The cliffs burned with light.
Draconis lay far behind the horizon, a faint glow of molten orange flickering against the endless sea of black stone. The air itself shimmered — heavy with heat, thin with life. No birds, no beasts. Only the low hiss of wind scraping across the volcanic ridges.
Hunnt stood barefoot at the edge of a cliff, his chest bare, skin streaked with soot and sweat. Every breath he drew came heavy, thick with ash. His knuckles bled from practice, his soles cracked from the rough stone. But his stance was calm — grounded. The silence around him was his only companion.
It had been weeks since he left the canyon.
Weeks since he had heard another voice.
Weeks since he had last called anything "home."
And in that solitude, only one rhythm remained — the sound of his breath.
He flexed his fingers once, then raised a foot and stepped into the air.
The world fell away.
For a heartbeat, gravity caught him — then whump, the air burst beneath his heel. His body surged upward, wind swirling beneath him. He kicked again. Another burst. Then another.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
Each impact echoed like a drumbeat through the valley.
But control was fragile. His fourth step faltered — the rhythm broke. The world tilted, and he crashed into the rock below, shoulder-first.
The impact drove the air from his lungs. Dust rose around him in choking clouds.
He stayed there for a moment, staring up at the red sky.
"Too slow," he muttered.
Rolling to his knees, he stood again. There was no frustration — only quiet discipline. The same way he'd been since leaving Pyro and the Felyne village. Alone meant no mistakes could hurt anyone but him. Alone meant he could fail as often as needed.
He wiped blood from his cheek and climbed the cliff again.
When he reached the top, he exhaled deeply, grounding himself. The heat shimmered against his skin.
"Again."
He stepped forward and vanished into the air — one, two, three, four steps.
He fell again on the fifth, but this time landed on his feet.
Progress.
---
The days blended together — the same endless rhythm.
Morning: breath control, stance, aerial repetition.
Afternoon: conditioning, body reinforcement through Tekkai endurance drills — slamming fists into rock until the skin calloused over, then continuing.
Night: meditation under the heat haze, channeling Observation Haki to feel the shift in air currents around him.
He wasn't chasing strength anymore. He was carving precision.
By the fifth day, his body moved without hesitation. He learned to feel the tension in the air — the moment before the kick released. The way pressure changed with every strike.
By the tenth, he could move across short distances with fluid rhythm. He wasn't soaring, not yet — but each step became lighter, faster, smoother.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
The sound echoed through the ridges like heartbeats. Each impact carved shallow dents into the rock beneath him, faint spirals marking where air had compressed and released.
He began testing rotation — twisting mid-step, using momentum to guide flight. He failed more often than not, tumbling hard across stone. But every failure refined his control.
When fatigue finally caught him, he collapsed beside the cliff edge, lying flat on the still-warm ground. The stars overhead burned dimly through the haze.
The silence here was absolute.
Hunnt stared upward, one arm draped over his eyes.
"This quiet…" he whispered to himself. "It's not emptiness anymore."
He rolled to his side, grabbing a worn strip of cloth from his bag — the last piece of his old cloak. He wrapped it around his hand, tightening it over bruised knuckles.
Then he stood again.
---
By the third week, Hunnt's technique had changed. He no longer forced the air to obey; he moved with it.
The difference was subtle — invisible to any observer, if one existed. The air beneath his kicks no longer screamed; it hummed. The shockwaves grew smaller, more focused, and the ground below him stayed unbroken.
At dawn, he practiced in rhythm with the rising sun, timing each Geppo with his breath.
Inhale. Step. Exhale. Rise.
The higher he went, the quieter each burst became.
When he finally stopped, suspended above the cliffs, the wind no longer resisted him. It flowed beneath his soles like unseen current.
For the first time, Hunnt could stand in midair without force — just balance.
He stayed there, eyes closed, feeling the world below breathe with him. The heat, the pressure, the whisper of stone. Everything moved in rhythm.
He smiled faintly. "So this is what stillness feels like."
He opened his eyes.
The horizon stretched forever — rivers of molten rock, mountains glowing faintly, the faint shadow of smoke trails from Draconis far to the east. It wasn't beautiful, not in the usual sense, but to Hunnt it was perfect.
This was a place where strength meant nothing unless tempered by control.
---
That night, a storm rolled across the ridges. Not of rain, but of wind — wild gusts sweeping through canyons and scattering loose ash in spirals.
Hunnt sat near his campfire, the small flame bending sideways under the gale. He stared into it, unmoving.
He'd long since learned to meditate through chaos. The storm's noise was rhythm — and rhythm was control.
He closed his eyes, listening.
The wind struck his body, but his stance didn't waver. Observation Haki spread outward in waves, each gust painted in his mind like rippling color. He mapped them — their speed, their angles, their rhythm.
He stood slowly, breath deep, and stepped forward into the storm.
Air whipped against him, tearing at his hair, his cloak. He stepped anyway.
One kick. Two. Three.
The wind caught his body and flung him upward — but he turned with it, not against. Each movement became smoother, more refined, until he moved as part of the storm itself.
From below, his silhouette would have looked like a shadow dancing through the air — rising and falling with invisible waves.
For the first time, he didn't crash. He descended slowly, landing without sound.
The storm eased soon after, its roar replaced by the hush of settling ash.
Hunnt sat again, smiling faintly at the flickering embers of his fire.
"Almost," he murmured. "Not there yet… but close."
He flexed his hand once, the faint hum of Haki answering beneath his skin.
Tomorrow, he'd push farther.
Tomorrow, he'd step higher.
But for now, he simply listened — to the breath of the world, to the quiet harmony of stone and wind.
The silence was no longer empty.
It was his teacher.
And somewhere in that endless stillness, Hunnt found what he'd been chasing all along.
Not strength.
Not mastery.
Peace.