Alex stepped into the clearing and stopped for a second before doing anything at all.
’Alright,’ he thought, looking at the running track, the rock face, the water channel, all of it sitting exactly where it had been left yesterday, patient and unbothered by the fact that it had nearly killed him once already.
’Same list. Same ten exercises. But I’m not just running through it blind this time.’
’I’m going to have to constantly try and feel the bond while I use my Aspect. That’s probably the most efficient way to actually get somewhere with this. Not sitting still trying to force it, but using it while my body’s already under strain, the same way I built everything else this week.’
Zara had already claimed her usual stone at the edge of the clearing, legs crossed, chin propped in one palm, watching him with the specific, comfortable patience of someone who had accepted, somewhere over the past two days, that arguing with him about pacing was simply not a fight worth having anymore.
"Same order as yesterday?" she asked.
"Same order," Alex said, already strapping the weighted bands to his legs. "Different focus."
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask to explain. She’d learned that too.
He started the run.
The weights dragged the same way they had yesterday, his legs protesting the same familiar argument, but underneath the burn he reached for something else entirely, not the rhythm of his stride, not his breathing, but the faint, thin thread that connected him to Zara.
’Try to focus on the bond,’ he told himself, feet pounding the dirt track.
’Remember the feeling when it settled during the ritual. How you were able to feel it, an intangible connection between myself and her, sitting there in the dark like a second heartbeat that wasn’t mine.’
He found it.
Faint. Wavering at the edges.
A little strange, in a way that wasn’t unpleasant so much as unfamiliar, the specific sensation of paying attention to something for the first time in a way he’d never had reason to before.
’Yes. This feeling. This faint connection. This is what I should be focusing on.’
He tried to hold it steady through the second lap.
It slipped somewhere around the third turn, the thread going quiet the moment his attention wandered even slightly toward the burn in his calves, and he reached for it again, patient, unbothered by the loss the way he’d learned to be unbothered by every other failure this week.
Zara felt something.
Not clearly.
Not in any way she could have named if someone had asked her to describe it on the spot.
Just a faint pull at the edge of her awareness, like a hand brushing against her sleeve in a crowded room and then withdrawing before she could turn to see whose it was.
’Was that him?’ she thought, straightening slightly on her stone, her own attention sharpening toward the bond without her fully deciding to do it.
’That felt like him reaching for something. Trying to find me, maybe.’
She reached back.
Nothing came of it, not yet, the thread going quiet again before she could properly grip it, but she kept her focus loosely on it anyway, curious now in a way that had nothing to do with watching him train and everything to do with the strange new game they seemed to have started without either of them agreeing to the rules out loud.
Alex finished the run and moved straight to the rock face, chalk-dusted hands finding the first hold with more confidence than yesterday, his body already remembering yesterday’s lessons even as his mind split itself between the climb and the bond.
’Don’t force it here,’ he thought, testing a hold before trusting his weight to it.
’The climb needs precision. If I try to hold the bond and the rock face at the same time with the same intensity, I’m going to fall, and falling from up here isn’t the kind of lesson I need twice.’
He let the bond sit at the edges instead, not chased, not gripped, just present, the way he’d learned to sense ambient mana in the formation.
Something he could return to between holds rather than something he had to fight for constantly.
By the time he reached the platform, he’d felt it flicker back into focus three separate times, each one a little clearer than the last, each one lasting a fraction longer before slipping away again.
He climbed down faster than yesterday, dropped into the water channel, and let the cold hit him without the gasp this time, his body already adjusted to the shock in a way it hadn’t been twenty-four hours ago.
’Progress,’ he noted, swimming against the current.
’Not the progress I actually came here for, but progress.’
He reached for the bond again mid-stroke.
It came faster this time.
Not a full connection, nothing close to what he’d felt in the chamber during the ritual, but a genuine thread, thin and steady, humming somewhere just behind his ribs, and he held it through two full lengths of the channel before it finally gave out.
Zara, watching from the bank, felt her own end of it pulse twice in quick succession and sat up straighter, her earlier curiosity sharpening into something closer to focus.
’That’s definitely him,’ she thought.
’That’s not random. That’s deliberate. He’s doing something.’
She closed her eyes.
She reached for her own end of the thread the way she’d been trained to reach for her shadow during meditation drills years ago, not grabbing, not straining, just opening a door and waiting to see what walked through it.
Something warm brushed against the edge of her awareness.
It didn’t last.
It never lasted more than a few seconds at a time. But it was there, undeniably there, and when she opened her eyes again Alex was climbing out of the water channel, dripping and shivering slightly, with an expression on his face that told her he’d felt exactly the same thing she had.
Neither of them said anything about it yet.
There would be time for that later.
Right now there were still eight more exercises left on the list, and Alex was already walking toward the hill with the water buckets, his mind already reaching forward for the next chance to try.