"Thug. Thug. Thug."
The sound of powerful punches echoed across the otherwise peaceful field.
It was Adyanth—once again testing his strength against the same tree that had served as his sparring partner for nearly two years. Thick-stemmed and worn, the tree bore visible patches where bark had been stripped clean. Some areas had gone bald, bruised by repeated impacts. If trees had memories, this one surely resented him.
Today, his goal was clear: bring it down.
If anyone saw what he was trying to do, they'd probably call him an idiot. A moron.
No one in their right mind would believe Adyanth could accomplish what he was attempting.
Because who in their right mind tries to fell a tree with bare hands?
---
Yes, Adyanth's body was stronger than average. Much stronger.
He had shattered the highest sprint record in history over a year and a half ago. And it wasn't just a one-time burst of speed—he could maintain that pace for tens of minutes without breaking a sweat.
Still, raw strength alone couldn't explain what he was attempting.
This wasn't just brute force.
This was something else.
Adyanth was trying to channel an ethereal energy that had begun stirring inside him.
---
It started a couple of months ago.
Whenever he exercised, he felt more energized than usual—an unnatural surge, something that hummed just beneath the surface of his skin. It felt like power coursing through his veins.
Driven by curiosity, he'd once sliced open his own arm, half expecting something glowing or inhuman to spill out.
But it was just blood.
Still, the wound he had inflicted healed within a couple of hours. Normally, that would take at least a day to close properly.
---
Then came the sprint that changed everything.
During a usual run, he suddenly felt the world around him begin to move in slow motion. Before he knew it, he had crossed a mile in what felt like just a few minutes.
That wasn't the only anomaly.
His hunger had started fading too. He calculated that he could go without food or water for three or four days with no adverse effects.
He didn't understand what was happening to him at first.
But slowly, he realized—it was all connected to the energy inside his body.
---
He began experimenting.
Day after day, trying different things—movement, rest, routine.
Then one day, during a sprint, he felt it again.
His breathing aligned perfectly with the rhythm of the energy flowing through him.
And once more, the world slowed down.
Distance collapsed beneath his feet.
His own speed startled him.
---
He sought help from Luna.
With her assistance, he obtained books on meditation and breathing exercises—guides to tap into whatever force had begun to awaken within him.
Over the past several weeks, he meditated frequently, practiced disciplined breathing, honed his focus.
Finally, he began to understand it.
He learned that the energy inside him responded to calm breathing.
He could guide it, manipulate it—at least while he was still.
---
Whenever he breathed slowly while sitting in silence, the energy rippled inside him.
A refreshing feeling would wash over his skin and settle in his mind.
The mental fatigue from all the smiling, all the pretending—gone.
In those fleeting moments, he felt calm.
A type of peace that words couldn't capture.
But it only lasted a few seconds.
The numbness always returned.
He had hoped this energy could cure him.
Give him back something he lost.
But it didn't.
Instead, it reminded him of everything he couldn't fix.
---
It made him anxious.
If his body was changing—becoming more and more detached from what was considered human—he worried whether healing methods built for humans would even work anymore.
Would therapy ever reach him?
Could it?
---
But he shoved those thoughts aside.
He wouldn't let them take root.
Right now, he had one goal: to manipulate the energy while moving.
It happened randomly before—those lucky moments when his breathing and energy aligned in motion—but never on command.
Not yet.
It was difficult. Adjusting breath while exerting his body required discipline bordering on obsession.
---
Today, as he punched the tree, he slowly began to remember the early days.
How impossibly hard it was to maintain breath control while moving.
How his lungs burned.
How his rhythm broke.
But after countless hours, something had shifted.
Now, with each strike, he could feel his strength rising.
---
The tree swayed with every blow.
Bark flew like splinters of a long-held secret.
Adyanth's face remained cold. Emotionless.
He wasn't shocked.
He didn't even seem to feel the strain in his muscles.
His mind was locked into only two things:
Breathing and punching.
He had lost all awareness of his surroundings.
Forgot about his past.
Forgot that today was his last day at the orphanage.
Forgot that Luna would arrive after lunch.
There was only now.
His breath.
His fists.
The tree.
---
"Be calm. Don't lose focus.
This energy only reacts to a calm and uniform breathing."
He told himself this again and again. Like a personal mantra.
---
At the peak of it—he finally felt it.
That quiet energy, long dormant beneath the surface of his skin, no longer whispered.
It climbed.
Rising from his gut, it began to gather—not chaotically, but with deliberate cadence, like a tide moving to a secret rhythm only his blood understood.
It curled into his fists like smoke winding through fingers.
He felt the thickness of the energy. It felt intentional and alive.
His punches grew sharper.
Faster.
Their rhythm began to harmonize with something that wasn't physical—something older than muscles.
The energy didn't resist.
It didn't buckle under the strain of motion or breath.
It responded.
As if it had simply been waiting.
And then, at the critical juncture—
It surged.
---
He punched.
And the result didn't resemble impact.
It resembled obliteration.
A hole ruptured through the tree's center like reality itself had snapped around his knuckles.
The trunk split apart with violent grace.
The tree groaned—not like wood—but like something ancient, dying slowly.
The stem burst outward, the whole structure lurching hard to the left before tipping into collapse.
But the force didn't stop with the tree.
It continued—like vengeance unfinished.
Scorched grass hissed beneath the trail of energy that raced through the earth.
