The back training fields were a graveyard of forgotten ambitions. Tucked behind the monolithic equipment sheds where the Academy's prestigious aura didn't reach, the earth was hard-packed, gray, and smelled of rusted iron. Professor Silas stood in the center of a patch of mud, his silhouette framed by the setting sun. He looked less like a teacher and more like a ghost of a war that hadn't quite ended.
When Matthew arrived, his body still aching from the theory exams and the cold stares of the Elites, Silas didn't offer a greeting. He simply pointed to a row of heavy iron chains hanging from a crossbeam. Each link was the size of a man's fist, etched with "Weight-Runes" that increased their mass ten-fold when activated.
"Put them on," Silas commanded, his voice like grinding stones. "Each wrist. Each ankle."
Matthew hesitated, then obeyed. As he latched the final shackle around his left ankle, the runes hummed, and the weight hit him like a physical blow. He buckled, his knees hitting the dirt with a wet thud. It felt as if the very planet were reaching up to pull him into its core.
"I thought we were doing combat training," Matthew wheezed, his face inches from the mud.
"We are," Silas said, circling him with a slow, rhythmic limp. "Modern mages are soft. They rely on mana to enhance their muscles. They jump higher because of wind-core pulses; they strike harder because of fire-core reinforcement. If their mana fails, they are nothing. Your father, the Brave One, didn't have a combat core. He had a 'Body-type' core that was barely Rank 1. He survived because he conditioned every fiber of his being to move as if he were underwater. He didn't use magic to move; he used his will."
Silas cracked his black-wood staff against the ground. "Get up. Move toward that pole."
Matthew strained. His muscles burned with a white-hot intensity he hadn't felt even under Lyra's flames. He tried to reach for the Null Core, thinking that if he opened the vacuum, he could "eat" the gravitational weight of the runes.
Crack!
The staff caught him across the shoulders.
"No! Do not use the Void as a crutch!" Silas roared. "If you eat the weight, you don't build the muscle. The Void is a hungry mouth, Matthew, but you are the body that carries it. If the mouth is strong and the body is weak, the mouth will eventually eat the host. Be the dirt, Matthew! Be the stone!"
For three agonizing hours, Silas didn't let Matthew touch a weapon. He made him run, climb, and shadow-box while the chains clattered and bruised his skin. Matthew's vision blurred. He saw his father's face in the flickering shadows of the equipment sheds—the way Thomas had looked when he came home from the fields, exhausted but unyielding.
"My father... he never told me," Matthew gasped, struggling through his hundredth push-up with a fifty-pound chain draped over his neck.
"Because he wanted you to have a life where you didn't have to be 'The Brave One,'" Silas said, his voice softening just a fraction. "But the sky tore open, and that life ended. Now, you have to be the man he was, and the monster he refused to be."
By the time the moon was high, Matthew lay in the dirt, vomiting from sheer physical collapse. His lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. But as he unlatched the chains, something miraculous happened. His body felt dangerously light—not just light, but fast. When he stood up, he accidentally leaped a foot higher than intended.
"That's the 'Old Way' ghost-step," Silas grunted, handing him a skin of water. "Tomorrow, we add the sword. Tonight, you sleep. And Matthew? Don't tell the Ignis girl about the chains. Let her think your speed comes from her fire. Surprise is the only weapon a Zero truly has."