The training yard behind Nort Burningstar's private quarters was less a place of growth and more a sterile, unsettling piece of engineering. It was a perfect square of bleached white gravel, shielded from the biting northern winds by a mana dome that hummed with a low, predatory frequency. Inside, the air was still—too still—and smelled faintly of ozone and the expensive, cloying incense Nort burned to mask the scent of his own exhaustion.
Rust stood in the dead center of the yard, his bare feet sinking into the sharp stones. The cold was a physical weight, biting at his soles and crawling up his shins, a constant reminder that despite the clean linen clothes and the warm stew currently settling in his belly, he was still the boy who had scavenged for survival in the Dump Arena. Behind him, leaning against a marble pillar with a carefully crafted mask of boredom, was White Turner. White was still riding the high of a hot bath and the sheer, absurd novelty of not being covered in the entrails of a Chimera. He looked like a prince who had stumbled into a graveyard and decided to critique the landscaping.
Nort circled them with the slow, rhythmic gait of a predator that had already won the hunt and was now merely deciding how to prepare the meat. His hands were clasped behind his back, his red beret tilted just enough to shadow his weary, blue eyes.
"Karma isn't some mystical fairy tale," Nort began, his voice cutting through the hum of the dome like a cold blade. "It's a ledger. A debt the world owes you. Whether it's because of a bloodline, a tragic prophecy, or the sheer, crushing weight of your fate—the more the world owes you, the more energy you can pull from the void." He stopped in front of White, poking a gloved finger into the center of the boy's chest. "White, your well is bottomless. You have enough karma to drown a continent and still have change for a drink. But the tap is rusted shut. You're a god in a straitjacket."
White opened his mouth to offer a retort—something about how he preferred silk to straitjackets—but Nort was already turning, his focus shifting to Rust with the suddenness of a lightning strike.
"And you," Nort said, his voice dropping an octave. "You're the ultimate thief. You can borrow anyone's tap, mirror any Authority you can perceive. But your body? Your body is a cracked cup. You take one sip of a Hero's power, and you leak until you're empty. You aren't built to hold the weight of the world, Rust. You're built to be a conduit that burns out before the circuit is finished."
Nort stepped back, sinking into a defensive stance that seemed to drain the color from the air around him. "Show me how much you can leak, kid. Try to take it."
Rust didn't hesitate. In the Dumps, hesitation was just a long-form way of saying 'suicide.' He reached out with his mind, seeking the invisible, viscous flows that governed the laws of LIMBO. Usually, finding an Authority was like catching a faint scent on the wind. But Nort's presence wasn't a scent; it was a hurricane. As Rust's consciousness touched the edges of Nort's "void," the world stuttered.
The white gravel under his feet began to vibrate, the individual stones dancing in a frantic, silent rhythm. Suddenly, the sensation of time began to stretch like warm taffy, becoming thick and unmanageable. Rust saw it—a shimmering, silver outline of Nort's hand moving before the man's physical body had even twitched a muscle. It wasn't just a reflex; it was a premonition. Rust saw the punch coming three full seconds before it existed in real space.
He pivoted on his heel, the gravel crunching violently beneath him. Nort's fist cut through the empty air where Rust's head had been a heartbeat prior. The force of the blow was so immense that the air itself whistled in protest, creating a miniature vacuum that tugged at Rust's hair.
The world snapped back into focus. Rust collapsed to one knee, his lungs burning as if he'd inhaled lye. His veins felt like they were being traced with concentrated acid—the "cracked cup" of his biology was already shattering under the sheer pressure of Nort's Tier-A essence.
"Three seconds," Nort murmured, his eyes widening just a fraction of a millimeter. "Impressive. Most copiers get a single heartbeat before their brains melt out through their ears."
"Told you," Rust wheezed, clutching his chest and feeling his heart hammer against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Cracked... cup."
From the sidelines, White clapped with a slow, rhythmic mockery that grated on Rust's raw nerves. "Bravo. Truly inspiring. Can we go back to the steaks now, or is it my turn to almost die in the name of education?"
Nort turned his gaze toward White, and the boredom evaporated, replaced by a clinical, terrifying focus that made the humidity in the dome drop instantly. "Your Authority is locked away, likely behind whatever trauma or 'world-hopping' nonsense brought you here," Nort said, ignoring the sarcasm. "But your karma is singing. It's so loud it's a wonder the Orcs didn't hear you from the next province. It's a glitch, White. A scream in a room full of whispers."
Nort raised a hand, and a massive, silver clock face—the Clock of Life—bloomed in the center of the yard. The hands began to spin backward with a deafening, metallic grind that seemed to vibrate in White's very marrow.
The world froze.
A bird that had been soaring above the mana dome hung mid-flap, a feathered statue pinned against the darkening sky. Dust motes suspended themselves in the air like tiny, frozen stars. White tried to shout, to move, to even blink, but the sound died in his throat. He was a prisoner in a moment that refused to pass, a fly in the amber of Nort's will.
Inside the frozen time, Nort walked up to White. He moved with a terrifying grace, his boots making no sound on the gravel. He reached out and flicked White's forehead with a nonchalance that was more insulting than a slap.
