People fear many things. The dark. Insects. Animals. The depths of the ocean. Death, hunger, sickness. But in this age, the thing people feared most could be summed up in a single word: Creatures.
The training room was on the lower floor of the tower.
It wasn't a large place — stone floor, high ceiling, bare walls. No windows. The light came from somewhere above, cold and even. On one wall, four heavy sandbags hung from iron hooks. On the opposite wall was a row of objects that Eren couldn't make sense of at first glance: heavy chests stacked on top of each other, a glass of water, a battery, a single scrap of paper nailed to a short length of rope.
When they arrived, Dusk was already inside. He was standing in the center of the room, arms at his sides. His shadow sat wrong on the floor as always — slightly crooked, independent, as if it had its own opinion on where it wanted to go.
When they walked in, he didn't look at them. He was looking at the objects on the wall.
"Two techniques." He said it without turning. "Assigned according to your element and fighting style." He paused. "Eren, Raphael — Suru and Zou. Kayra — Kaba and Suru. Orin — Kaba and Zou." He finally turned. "Suru: loading magical energy into your muscles to increase your physical capacity. Kaba: coating your body's surface with magical energy to increase your durability. Zou: producing a physical substance from your magical energy — for those with an elemental ability, this is the point where your element becomes real."
He looked at all four of them.
"We start with the first technique assigned to each of you. Kayra, Orin — lift the chests."
The chests were heavier than they looked.
Kayra lifted his without difficulty and started walking. Orin picked his up slowly, jaw set, and followed. Halfway across the room something changed in his movement — almost imperceptibly small, but the chest no longer seemed to be pulling him down.
Dusk watched both of them. He said nothing.
In front of Eren and Raphael were the sandbags.
"Load the energy into your legs." Dusk told them. "Not your arms — your legs. The weight is the same. The distance is the same. You are not."
Nobody knew how to do that.
Eren closed his eyes. He tried to feel the energy in his chest — the same vibration as in the altar, faint but present. He tried to push it downward. Into his thigh muscles. Into his calves.
Nothing happened.
He picked up the bag anyway. Took one step. The weight was the same. The burning was too.
He set the bag down at the far wall and looked at his legs. Nothing had changed.
Raphael tried to push the energy into both legs at the same time and walked into the wall.
Dusk watched them. He made no comment.
Leila walked in on the third day.
She didn't announce herself. She came in through the door, looked at the room, saw Eren carrying a chest with the same strained expression as the first day, and came and stood beside him.
"You're pushing." She said it quietly, not for the room — just for him.
Eren set the chest down. "I am pushing."
"Forcing. Those are different things." She looked at his legs. "Don't imagine the energy moving somewhere. Imagine it's already there. Your energy in your legs — not going there, already there. As if it's always been there and you're only noticing it now."
Eren looked at his legs.
He tried her method. Not pushing — noticing. As if the energy had always been sitting in his calves, warm and waiting, and he was only paying attention to it now.
He picked up the chest.
It was still heavy. But the first step felt different — more solid, as if the floor were closer than it had been before.
He reached the far wall.
He came back.
He set the chest down and stood there breathing. Not better — not yet. But different.
Leila watched him. She said nothing. She turned and left.
On the other side of the room, Kayra wasn't struggling.
This was Kayra's territory — he had used magic before. The Night Chain on the island, the Moonlight spear in the cave. The channels weren't unfamiliar to him. When Dusk explained Kaba, something settled in Kayra's face, like a word he'd been trying to remember finally surfacing.
By the second day he could hold a coating of dull grey-brown on his hands without losing it. Dusk looked at him once.
"Earth element." He said it in a flat voice. "It shows. Move to Suru tomorrow."
Kayra nodded. There was nothing in his face — no pride, no surprise. Just acceptance.
Raphael heard this and looked at his own sandbag. Then at Kayra. Then back at the bag.
"Don't." Orin said from the far side of the room.
Raphael looked at him.
"Don't compare. Just carry the bag."
