"Year two… nothing was real, but the pain sure as hell was."
The words left my mouth like frost off my breath. I stood on solid stone, shirtless again, not from pride or confidence, but because the Trickster insisted I feel everything. "Control," he said, "starts with sensing the chaos. Then you choke it."
I hated when he made sense.
This year wasn't about surviving the cold anymore. This was about facing myself. Or rather… versions of me that never should've existed.
They came in waves—hybrids with hollow eyes and fangs like broken glass. Their forms flickered, stitched together from memory and nightmare. The Trickster's doing, obviously.
"You'll fight them every day," he said lazily, perched upside-down on a cloud that didn't exist. "But you only pass when you stop trying to kill them."
I didn't get it at first. They attacked. I fought. I won.
Then everything reset. Again. And again.
They screamed like real people. They bled like real people. One even looked like my mother. I hesitated. She stabbed me.
Next reset.
I broke bones. I shattered spines. I even roared like some feral god.
Next reset.
Then it hit me. He wasn't training my power—he was training my choices. So, one day, I didn't fight. I let them hit me. I dodged. Disarmed. Stepped around their rage. I didn't kill.
That day, the illusionary sun rose. First time I'd seen it in a while.
When it got quiet, I knew worse was coming.
He stepped forward from the fog—me. But taller, crueler. Smiling like the Trickster on a bad day. His energy felt like madness caught in a storm.
"Nice body," he said. "Shame you're wasting it on restraint."
We fought. I lost.
Next day: we fought. I lost again.
It wasn't until I stopped trying to beat him and started listening that I realized—he wasn't fighting to kill me. He wanted to prove I wasn't ready.
So I absorbed his blows. I spoke. I didn't back down, but I didn't fall into rage either.
Eventually, he vanished, grinning.
Just when I thought I was through the storm, the wind itself screamed.
"Thought I'd forgotten you," he whispered through the wind. "Time to test your silence."
The world around me folded. No ground. No sky. Just vibrations.
I couldn't move unless I matched the tone of the wind with my heartbeat. It took hours. Days. Who knows. I screamed once. My own voice shattered the floor beneath me. The Trickster laughed from somewhere above.
The Sound god wasn't training my body. He was training my frequency. My ability to resonate with the world without breaking it.
There was one final step: speak while in the storm without causing collapse.
"I am not you," I whispered into the storm. "But I am not afraid of you either."
And with that, silence returned. And so did gravity.
I woke up beside the Trickster. He was sharpening his claws with a hummingbird.
"Not bad," he muttered. "You didn't shatter this time."
I didn't reply. I just stared at the wind.