The Training Hollow resembled a crater more than an arena. It lay beneath a ridge of charred stone well outside the edge of the city, far from the molten arteries of Vel'Kareth. The ground here was split and pockmarked, webbed over with long-forsaken summoning glyphs burned deep in the earth.
Michael watched the gentle currents of heat rising off the stone, standing at its edge. His fire spirit brooded close, flickering slightly brighter than normal agitated.
Kael stood in the middle of the hollow, sword drawn but resting beside her.
"This place knows your soul," she said. "It doesn't only react to technique. It responds to what you're not saying. If you're scared, it'll show. "If you're lying to yourself, it's going to burn you."
Michael slowly descended, boots scuffling over charred gravel. "So it's dangerous."
"Of course it is," Kael replied, smiling. "Everything real is."
Anna perched at the fork of the ridge, her legs folded up beneath her, the outline of her figure colored by the horizon's molten light. She didn't say anything. She simply observed, hands folded on her knees, as serene as always.
Michael settled into his spot in the circle. The air shifted. Magma underneath the surface started to glow orange and gold, like a pulsing heartbeat.
Kael raised her hand. "No summoning yet. I want to see how your Thread treats you, not your spirit. Close your eyes."
He obeyed.
"Breathe. Feel your center. Where does the flame lie in you?"
Michael focused. It was not his chest, not really. It wasn't even pain. It was… regret. And vanish where he'd lost a heat. His sister. His dignity. The version of himself that had died in the rain.
Kael's voice came again. "Now bring it forward. Let it rise. Don't try to control itjust let it burn."
The glyphs pulsed brighter. The air thickened. A dart of flame erupted from Michael's palm wild and unformed but real. Then another. Then a whole shape, flickering, circling him.
But it was unstable.
His breath hitched. The fire flared, whipped out, and nearly hit Kael. She didn't blink she merely lifted one arm and blocked it with a narrow barrier carved from her bracer.
"Too much," he muttered. "I can't—"
"Yes, you can," Kael snapped. "You just don't know who you are when the fire responds."
Michael's hands shook. "What if I don't like it?"
A few steps behind him, Anna's voice drifted down — soft, yet distinct.
"And then you learn how to hold it lightly."
He turned.
Now she stood there, on the very edge of the Hollow, arms still locked at her sides, hair spun to gold, glinting in the sunlight like a fabricated flame. Her gaze met his not authoritative, not prescriptive, just present.
"I used to be like you," she said. "Scared to see what my Thread would reveal to me. I have been a healer through one Realm. Another as a wanderer. "I was someone far different than I wanted to be."
Michael gazed at her, his flame dimming in his hands a bit.
Anna stepped forward, just out of the circle. "But in each lifetime, there was something I carried on. Even if I didn't know how."
"What was it?" he asked.
She smiled soft, sad, and full of something infinite.
"Compassion. Even through times when it didn't add up. Even when I didn't earn it."
There was silence between them.
Then Kael cleared her throat. "That's a surfeit of soul-searching for one lesson. Try again. Slower this time."
Michael returned to the glyphs, the fire warm in his palms. It felt different this time not less dangerous, but less solitary.
....
They trained again the next day.
This time, The Hollow was hotter. Michael sensed it before he even entered like the very ground was listening more intently.
Kael had no grace to give him. "Call your flame. Don't let it think for you. Don't let it run wild."
Michael raised a hand. And the fire came not chaotic this time, but strained. Tension, not trust, is the way to control.
Kael studied him with narrowed eyes. "You're forcing it. That's not mastery. That's fear with a leash."
Michael grit his teeth. "I'm trying."
"Try less." She stepped forward, runes on her armor catching the light. "You planning on surviving Pyrrhion? Do you think you can survive the Realms? Then you need to own this compassion doesn't halt the blade.
Whereupon the grapes of mercy give way to the news that mercy doesn't put food in a dead man's mouth. You're struggling to win with compassion, and this world does not give a shit.
He stared at her. Then added softly, "That's not true."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "No?"
Michael stepped back and allowed the flame in his palm to diffuse to a gentle flicker. "You survived by turning into a weapon. Anna survived by being a place other people could rest. And me? I died trying to be needed. I died thinking I wasn't good enough."
Kael's face hardened. "And?"
"And I think," he said, staring down at the flicker in his palm, "that perhaps it's not enough to survive."
Anna stood at the edge of the Hollow with her hands folded over her breast, silent but listening.
Michael looked up. "This world burns everything. That's - fact. But what you do after it burns you that's what matters."
Kael folded her arms. "And what do you have, then, as an answer? You plan to light a candle and hope it scares the dark away?"
Michael stared up at the flame in his hand and then closed it gently around it.
"No. I'll carry the fire. Even when it hurts. Even when it doesn't make a difference. Because maybe the idea isn't how to stop the world from burning… maybe it's how to pick who's not on fire with me."
Silence.
Even the glyphs beneath his feet hesitated lessened in brightness—as if the Hollow was listening.
Kael was silent for a long time. Then she nodded. Just once. "Alright," she said. "That's a real answer."
Anna moved up, even softer but more assured. "That's the start of a truth you can build a life around."