The whole island throbbed with the Lord of Storms festival—music, laughter, and the crash of waves against revelry. But inside the small house, none of it reached. The walls that had been built to keep the wind out kept the noise out too, and the room was still and silent.
Ashan sat coiled in the corner, a single oil lamp casting his shadow long against the wall, a scroll of kiriya spread before him like a map to hidden treasure. The flame guttered, the shadows danced, and the words on the parchment seemed to shift and move in the light.
Trying to achieve Bodh in under three weeks? The thought surfaced with bitterness. He crushed it immediately. Foolish or not, the path to immortality is on the line.
Ashan smoothed the parchment with trembling fingers. Learning the foundational combat first. Smart. This kiriya has healing techniques too—mid-battle healing. At least the chances of surviving increase long enough to get the basics down.
Eyes traced the words until they blurred. Then the scroll was set aside, its weight settling into the table, its secrets waiting for the moment when they would be needed again.
Three deep, quick breaths to the center. Then movement.
Feet spread wide. Knees bent deeply, not spring-loaded but rooted, as if soles had grown tendrils into the earth below. The floor became something else. It was the ground. It was the thing that held him. It was the thing that would not let him fall.
Spine curved, head lowered, hands resting near knees. The position of a serpent waiting—not sleeping, never sleeping—just waiting.
Ashan breathed. Slow, deep inhales through the nose, drawing prana down through the feet, up through the body, through the channels that had been opened in the cave and had been waiting for this moment. Exhale with a soft, sustained hum—the sound of settling stone.
There. He let the thought surface. Faint, but undeniable. A pulse of energy flowing around the root chakra, drawn from the earth through the touch of feet.
[Coiled Stance]
The stance held for ten breaths. Then I shifted.
Body lowering, almost crouching now, one knee near the ground, the other bent sharply. Torso twisted, head turned to look up from below. Arms close, protecting the core. The posture of something buried, waiting to erupt.
Breath became short, contained. Air held and released in small bursts like a creature conserving oxygen underground. Prana flowed from feet to upper torso in a thick, sluggish stream.
[Burrowed Stance]
Then the third.
The body leaned forward, one leg advanced, the other braced like an anchor. Striking hand low, then rising—slowly, deliberately—like a spike thrusting from below. Gaze followed the energy: downward first, then up at the moment of strike.
Breath became long, held, then released in a sudden, sharp exhale through the teeth. Not a hiss—the crack of stone splitting. Prana stored in the inhale, bursting outward in the exhale. Power from the earth below, channeled through flesh and bone.
[Fang Stance]
Three down.
Ashan took a sharp breath, and calling it a hiss would have been generous. Sweat beaded on his forehead, then poured freely down his face, tracing paths through the grime. Sharp pangs ran through his body—muscles screaming, tendons protesting.
Damn. It isn't that easy.
Upper clothes stripped away, letting the chilled gust of wind strike bare chest. In the flickering lamplight, the faint marks of old scars mapped the back, shoulders, chest—a geography of survival.
Fourth stance.
Feet planted firmly, knees slightly bent. Arms open, palms facing down as if pressing the ground itself into submission. Chest open, head high. The posture of a mountain that knows it cannot be moved.
Breath deepened. Full breaths, drawn from the earth and released upward like offerings.
Prana surged through Ashan in rapid motion, thick and heavy as floodwater.
Heavy. Like holding a boulder.
The stance was held until the legs trembled and the boulder threatened to crush.
[Grounded Stance]
Huff... huff...
Ashan collapsed into a brief rest. A small puddle of sweat formed around his feet, catching the lamplight, holding it. The room smelled of oil smoke and exertion. The body begged to stop.
Last stance.
He did not stop.
The most fluid of earth stances—constant shifting, but always low, always connected. Weight transferred from one foot to the other, body turning, arms sweeping in wide arcs. But the head never rose, the feet never left the ground. Like a snake shedding its skin while remaining anchored to the earth.
Breathing became cyclical—inhale drawing from the earth, exhale releasing down into the earth. A continuous loop, never broken. Prana flowed in fluid motion through the body, always returning to the root chakra, always finding its way home.
[Shedding Stance]
One breath held. Two. Three.
Then gravity took its course.
Thump.
Ashan slammed onto the cold ground. Chest heaving, lungs burning, every muscle singing with fire. The ceiling spun above, the cracks in it the same cracks that had been there when he first took this room. The lamp flame danced in peripheral vision.
Fifteen minutes. Only fifteen minutes, and the body is begging for mercy. Lack in the physical domain—gods, such lack—but can't let it hold back. Not now. Not when it's finally within reach.
Up again, a few light stretches that felt like torture. The scroll lay where it had been left, patient as stone. Outside, the festival roared on, indifferent to the struggle.
Ashan moved back into the first stance.
Only the rough sound of panting and the steady drip of sweat remained in the room. The night stretched long before him, and the path to immortality stretched longer still. But he was on it now, finally on it, and would not stop until the body gave out completely.
Then rest. The thought drifted through his mind, shifting into the second stance, into the third. And then start again.
The serpent coiled and waited.