The wind was the first enemy he met.

  It struck him the moment he stepped outside the wooden cabin where he had spent the night, well if one could even call it “night.” Sleep had been shallow, restless, broken apart by the stranger’s footsteps pacing in the other room. Ato hadn’t dared to ask why he paced. Something about the way the Stranger moved made him feel like he was watching a caged predator keep itself sane.

  Now, as the cold tore at his skin, Ato realized this training was never going to be normal. The Stranger wasn’t a teacher. He was a storm waiting for an excuse.

  “Warm up,” the Stranger ordered.

  That gravel rough voice. Low. Impersonal. Like Ato was nothing more than an object to be tempered. Ato stretched his arms, his muscles sore from the previous day’s drills, dodging and attacking the Fallen he faced much less attacking it almost got him killed on multiple occasions, he was only able to manifest a sharp thread and kill the thing with a swift SLASH when death drew near for the eighth time. His hands shook uncontrollably, though he did not know whether from cold or fear.

  The Stranger watched him for a long time. Eyes hidden behind that dark cloak he never seemed to take off. Ato had never seen his full face. Not once.

  “A Lifeweaver who can’t endure the elements isn’t a Lifeweaver at all.”

  Ato opened his mouth.

  “I’m… I’m not a Lifeweaver.”

  The Stranger stepped closer. Too close.

  “No. Not anymore.”

  Ato felt that sentence like a blade pressed against the back of his neck. The Stranger didn’t elaborate, but Ato understood. He had broken the Oath — “Life is sacred. We shall never use life to take life.” That creed had been whispered to him by his father during childhood, even though neither he or his father knew what it truly meant.

  And yet, Ato had killed.

  The guards.

  The night he escaped.

  The moment the threads answered him in a way they never should have.

  Something in him had shifted.

  Something violent finally unchained.

  Today, he would learn what that meant.

  The Stranger’s first command was simple:

  “Run.”

  Ato obeyed. The terrain was brutal, hills, jagged stone, patches of ice. The air burned in his lungs, but he pushed through. Every time he slowed, a sharp crack tore through the air. The Stranger snapping his fingers.

  A thread whip of pure force lashed the ground beside Ato’s feet.

  Not touching him.

  But close enough to remind him he could.

  “Again,” the Stranger said. “Faster.”

  Ato gritted his teeth and forced his legs to move. His breath turned to smoke, his vision blurring.

  Hours passed like this.

  Or maybe it was minutes.

  Time tended to bleed together under pain.

  Ato collapsed at the top of a slope, chest heaving.

  The Stranger didn’t look impressed.

  “You’ll pass out long before you reach your limits if you don’t control your breathing.”

  He knelt beside Ato, pressing a hand to the boy’s back.

  A warm pulse of VITA threaded into him healing, soothing, restoring.

  Ato gasped, startled.

  “I thought… you weren’t going to heal me.”

  “I heal you so I can break you again.”

  There was no malice. It was a simple fact.

  Ato wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

  After lunch which consisted of two stale biscuits and water cold enough to sting the teeth the Stranger began the next lesson.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Ato obeyed.

  “Now feel.”

  “At what? There’s nothing h—”

  Something slammed into him from the left.

  Ato rolled in the dirt, coughing.

  “Good. You sensed it a moment before impact.”

  “That was after you hit me!”

  The Stranger tilted his head.

  “And?”

  He extended a hand, palm open. Threads of shimmering white drifted from his fingers like strands of sunlight. Ato stared. Each one pulsed softly, rhythmic like a heartbeat.

  “These are VITA threads. Life threads. The core of what you were meant to be.”

  The Stranger suddenly clenched his fist.

  Darkness rippled through the threads, corrupting their glow.

  “But VITA can be inverted.”

  Ato flinched. The air grew cold again. Those darkened threads radiated a pressure that felt… wrong. They didn’t pulse like life. They absorbed it.

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  “MORTIS,” the Stranger murmured. “Decay.”

  Ato’s skin crawled. Something deep inside him resonated with those dark threads like metal pulled by a magnet.

  He hated that feeling.

  He also didn’t understand why it felt so natural.

  “You have VITA,” the Stranger said. “But you also have this.”

  He flicked his fingers, sending the MORTIS threads toward Ato. They passed through him like smoke, leaving his limbs numb.

  Ato exhaled shakily.

  “What… is happening to me?”

  “You’re Awakening.”

  The word felt too big for him.