Raphael opened his mouth. Closed it. Picked up the bag.
A week passed.
Then most of another week.
Eren failed twelve times before he achieved consistent work in Suru. Not all at once — slowly, piece by piece. First just one leg. Then both, but it slipped after a few steps. Then longer. Leila came back on the sixth day and watched Eren carry the chest twice to the far wall without losing it.
She said nothing. But she stayed for the rest of the session.
By the end of the second week he could feel the difference clearly — the energy sat in his legs like a second set of muscles, heavier and more decided than before.
The turn came for Kayra and Orin to move to Kaba.
Dusk lined them up in front of Gus's dough dolls.
The dough dolls were not what Eren had expected.
They were roughly human-shaped — each nearly as tall as a person, dense and pale, standing in a row with flat faces and thick arms. Gus had made them the night before. When he'd carried them in he'd been wearing his usual open smile, and he'd handled them with extreme care, as if carrying something fragile.
They were not fragile.
Kayra's first punch landed and the doll moved back perhaps one centimeter. His joints ached. The dough absorbed the blow and returned to its original shape with patient indifference.
"Coat your hand." Dusk said. "Your whole hand. The energy is on the surface, not inside — as if you're wearing a glove made of your own magic."
Kayra tried. His hand trembled — faintly, a dull grey-brown, compressed earth-color. He hit the doll again.
The doll moved back three centimeters.
Small. But real.
Orin was next. He stood in front of his doll, both hands raised, eyes closed. When he opened his eyes something had changed — his hands were glowing. Not faintly. Not trembling. A full silver coating running from his fingertips to his wrists, bright and clean.
The room went quiet.
Dusk looked at Orin's hands for a long time.
"Metal element." He said it in a flat voice. "Silver variant in particular. For Kaba this is the highest-performing element for surface coating. Earth is second. The rest of you will take longer to reach this level. That's not a flaw in you — it's a property of your elements. Don't forget that."
Orin looked at his own hands. He turned them slowly. Silver light caught on his fingers.
He punched the doll.
It slid back half a meter and hit the wall.
Raphael stared. "That's not fair."
Nobody argued.
Zou was different.
Dusk didn't explain. He placed objects in front of each of them and stepped away.
In front of Raphael: a glass of water and a scrap of paper nailed to a short rope.
In front of Kayra: a small stone and a candle.
In front of Orin: nothing. Just empty floor.
In front of Eren: a battery.
"Fill the glass." He told Raphael. "From nothing. No water source. Just you."
"Move the stone." He told Kayra. "Then light the candle. Without matches."
"Do something." He told Orin. "Anything. From your element."
Last, he stood in front of Eren. He looked at the battery.
"Charge it."
Eren looked at the battery. It was small, ordinary, the kind you'd find in any lamp or clock in the city. He picked it up.
He tried to feel his electricity. He knew it was there — the altar had told him, the scroll had confirmed it. Darkness, Shadow, Electricity. Three elements. The way he'd learned to reach for Suru, he reached for Electricity — not pushing, noticing, as if it had always been there.
Something stirred.
But the battery stayed dead.
Leila found him in the training room that evening.
The others had gone upstairs. Eren was still sitting on the floor, battery in his hand, turning it over and over.
She sat across from him. She didn't ask what he was doing.
For a while neither of them said anything.
"Fire technique." She said finally. "When I first learned Zou. I could feel the heat — I knew it was mine, I knew where it came from. But I couldn't get it out. It just sat there." She looked at her hands. "My instructor told me to stop trying to produce fire. Imagine the fire that already exists, he said. Not the fire you're making — a fire that's already burning somewhere, and you're just showing it where to go."
Eren looked at the battery.
"Electricity doesn't just exist." He said it quietly. "Not indoors."
Leila was quiet for a moment.
"You were a candidate." She said. "You went through the ritual. You saw your inner world."
"Yes."
"Was there lightning there?"
