't make sense but it fascinated me. She was like two different people depending on the hour. She was day-blind and night-sighted. I wanted to ask but I knew she wouldn't give me a straight answer. I tried to and it ended in failure.
By the last days of April, something insane happened.
The dune training no longer crushed me. It no longer broke my back and left me crawling on hands and knees. Somehow, somewhere between the twentieth and twenty-fourth day, my body just… changed. On April 23rd, I tied the rope, braced myself for another half-day of torture, and started climbing. And then I realized I was moving faster. The rock wasn't sinking as deep. My legs didn't burn as badly. I reached the top in one hour.
One hour.
I stood there at the peak of the dune, staring at the sinking sun, panting but not dying, and I laughed. I actually laughed like a madman because how the hell? For weeks I bled, cursed, screamed and dragged my body through this torture and now suddenly I was breezing through it?
I wasn't just stronger. I was faster too. My body felt light in a way it never had before like I unlocked a new gear without meaning to. It scared me because I had no idea how I improved so much. Was it the Xana adapting? Was it my Argemenes body mutating again? I didn't know.
But it meant one thing. Dune training only ate one hour of my day now.
Which left me with the rope.
Skipping rope had always been "easier" compared to the dunes, but now that it was my main training, I went all in. No more half-hearted pacing. I went faster, testing how quiet I could be while still moving like lightning. My afterimages blurred around me as the rope snapped against the air, faster and faster.
Nefira, of course, was unimpressed.
"Still loud," she said flatly.
I grinned between breaths. "Give me time."
And she did. And slowly, she started admitting it. "Better." "Improving." it was never praise, but acknowledgment. And that was enough.
By April 30th, the last day, I was a different person than the one who stumbled into this training a month ago. My body was leaner, stronger, and faster.
°°°°°°°
The sun hadn't even settled fully over the horizon when I stood before that dune one last time at six in the morning. My rope lay coiled at my feet and the familiar boulder sat waiting, like a smug opponent who thought it had beaten me for good.
I crouched, tied the rope around my waist with steady hands and watched as it began to glow faintly. I spat into the sand and stared up at the dune's crest.
"This is it, last day of the month. I'm finishing this."
I took one deep breath, air filling my lungs, then exhaled everything.
I ran.
The first steps bit into the sand, each foot sinking deeper as the rope yanked taut and the rock dragged behind me. But this time, I didn't slow down. I let the weight pull me. Every time the boulder buried itself, I tore it free with raw strength. Sand exploded around me with every surge as I pushed harder and faster. My legs screamed but I didn't care.
For the first time, I wasn't thinking about conserving stamina or pacing myself. This wasn't a marathon. The dune wasn't going to win this time.
I hit the midpoint in what felt like three to five minutes. My feet were leaving afterimages. The rope creaked under the strain and the stone gouged trenches through the sand, but I was moving faster than I ever had. The crest of the dune came rushing toward me and before I even realized it, I was there at the top, my heart hammering in my ears.
But I didn't rest.
I hauled the rock out of its sandy grave in one brutal motion, lifted it clear above the ground and without stopping, hurled myself down the slope. Gravity surged under my heels, the dune dragging me faster. The stone behind me didn't slow me now. It skipped, crashed and dragged like a comet tethered to my back.
This time, I counted.
One second. Two. Three...
The desert blurred into streaks. My body was leaving a blur of afterimages that split and merged as I descended. My muscles didn't register the weight anymore. The rope burned at my waist but it felt almost weightless, like it wasn't the stone holding me anymore but my own momentum tearing me forward. By the time I reached the base, the number was clear in my head.
Twenty seconds.
I slammed both feet into the sand to stop. The world lurched.
Physics hit me like a slap in the face and my sudden stop meant the boulder didn't stop with me. It hurtled forward with all the momentum it had built up from my sprint, pulled by the force of my deceleration. The heavier the mass, the harder the inertia. That rock wasn't slowing down just because I had. It shot toward me like a catapulted projectile, the line between us acting like a slingshot.
I had one second to act.
The shadow of it fell over me, dust and sand blasting forward as it descended. I clenched my fist, drew every shred of strength I'd built this month into my arms, and turned my whole body into the punch.
The sound was like thunder cracking open the desert sky. Stone met flesh and lost. The boulder exploded. Shards scattered across the dune field with a rain of shattered rock.
I stood there, panting like I had been holding my breath the whole climb. Sweat dripped down my back. I threw my head back and screamed into the endless desert sky.
"FUCK YES!"
The echo carried for miles. The desert didn't laugh at me this time.
That was when the air warped and Seirath stepped through one of his shadow-black portals. He stood there, silent for a moment, as if he wasn't sure what he was looking at. Then he spoke, his voice colder than usual but tinged with something I never thought I would hear from him.
"Amazing. Ten minutes and twenty seconds."
My knees nearly buckled, but I forced myself to stay upright.
"I actually… did it. A whole month of hell and I finally… did it."
I bent, untied the rope from my waist, and let it fall to the sand. My hands were trembling when I turned to Seirath.
"Master, may I ask, what's the deal with this rope anyway? Why does it glow?"
Seirath's eyes flicked to the frayed cord.
"That rope was the real weight. Every time you tied it to yourself, it absorbed the mass of the rock and reflected it back on your body. You weren't pulling a stone. You were pulling yourself, twice over. It was your own strength against your own weight but amplified."
I froze. "What?"
All this time… it wasn't the boulder at all? My stomach dropped. No wonder I'd gotten stronger. No wonder I suddenly been able to climb faster, run faster and tear through the sand like it was nothing.
"You broke it. That is no small feat but you're not done. Not yet."
I straightened, forcing the grin back onto my face even though my body still trembled from adrenaline.
"Of course I'm not done. What's next?"
"Finish the rope training. If you fail, you will continue until you succeed. You know the rule by now."
I nodded. My legs hurt, my fists hurt and my lungs burned, but I couldn't stop smiling. I picked up the rope again and slung it across my shoulder. This time, I'm going to use this one as a skipping rope.
I stepped toward the portal and looked back.
"Thank you, Master."
And without looking back at the desert, I walked inside.