  “But Awakening shouldn’t feel like this,” Ato whispered.

  The Stranger said nothing. But Ato caught a flicker of regret. Or maybe sympathy. It was there for only a heartbeat.

  Then gone.

  The tests grew harsher each day.

  Ice zones where Ato had to maintain warmth using VITA alone.

  Spirit beasts conjured from woven thread hunters he had to face with nothing but instinct.

  Meditation sessions that lasted until his legs went numb and his thoughts blurred.

  Worst of all:

  He hadn’t slept properly in three days.

  Every time he began to drift, the Stranger’s voice dragged him back to reality.

  “Again.”

  “Start over.”

  “Do it without looking.”

  “Fight blindfolded.”

  “Fight with your hands tied.”

  “Fight me.”

  That last one was always the worst.

  The Stranger never fought to kill him.

  But he fought to remind Ato how weak he still was.

  Ato learned to dodge, sense, react.

  He bled.

  He cried silently, when exhaustion broke him.

  He stood again because the stranger waited, arms folded, never offering comfort.

  And yet…

  There were moments…

  Small ones.

  Moments where they shared food by the fire. Where Ato caught the Stranger humming quietly, poorly, but sincerely. Moments where the Stranger offered actual advice, not orders.

  “You carry too much guilt,” he said one night. “It weighs down your threads. Makes them hesitate.”

  Ato stared into the flames.

  “I killed people.”

  “You protected integrity. And that has a cost.”

  “Did you kill anyone?”

  The Stranger paused.

  “…yes.”

  Ato swallowed.

  “Were they bad people?”

  “They were alive people.”

  It was the closest thing to vulnerability Ato had ever heard from him.

  Another night, Ato asked,

  “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

  The Stranger poked at the fire.

  “Names are for men. I am not one anymore.”

  Ato didn’t know what to say.

  The unease came slowly.

  The way the Stranger sometimes looked at him, not like a student, but a weapon being forged.

  The way he always disappeared for long stretches, returning with blood on his gloves he didn’t bother explaining.

  The way he tensed whenever Ato asked about the past.

  The way he avoided every question about Lifeweavers except the harmless ones.

  One evening, after another brutal test, Ato caught him staring at the boy’s hands.

  Not confused.

  Not proud.

  Calculating.

  Ato felt something twist in his stomach.

  “What… what do you want from me?” he asked quietly.

  The Stranger didn’t answer.

  That was the first time Ato truly felt fear of him.

  During a rare calm moment, the Stranger finally spoke of the Lifeweavers.

  “There was once an oath,” he said.

  “The Oath of Verum.”

  Ato listened intently.

  “Life is sacred. We shall never use life to take life.”

  Ato whispered the words.

  He remembered hearing them before.

  But they felt different now.

  “You broke that oath,” the Stranger said.

  Ato’s chest tightened.

  “I know.”

  “You awakened something ancient,” the Stranger continued. “Something long buried. Lifeweavers who broke the Oath were said to transform. Their threads darkened. Their minds sharpened into weapons.”

  Ato trembled.

  “Into what?”

  The Stranger looked at him.

  Truly looked at him.

  “Into Deathweavers.”

  Ato froze.

  “But that’s just a myth,” he said weakly.

  The Stranger didn’t blink.

  “It isn’t.”

  Ato felt his pulse thudding in his ears.

  He remembered the guards.

  The way their life threads had snapped like twigs in his hands.

  The way it had felt easy.

  “Am I… becoming one of them?”

  The Stranger didn’t give him comfort.

  “You are becoming exactly what you were meant to be.”

  The moment came suddenly.

  Ato was meditating, trying to pull VITA from the air. Trying to breathe it in, make it flow through him. Trying to be what he once was supposed to be.

  But something resisted.

  Something inside him twisted, rejecting the softness of life.

  It rebelled.

  It hungered.

  And then...

  A thread burst from his fingertips.

  Not white.

  Not gold.

  Not warm.

  Black.

  Cold.

  Silent.

  A Death Thread.

  The Stranger exhaled slowly.

  “There it is,” he murmured.

  Ato stared at his hand, horrified.

  “I didn’t mean to”

  “You don’t choose darkness,” the Stranger said. “It chooses you.”

  Ato’s breath trembled.

  “What… what am I becoming?”

  The Stranger turned away.

  “Stronger.”

  But his shadow trembled as he said it.

  As if even he wasn’t sure.