Eren thought. Stone city. Full moon. The storm that broke when everything went dark — the lightning striking one after another ahead of him as he ran.
"There was."
"Then it already exists." She leaned slightly forward. "Close your eyes. Go back there. See the lightning the way you saw it in your inner world — not here, but there. See it striking. Then see that lightning striking toward the battery."
Eren closed his eyes.
Stone city. Cracked pavement. The sky was splitting above him, one bolt of lightning, two, the sound coming delayed and heavy.
He held the battery.
He imagined one of those bolts — not coming from him, just existing, existing there the way it did in that place — and bending toward the small thing in his palm.
Something cracked.
Small, sharp, like a finger snap. The battery hummed faintly in his palm — barely, just for one second. Then it stopped.
Eren opened his eyes.
Leila was watching him.
"Was that it?" he asked.
"That was it." She stood up. "Do it again tomorrow. And the day after."
She walked to the door. She stopped.
"My family." She said it without turning. "We haven't spoken in two years. They wanted me to go into trade. My father has a trading company — old money, a safe life, no monsters." A pause. "I applied to the Academy without telling them. When they found out, they stopped writing."
Eren said nothing.
"I'm not telling you this because I want sympathy." She looked at the door frame. "I'm telling you because you look like someone who understands what it costs to choose something."
She left.
Eren sat with the battery in his hand for a while longer.
Then he closed his eyes and tried again.
Two weeks later.
Raphael filled the glass on his twelfth attempt — not much, just a finger's width of water, but it was there. He stared at it for a long time before touching it.
Kayra produced a stone on the fourth day, a flame on the ninth. The flame was small and uncertain, burning orange instead of the deep red it would eventually become, but Dusk gave him a single nod.
Orin shaped a silver arrowhead on the sixth day. By the end of the second week he had a complete arrow — edges rough, balance uneven, but whole. He held it and examined it the way Kayra had examined the chests: no pride, no surprise. Just acceptance.
And Eren could charge the battery.
Not fully. Not for long. But consistently — every time he reached for it, the hum was there now. The lightning in his inner world, bending toward whatever he held in his hand. He had learned not to think about it too much. The moment he started analyzing it, it slipped.
He told Leila. She gave a single nod, the same kind Dusk had given Kayra's flame.
That was enough.
Then Dusk brought them back in front of the dough dolls.
All of them this time. The full row — six dolls, flat-faced and thick-armed, standing patient against the wall.
Dusk stood before them.
"One doll each. Everything you have — Suru, Kaba, Zou. Whatever you've learned. One minute."
He stepped aside.
They went in.
Kayra loaded Kaba into both fists and Suru into his legs and hit his doll — it split clean down the middle, the dough held together but the crack was there. He hit it again. It hit the wall.
Orin drove his silver-coated palm into his doll's chest. It caved inward, a deep dent forming; then it slowly tried to push back. He hit the same point three more times.
Raphael generated a burst of wind and his doll tilted sideways into the one next to it. Both swayed. He laughed.
Eren loaded Suru into both arms and hit his doll. It moved. He hit it again. It moved more. On the third hit his energy slipped — Suru released and the punch landed with ordinary force and his joints screamed.
He stepped back.
The doll had shifted maybe half a meter. It was already coming back.
Dusk looked at all of them. He examined the dolls — dented, displaced, one of them cracked, but standing. All still standing.
"Not enough." His voice was flat. There was no disappointment in it — just a fact. "These dolls don't fight back. They don't move, they don't run, they don't hit you. They just stand there and take the damage." He looked at them. "And you still can't put a single one on the floor."
Nobody argued.
"This training continues every day until you can beat them." He turned toward the door. "Same time tomorrow."
He left.
The four of them stood in front of the dough dolls. The dolls looked back, patient and flat-faced, slowly returning to their original shapes.
Raphael looked at his doll.
"I hate that thing." He meant it.
Orin watched the dent in his doll's chest push back out, centimeter by centimeter.
"Same time tomorrow." he said.
They went upstairs.