Adam closed his eyes.
This time, it came fast.
No minutes of slow breathing. No struggle to quiet his mind. The flame was simply there—waiting at the base of his stomach, below the navel. A small, steady glow. He locked onto it within seconds.
Adam paused. The ease surprised him. The first time, it had taken him nearly ten minutes of breathing exercises and absolute stillness just to catch a glimpse of it. Now, barely a thought, and there it was.
He didn't understand why. But he pushed the question aside. There were more important things to figure out.
The flame sat in one place. It burned, but it didn't move. It didn't spread. It was just a point of warmth buried deep inside him.
Adam focused. He had an idea.
'What if I move it?'
He concentrated on the flame and tried to pull a piece of it upward. Toward his chest. He imagined the energy leaving the flame and traveling through his body like water through a pipe.
Nothing happened.
He pushed harder. He imagined it more clearly—a thread, thin as a hair, being drawn from the tip of the flame and pulled upward.
Still nothing.
Minutes passed. Adam didn't open his eyes. He kept his breathing slow, his mind locked on the flame. He adjusted his approach repeatedly—pulling gently, pushing firmly, willing it, asking it.
Then, finally, something shifted.
A strand. Thin. Almost invisible. Like a single thread peeling away from a ball of yarn. It separated from the flame and drifted upward, weak and unstable.
It moved toward his chest.
The moment it made contact, Adam's chest flooded with warmth. Not a comfortable warmth—a deep, spreading heat that pressed outward against his ribs. Sweat broke out across his forehead. His shirt stuck to his chest.
Adam's eyes snapped open.
The thread vanished. The warmth cut off instantly, and the energy snapped back to the flame like a rubber band.
Adam sat there, breathing hard, wiping the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.
It's not
Moving that energy—even a thread of it—had taken everything he had. And the moment his concentration broke, it was gone.
He closed his eyes again.
The flame was still there. He locked onto it, pulled at it again. The thread separated faster this time—not easily, but faster. It rose toward his chest.
The heat returned. Sweat ran down his temples.
Adam held it. His jaw was clenched, his whole body rigid with effort. The thread of energy hovered somewhere near his chest, connected to the flame below but not attached to anything useful.
He thought about his first attempt. He had been trying to pull the energy all the way to his hands. That was too far. The thread was too fragile, the distance too great.
'What about something closer?'
His lungs were right there. Just above the flame, separated by only a few inches of internal space.
Adam shifted his focus. Instead of pulling the thread upward and outward, he directed it toward his lungs—both of them, sitting on either side of his chest.
The concentration required was immense. It felt like trying to thread a needle while running. Every second, the energy tried to snap back. Every second, Adam forced it to stay.
Sweat covered his face. His breathing was ragged. His hands trembled on his knees.
Then it connected.
The thread of energy touched his lungs, and something changed.
His breathing was still fast—his chest still rising and falling rapidly from the effort. That didn't change. The speed stayed the same.
But the oxygen did not.
Adam felt it immediately. A rush. Not of air, but of delivery. Every breath he took was suddenly doing ten times the work. Oxygen flooded his cells—not just his lungs, but his arms, his legs, his brain. It was as if someone had opened a valve that had been stuck his entire life.
His body felt light. Not weightless, but unburdened. Like the difference between breathing through a straw and breathing through an open window.
'This is—'
His concentration shattered.
The thread disconnected. The energy snapped back to the flame. His lungs returned to normal.
But the effect lingered.
For several seconds after the disconnection, Adam could still feel the enhanced oxygen flowing through his body. It faded slowly, like the warmth of a fire after you step away from it.
Adam opened his eyes. He stared at the river in front of him, the water reflecting the afternoon sky.
His mind was racing.
'It enhanced my lungs. Not by changing their speed—by enhancing their function. My breathing stayed the same, but my lungs were absorbing and distributing oxygen at a massively higher rate.'
The implications hit him one after another.
If this energy could enhance lung function by connecting to them…
'What about my eyes? My muscles? My brain?'
Every organ. Every system. If the energy could connect to any part of the body and multiply its efficiency, then this wasn't just a power source. This was an upgrade system.
Adam's heart pounded. The excitement was almost unbearable.
He closed his eyes one more time. He reached for the flame.
It was there. But—
Adam's excitement died.
The flame was smaller. Noticeably smaller. Where it had been a steady glow, it was now barely a flicker. The energy he had spent threading it to his chest and lungs had come directly from the flame itself.
It wasn't generating new energy. It was being consumed.
Adam stared at the shrunken flame in his mind's eye. A cold thought formed.
'This is not infinite.'
The flame was a reservoir. A tank. And he had just drained a visible portion of it in two short experiments. If he kept going at this rate, the flame would go out entirely.
And then what?
Adam opened his eyes. He looked at his hands. They had stopped shaking, but the question remained.
'What happens when the source runs out?'