"Feel that?" Nort's voice was the only thing that moved.
White didn't just feel it; he lived it. Inside his skull, it felt like a thousand needles of static electricity were dancing a frantic jig. It wasn't pain, not exactly; it was a pressure, a vast, angry ocean trying to squeeze through a needle's eye. It was the feeling of a mountain trying to fit inside a matchbox.
Nort snapped his fingers, and the world lurched forward with a sickening jolt. The bird flew on; the dust settled. The static in White's head receded, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache.
"That static? That's your karma reacting to my interference," Nort explained, his voice heavy with a weariness that went deeper than bone. "It wants to be used. It wants to tear this dome apart and rewrite the sky. You just don't remember how to open the door, or perhaps you're too afraid of what's on the other side."
They trained until the artificial sun of the North began to dim into a pale, ghostly violet, casting long, skeletal shadows across the gravel. Rust practiced "Time Bursts," each one-second jump leaving him more nauseated and pale than the last, his body struggling to adapt to the stolen tempo of a master. White tried everything—meditation, screaming at the sky until his throat was raw, even trying to punch Nort in a fit of pique—but his power remained a silent, buzzing ghost, a treasure chest without a key.
As the evening chill turned sharp, the scene shifted from the sterile yard to the humid, suffocating warmth of the mansion's bathhouse. Steam rose in thick, white clouds, blurring the edges of the room and making the world feel small and private. Nort sat on a stone bench, draped in a simple robe, watching the condensation drip down the surface of a massive, silver-framed mirror that occupied the far wall.
"There's an old story," Nort began, his voice echoing off the damp tiles, sounding older than the stones themselves. "The story of the Spacewalker. A god from outside—much like you claim to be, White—who nearly reduced LIMBO to cinders a millennium ago. The old Savior stopped him, but he couldn't kill a god. Nature doesn't allow for such a void. So, he cut the Spacewalker into pieces and sealed them away, hiding them in plain sight."
Nort looked at White through the swirling steam, his eyes unreadable. "The pieces were given to the Savior's companions, the ones who had bled beside him. An Angel took the face. A Dwarf couple took the body. A Dragon took the heart. A Demon took the blood. And a Monkey took the eyes."
Nort stood up, the movement heavy with the weight of centuries. He grabbed a towel and wiped a clean, harsh circle in the fogged-up mirror. He gripped White's chin with a hand that felt like iron, forcing the boy to look at his own reflection.
"Look. Truly look."
With the grime of the Dump Arena scrubbed away and the palace lights catching the angles of his bone structure, the face staring back was haunting. It was too symmetrical, too ethereal to be entirely human. It was the face Rust had seen a thousand times on the faded, peeling murals of the slums—the face of the White Savior from the ancient, dusty prophecies that mothers whispered to their dying children.
Rust, sitting on the edge of the cooling pool, whistled low, the sound sharp and jarring in the quiet room. "Shit, White. You really do look like the pictures. I thought it was just the hair, but... that's the face that launched a thousand crusades."
White reached up, his fingers trembling as he touched his own cheek, tracing the line of his jaw as if he were touching a stranger. For the first time since he'd arrived in this world, the sarcasm failed him. The wit, his only true weapon in the Dumps, evaporated in the heat. He looked like a man who had just realized he wasn't the lead actor in a play, but a sacrificial lamb in a ritual he didn't understand.
"The prophecy says the Savior returns in a hundred years wearing a stranger's face," Nort said softly, his voice a death knell. "You're right on schedule, White Turner. And the world is cracking again. The REs—Remnants of Extinction—are waking up in the dark. Zecker was just the first symptom, a localized infection in a body that is starting to rot from the inside out."
Rust met Nort's eyes in the reflection of the mirror, his own gaze narrowing. "And what do you want? You're a Captain of the North. You could have handed us over to the 'White Plains' or the Council. Why keep us here? Why play teacher to two 'losers of humanity'?"
Nort smiled that sleepy, dangerous smile—the smile of a man who had seen the end of the world and found the experience deeply disappointing. "I want to train you. I want to see if a 'Glitch' and a 'Mirror' can do what a thousand 'Heroes' and their protocols couldn't. I want to make sure that the next time the world tries to die, it has to deal with two slum kids who are too stubborn, too arrogant, and too broken to let it happen."
White's grin returned then, though it was different from before. It was no longer the defensive sneer of a scavenger. It was slow, feral, and edged with a desperate kind of madness that mirrored the fire in Nort's eyes.
"Finally," White whispered, his voice a raspy promise. "A stage big enough for my debut. If I'm supposed to be a Savior, I might as well be the most expensive one you've ever bought."
Rust just sighed, leaning back against the cool stone and closing his eyes against the steam. "We're going to regret this, aren't we? We're going to wish we were back in the trash digging for copper."
Nort laughed for the first time since they had met. It was a dry, brittle sound, like glass breaking under a heavy boot. "Probably. In fact, I guarantee it. But regret is a luxury for people who survive the night. For now, just focus on breathing."