The sky is still more night than morning when Kael drops the last handhold and lands barefoot in the Pit. Cold stone kisses his soles, but the Aua is already awake, sliding warm and restless under his skin.

  Toren waits in the center, barefoot, black trousers, sleeveless linen wrap the color of old ash. His wrapped hands hang loose. Six ironstone slabs stand behind him like monuments.

  Toren rolls one shoulder.

  “Watch once.”He walks to the first slab.

  No stance. No warning.

  He lifts his right hand and flicks the stone with one lazy finger, the way you’d flick a bug off your sleeve.

  The slab detonates.

  A heartbeat of absolute silence, then the world punches outward. The ironstone becomes a white sunburst of powder and thunder. The shockwave slams Kael backward; dust leaps off every wall. A perfect crater yawns where the slab stood, edges glowing cherry-red. Cracks sprint thirty body-lengths up the canyon walls and keep climbing.

  Toren lowers his hand, flicks an invisible speck from that single fingertip, and turns.

  “That’s the bar. Reach it.”

  He steps aside. Kael faces the second slab.

  He plants his bare feet, tightens the cloth around his right hand until it creaks, and draws the Aua down his arm until his knuckles shine white-hot.First punch.

  He throws every ounce of himself into it.

  The impact is a cannon shot. The slab lurches, surface spider-webbed with glowing cracks. A chunk the size of a barrel shears off and crashes down.Toren folds his arms. “Again.”Second. Third. Fourth.

  Each strike lands harder, cleaner. The ground begins to tremble in rhythm with his fists. Dust rises in perfect rings. The canyon answers every blow with a deeper, angrier echo.

  Fifth punch.

  He feels the line snap true: heart, shoulder, fist, starlight.

  The slab explodes into a storm of shards that scream through the air like thrown spears. One piece buries itself halfway into the far wall with a dying bell-note.

  Kael stands panting, arm shaking, the Aua singing in his bones.Toren whistles low. “One.”The third slab waits.

  Kael is already moving.

  The next takes six blows.

  The fourth, five.

  The fifth, three, and the shockwave lifts loose stones off the rim and rains them down like hail.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The sixth slab is the biggest, its face scarred by decades of fists.

  Kael circles it once, rolling his shoulder, letting the Aua coil and wait.

  He breathes out slow, tasting iron and starlight.

  Then he hits it.

  First strike: a deep, bell-note crack.

  Second: the slab rocks on its base.

  Third: a fracture splits it crown to root.

  Fourth: he pours every memory of fear, every promise made in the dark, every heartbeat since the night the sky broke.

  The slab detonates so hard the ground bucks beneath his bare feet.

  The blast rolls outward in a perfect circle, carving a shallow bowl twenty paces wide. Shards scream overhead and bury themselves in the canyon walls like arrows. The echo climbs the stone and comes back as a roar.

  Silence falls, thick and ringing.

  Kael stands in the new crater, chest heaving, right arm hanging loose, knuckles glowing through torn cloth. The Aua moves slow and satisfied under his skin, purring.

  Toren walks the circle of devastation, bare feet silent on fresh broken stone.

  He stops in front of Kael, grins wide.“Six slabs. Less than an hour.”

  He claps Kael on the back hard enough to stagger him.

  “Now we do the left.”

  Kael laughs, short and wild, and the canyon laughs with him.They finish the left hand the same way: six more slabs, six more roars, six more craters.

  By the time the sun is high and brutal, the Pit floor is a moonscape of smoking bowls and glass-sand.Toren tosses him a waterskin.

  “Sit. Eat. Then we play.”

  They tear into flatbread and goat in the thin shade of an overhang. No words. Just the sound of chewing and the low, satisfied hum of the Aua under Kael’s skin.

  When the waterskin is empty, Toren stands, wipes his mouth with the back of one wrapped hand, and jerks his chin toward the open Pit.

  "No beams yet,” he says. “Just fists and light. Come try.”Kael rises. The Aua flares awake, bright and ravenous.

  They square up.

  Kael attacks first: fast, vicious, a storm of punches, elbows, knees wrapped in white fire.

  Toren blocks or slips every one, lazy, almost bored. A palm to the chest here, a forearm there; each deflection a small thunderclap. Kael never touches him. Not once.

  Minutes stretch.

  Kael breathes harder, glows brighter, moves faster than he ever has. Toren just smiles, bare feet dancing on broken glass, giving ground only when he feels like it.

  Then Kael sees it.

  Toren throws a looping right, just a hair too wide.

  Kael drops under it, plants both bare feet, and throws everything he has left: a rising, spinning back fist wrapped in blinding starlight aimed clean at Toren’s jaw. The strike is perfect. The air screams around it.

  Toren’s eyes widen the tiniest fraction.He moves.A single pulse of white-silver light explodes from the soles of his bare feet.

  Toren launches straight up, three body-lengths in the blink of an eye. Kael’s backfist passes under him so close it rips the linen at his waist. The missed strike slams the ground and detonates a crater wide enough to bury a horse. Dust and glass-sand blast outward in a perfect ring.

  Toren hangs in the empty sky for one heartbeat, suspended on raw starlight, looking down with a huge, delighted grin.

  Kael stares up, chest heaving, Aua flaring furious and awestruck.

  “That’s not fair!” he shouts, voice raw.

  Toren laughs, deep and rolling, and drops back to the ground, landing light as dust ten paces away.

  “Never said it would be fair, glowstick,” he calls, spreading his arms. “Tomorrow we teach you how to cheat the same way."

  Kael lowers his fist slowly, glow pulsing hot and alive under his skin.