A blackened path cut across the field, smoldering lightly, as if struck by lightning drunk on raw momentum.
---
The sound that followed was not mechanical.
Not physical.
It was elemental.
A deep-throated roar ripped through the clearing, as though something in the sky had reacted to the impossibility below.
It wasn't just noise.
It was shockwave.
It ripped through Adyanth's trance like a slap to his soul.
His eyes opened wide.
He blinked—once, twice.
He stared.
But the awe didn't last.
---
Because the pain got to him first.
It arrived suddenly yet decisively.
Like a debt collecting all at once.
His body buckled inward.
A sharp cry broke from his lips.
His shoulder had twisted—dislocated in a way that felt unnatural, like bone had chosen mutiny.
His hand, still trembling, looked scorched from the inside out.
Blood gushing out.
Not because of the surface wounds. No, It's because of the internal rupture.
Then came the nosebleed.
Then the tears of blood from his eyes.
He couldn't even register it properly.
Only the wet warmth spilling down his cheeks.
---
Then—
"Bleh. Bleh."
The vomit came hard.
It was thick, meetallic and sluggish.
He could taste the iron.
There was a hint of black to it—but he couldn't focus, couldn't judge.
His vision spun.
The world fragmented.
His heart pounded like it was trying to escape his chest entirely.
He hated this.
The instability.
The power he couldn't contain.
The storm of sensation.
And yet—
His body gave in.
The world tilted.
And he collapsed.
Flat onto his back.
Eyes shut.
Not peacefully.
Desperately.
Just hoping—somewhere deep inside—that he'd wake again.
---
Then came the transformation.
It began silently.
From the pores of his skin, thin ribbons of black liquid leaked out—slow, deliberate, like ink bleeding from paper.
It didn't splash.
It crept.
Spread.
Wrapped around him like a living second skin.
Soon, he wasn't human anymore.
He was silhouette.
He looked like a tar-born and featureless.
And then—
It hardened.
Crystallized over his body in glistening jagged scales.
Time stretched.
Then—without warning—it shattered.
Not in violence.
In release.
---
What remained beneath was something else.
Skin, olive-toned, gleamed under the midday haze—unblemished, oddly serene.
It held a texture like silk carved from thunderclouds.
His limbs, slightly longer now, flexed with quiet density.
Muscles drawn tight, not bulked—but woven with tension.
His chest had reshaped.
His frame condensed into a compact, efficient and precise shape.
Abs had formed—clean, visible, sculpted without excess fat.
Even his face had changed.
The youthful softness, the gentle angles of a boy still growing?
Gone.
Now there was maturity.
A handsomeness not promised—but forged.
Refined features that hinted at something designed for conflict.
---
The shoulder—once dislocated?
Set back in place without a scar.
No swelling.
No stiffness.
No memory of trauma.
The hand—once charred, bleeding?
Regenerated completely.
Skin smooth.
Knuckles clean.
No hint it had ever failed him.
His entire system had rebooted.
Not patched.
Not recovered.
Rewritten.
A transformation that obeyed no science, no medicine, no tradition.
But the true tragedy?
The part that mattered most remained untouched.
---
The shell had evolved.
It was faster now.
Stronger.
Sharper.
A body sculpted for endurance, for precision, for something beyond human limitation.
But the mind—
Still numb.
Still distant.
Still incapable of joy that didn't feel borrowed.
Still unmoved by grief that refused to land.
His emotions lay behind a soundproof glass.
Unreachable.
Unreactive.
There was no spark.
No catharsis.
No clarity.
No ascent toward understanding.
No descent into despair.
Only a vacuum sealed shut by habit.
Still…
He was Adyanth.
---
And yet—
Something stirred.
Subtle.
Insistent.
Like breath caught in a still room.
A flicker—not fierce or loud, but present.
A tiny displacement in what had always been stillness.
A seed.
Planted not by choice, not by miracle.
But by momentum.
By consequence.
He has taken a step toward his awakening.
Not heroically.
Not dramatically.
Just… quietly.
As if his body had decided to move forward
and hadn't waited for his soul to catch up.
---
And elsewhere—
far removed from soil, wind, or the shattered bark still settling behind him—
two pairs of eyes remained fixed.
Unblinking.
Silent.
They had been watching longer than he would ever know.
They hadn't arrived with curiosity.
They hadn't stayed for wonder.
They watched for consequence.
With purpose.
With patience.
With something colder than interest.
They didn't speak.
They didn't intervene.
They didn't lean in.
They calculated.
Like they were waiting for a variable to tip.
A system to stabilize.
Or a question to finally ask itself.
---
Were they waiting to help?
To offer knowledge, protection, some whispered truth?
Or were they weighing the angles—
To decide when to use him,
when to guide him,
when to break him?
Even time, ancient as it was, couldn't answer.
The moment was still forming.
And the path hadn't revealed its shape.
---
But one truth remained unshaken.
It stood like stone behind every collapsed tree and scorched blade of grass:
Adyanth had crossed over.
Not into power.
Not into fate.
Into the unknown.
Not by choice.
Not by awareness.
His step was subtle, but absolute.
He hadn't asked.
He hadn't agreed.
He hadn't even realized.
But now, he stood within a world
stitched together by threads he couldn't see.
Bound to laws he hadn't been taught.
And the world—
the watchers—
the silence above—
would respond.
Whether he wanted it to…
or not.