# Chapter 3 – After Three Years
Three years passed faster than I expected.
The village hadn't changed much. Same trees, same road, same sound of Ren's tools in the morning. But the field behind the house looked different now grass worn away in wide circles from thousands of launches, the ground marked by three years of the same motion repeated until it stopped being practice and started being instinct.
I'd built a proper stadium out there. Wooden frame, metal sheet inside, solid enough that it didn't shift under impact. It wasn't pretty, but it held.
"Three. Two. One. Let it rip."
The cord slid clean through my fingers.
Drago hit the bowl and curved along the edge in a low, controlled arc, holding the outer lane without drifting. The driver activated at exactly the right moment one brief flare of contact, then smooth again. The hum that came off the spin was clean and even.
Three years ago I would have called that lucky.
Now it was just Tuesday.
I crouched and watched until the spin faded. Drago tilted slightly, caught himself, and stopped upright in the center. Stable. Precise.
I picked him up.
The metal was warm in a way that had nothing to do with friction.
I turned him over once, studying the edge of the layer. Small marks where he'd taken hits over the years, worn smooth now instead of sharp. He looked used. He looked real.
"Getting quieter," I said.
Not to anyone in particular. Just out loud, the way I'd gotten used to talking to him over three years of training alone in a field.
The afternoon was warm, the light going gold through the trees at the edge of the property. Somewhere behind me I could hear Ren working, the irregular rhythm of a hammer on something stubborn.
I sat down in the grass with the notebook I'd been keeping since the beginning.
The early pages were a mess crossed-out angles, smudged calculations, entire sections marked WRONG in increasingly frustrated handwriting. Further in, the notes got cleaner. More precise. Less about fixing mistakes and more about understanding why something worked.
At the very back, I turned to a fresh page and wrote across the top:
*Confirmed Eclipse Drago.*
Then I sat with the pencil for a moment, thinking about how to put three years into words.
---
**Dragon Crash** had come first. Pure offense Drago surging forward with everything committed to the strike, no hedging, no fallback. When the launch was perfect and the angle was right, the spin grew so violent that the bowl hummed beneath it and sparks lifted off the rim in a spiral of red and gold. It had taken months to learn how to guide that force without the whole thing collapsing on itself. The first hundred attempts had ended with Drago bouncing off the wall and wobbling to a stop somewhere embarrassing.
Now it was the cleanest thing I knew how to do.
**Reverse Inferno** had been an accident.
A Bey had hit Drago hard during a practice match hard enough that I'd already started moving to pick him up and then instead of slowing, the rebound had sharpened. The spin had tightened. Drago had come back faster than he'd been hit.
I'd spent two weeks trying to make it happen again before I understood what I was actually doing. The timing had to be exact. The spin had to be strong enough to convert the impact instead of just surviving it. When it worked, the return hit landed like something had been storing the energy for exactly that moment.
When it didn't work, Drago lost ground fast.
High risk. Real reward. The kind of move you couldn't half-commit to.
**Eclipse Destruction** I still wasn't sure I fully understood.
It only happened at maximum spin, full commitment, nothing held back and even then it didn't always come. When it did, the wings snapped open at the point of impact and the force that came off it was different from anything else Drago could do. Not just stronger. Different in quality. Like the difference between pushing against something and having the ground drop out from under it.
It scared me a little, still. Which probably meant I wasn't ready to use it carelessly.
I wrote all of this down in the notebook, closed it, and set it in the grass beside me.
Three moves. Three years.
I looked out at the worn circles in the field.
It wasn't enough to stay here anymore. I could feel it not as restlessness exactly, more as a kind of ceiling. I'd gotten as far as training alone could take me. The next part required someone pushing back.
---
The next morning, Ren was already standing by the stadium when I came outside.
Two launchers on the table. His old Bey in his hand shell scratched, edges worn, weight distributed in a way I'd studied from a distance more than once without him knowing.
"Morning," I said.
"Morning." He looked at me steadily. "Ready for one more?"
I understood immediately. "A battle."
"If you win," he said, "you're ready for Beycoma."
I picked up my launcher. "And if I don't?"
"Then we find out what's still missing." He smiled slightly. "Either way, useful."
We took opposite sides of the stadium.
"Three. Two. One. Let it rip."
Both cords snapped at the same moment.
His Bey entered the bowl with a heavy, grinding roar more aggressive than I remembered, the kind of spin that wanted to own the center immediately. Drago met it on the outer rim, and the first clash sent a short wave of displaced air through the grass.
I felt the impact through the launcher still in my hand.
Heavier than expected.
"Dragon Crash."
Drago curved along the wall, speed building, and drove into the second hit with everything behind it. Sparks scattered off the rim. Ren's Bey held its position and pushed back with more force than I'd anticipated.
Ren watched the bowl without moving.
"You're still hesitating," he said. Calm, not critical. Just observing.
My jaw tightened.
He was right. Even now, even after three years, there was a half-second where I second-guessed the commitment. Where some part of me calculated whether full power was worth the risk.
I looked at Drago moving in the bowl.
Thought about the last three years. The field. The worn circles in the grass. Every launch I'd made alone in the morning before Ren was up.
No more half-measures.
"Drago," I said quietly. "Everything."
The response was immediate not a sound, not a voice, but a heat that moved through the grip of the launcher and up through my arm and settled somewhere in my chest like a door opening.
Then the wings came out.
I hadn't planned it. I'd felt Eclipse Destruction build before, but this was faster than usual, more sudden the metal segments lifting at the point of impact with a flash of gold-red light that cut through the shadow of the bowl, and the force that followed was enough to make me take one step back from the shockwave.
Ren's Bey burst apart.
Pieces scattered off the stadium walls and into the grass.
I stood there for a moment, breathing harder than the effort should have required.
Then I walked to the bowl and picked Drago up.
The metal was warm. The wings had folded back. He looked the same as always the same small worn Bey I'd built at a workshop table when I was six years old.
Ren collected the pieces of his Bey from the grass without hurrying. He examined each piece briefly, set them aside, then looked at me across the stadium.
"There it is," he said.
"I didn't know that was going to happen."
"I know." He picked up the last piece. "That's exactly why it happened."
---
The days after moved quickly.
Ren spent most of them at his bench, tuning my launcher tightening every connection, checking the tension in the cord, polishing the frame until it caught the light cleanly. He didn't talk much while he worked. He never did. But I'd learned to read the care in the way he handled things, the way he checked his work twice without being asked.
On the last evening I stood in the doorway of the workshop, watching the sun go down across the walls.
The tools were quiet for once.
Ren set down whatever he'd been adjusting and looked over at me. The workshop light made the lines of his face look older than usual, and for a moment I saw the three years differently not just what I'd learned, but what he'd given. The mornings he'd left the bowl out without explanation. The afternoon he'd let me stay when I'd sat crying quietly on the floor of the workshop and pretended I hadn't been.
He crossed the room and handed me the launcher. Fully assembled, cord wound clean.
"Take care of it," he said.
"I will."
He held onto it for just a second longer before letting go.
"Ryo." His voice was the same as always quiet, steady, not given to speeches. "Whatever happens next. Don't chase winning." He paused. "Chase understanding. The wins come from that. Not the other way around."
I nodded.
But he kept looking at me, and I realized he wasn't done.
"You came to me already knowing things a child shouldn't know," he said. "I never asked you about it. Wasn't my place." The workshop was very quiet. "But I want you to know that I saw it. And I didn't care where it came from." He met my eyes. "You're my son. That's all."
My throat closed.
I didn't say anything for a moment because I couldn't.
Then: "Thank you."
He nodded once. Done. He walked back to his bench and picked up a cloth and started wiping down a tool he'd already cleaned twice.
I stood in the doorway a little longer, holding the launcher.
---
Morning came gray and cool, mist still sitting in the low places between the trees.
I stood at the gate with my bag over one shoulder and Drago in his case at my hip.
Ren was at the gate. He didn't say anything else just stood there the way he always stood, solid and unhurried, like someone who had made his peace with time.
I extended my hand. He took it the grip rough and familiar, the same hands that had handed me a box of mismatched Bey parts on my sixth birthday and changed everything.
Then he let go.
I looked at Drago's case once, then at the road ahead.
Three years. One Bey. Everything I knew how to do.
I started walking.
The road stretched out past the tree line, straight and open, and each step felt lighter than the one before not because it was easy, but because it was right.
Somewhere behind me, the workshop tools started up again.
I didn't look back.
Ahead was Beycoma Academy. New stadiums. Real opponents. Battles that would show me everything I still didn't know.
And for the first time since I'd woken up in this world, I wasn't just surviving it.
I was moving through it like I belonged here.
Like I was supposed to be exactly here, on this road, at this age, carrying this Bey.
Like it had always been leading to this.