With dried blood sticking to his fingers, he took one of the parched, brownish papers. The paper was rough against his skin, its surface thirsty, drinking up the moisture from his fingertips, the faint smear of crimson that had dried there becoming part of its texture. The smell of it rose to meet him—old, dry, the smell of things that had been waiting for a long time.
Here goes nothing.
He held the quill, letting his thread of atmic urja flow to its tip, feeling the fragile connection that was the only thing standing between him and another shattered instrument. Then he began to draw the circular flame symbol.
Kach!
The tip broke the moment he applied pressure to draw the first line—a clean, diagonal break that left the nib useless, the paper unmarked. He stared at the broken quill in his hand, felt the frustration build in his chest, and clenched his bloodied fist. The quill snapped in half.
"Charmcasting tests your patience and your control over your urja in equal measure." Shikshak Yaren's voice drifted across the room, dry, detached, the voice of a man who had seen this scene play out a hundred times before. He assumed his sadhana state once more, his breathing slowing, his eyes closing, his presence receding into something that was not quite sleep and not quite wakefulness.
Ashan didn't take another quill immediately. He sat in the silence, his hands resting on his knees, and looked at his fingers. The cuts where the splinters had embedded were healing themselves at a slow, visible rate—the flesh knitting, the skin closing, the blood drying and flaking away. It was a thing that would have astonished him once, that would have made him stop and stare and wonder at the strangeness of this world he had found himself in.
I wonder when it started. He turned his hands over, watched the healing continue. But seeing these things doesn't surprise me anymore.
He shook the nostalgic thought away. It was a luxury, nostalgia, the kind of thing that people with time on their hands indulged in. He had no time. He had never had time.
He took another quill and began again under the analytical gaze of his siddhi. The gray-white whirlpools spun in his eyes, dissecting every motion, every tremor, every fluctuation in the flow of his urja. [Viksana: Analyse] let him observe and understand—the precise angle of the nib, the pressure of his grip, the way the energy moved from his core to his fingers to the quill's tip. Understanding, he was learning, was not the same as control.
Kach!
Snap!
The sounds of breaking quills echoed dully in the room, a percussion of failure that seemed to grow louder with each repetition. He had gotten the hang of drawing with the empowered quill—the first stroke was clean now, the second, sometimes the third. But it would break midway, the fragile instrument unable to sustain the flow of energy for more than a few seconds at a time.
After several more tries, he was finally able to complete a circular symbol.
He held the paper up to the light, examined his work. The circle was there, more or less—a closed loop that was almost round, that almost held its shape. The flames inside were something else entirely.
Well. He let the paper fall to the floor, watched it settle among the others. Calling it a 'circular symbol' is a bit of a stretch.
He took another paper. Another quill. Began again.
Some time later—minutes or hours, he could not have said—Shikshak Yaren opened his eyes. His gaze moved across the scattered papers, the broken quills, the boy who sat among them with trembling hands and a face set in lines of stubborn determination.
"That is enough for the first day."
Huff! Huff!
Ashan's hands were shaking violently now. He could barely hold the quill straight, the muscles in his fingers and wrists having long since passed the point of exhaustion. He held up his latest attempt—the best one, the one that had taken him the longest, that had cost him the most.
"How is it?" His voice was hoarse, scraped raw by the effort of holding the flow of urja steady for so long.
Shikshak Yaren took the paper, held it at arm's length, examined it with the same clinical detachment he had shown to everything. The circle was drawn in a neat formation—that much Ashan had managed. But the flames inside...
"What is this abomination?" His teacher's voice was flat, but there was something beneath it, something that might have been exasperation or might have been the first stirrings of amusement. "Do these flames look like wild grass to you?"
Damn. Ashan let his hands fall to his knees, let the exhaustion settle into his bones. I should have taken that drawing class seriously in my past life.
"You have a long way to go." Shikshak Yaren set the paper aside, his expression unreadable. "You should rest for today and reflect on the lesson."
Ashan nodded. There was no argument left in him. His right hand was numb from the wrist down, the muscles locked in a cramp that would not release. His urja was nearly spent, the reserves he had built over weeks of practice drained to almost nothing. He stood, swaying slightly, and bowed to his teacher.
"Praise the Lord of Greed!"
"Praise the Lord of Greed!"
He turned toward the door, his steps unsteady, his mind already turning over the day's failures, the things he would do differently tomorrow, the ways he could improve.
"Wait." Shikshak Yaren's voice stopped him at the threshold. "There is something I need to say to you."
Ashan turned. His teacher's expression had shifted, the dry detachment replaced by something more serious, more direct.
"The way you are trying to achieve Bodh is not feasible." Yaren's voice was quiet, but it carried. "If you feel it is a grind, then you should stop your current approach to sadhana."
He held Ashan's gaze for a moment longer, then waved a hand in dismissal. "That is all."
"Thank you for the advice." Ashan bowed again, the gesture automatic, his mind already racing, turning over the words, examining them from every angle.
He left.
Along the way, he contemplated his teacher's words, letting them settle into the spaces behind his eyes, letting them turn over and reveal their edges.
Am I trying the wrong way?
He skipped dinner. His stomach would complain, but his body had learned to ignore such complaints, had learned that there were things more important than the next meal. He entered his hut, sank into a state of sadhana, and let his excessive thoughts die down one by one, until his mind was calm, his body still, his presence reduced to the slow rhythm of breath and pulse.
He studied his muladhara chakra at the base of his spine, the wheel of light that was the foundation of everything he was building. The dark-golden band of volatile sin energy still revolved around it—a serpent coiled around treasure, guarding, protecting, refusing to release its hold.
The energy loss rate is still the same as ever. He watched the energies flow, saw the places where they clashed, where they bled away into nothing. The synchronization and harmonization interval I invented is still holding my Samyama Marga together. But it's not enough. It was never enough.
Kumar Taevor is the only one who might help me with this. He let the thought surface, examined it, let it go. And before asking for a favor, I have to prove my worth.
He immersed himself deeper, letting the failures of the day fall away, letting his core state hold steady.
The moon came and went, tracing its slow arc across the sky. The sun took its throne again, its light streaming through the small window, painting the walls in shades of gold and shadow.
Ashan emerged from sadhana.
What is my short-term goal now? He stretched his aching muscles, felt the stiffness in his shoulders, the dull throb in his hands. Achieving Bodh in the [Combat Bolt] mantra, and learning charmcraft.
Bodh is the realization. Sadhana is the vessel.
He contemplated Shikshak Yaren's words deeply, turning them over, fitting them into the framework he was building.
If casting the mantra to achieve Bodh isn't working... no, the wrong thing isn't the casting. He let the realization settle, let it open doors he had not known were closed. It's the way I'm thinking about it. Approaching it.
Something clicked in his mind.
He entered the sadhana state once more, but this time he wasn't cultivating energy. He was analyzing the [Combat Bolt] mantra itself. The words echoed in the halls of his mind, and he recited its foul syllables lightly under his breath, letting them fill the space, letting them become part of him.
Viksana's analysis was active, dissecting the mantra's structure, its meaning, the shape of the power that moved through it. But no matter how he turned it, the translation and its described use didn't reveal any deeper secret.
Yet Ashan didn't stop. Like a man possessed, he kept muttering the mantra, letting it wind through his thoughts, letting it settle into the spaces between his breaths.
Bodh is realization. Realization doesn't come in one go. What better way to realize something than to first understand its true nature?
He let the thought carry him deeper, into places where the words began to lose their meaning, where the structure of the mantra began to reveal itself in ways that had nothing to do with language.
The paradox about Bodh is this: if you think of it as a grind, you are wrong—even if the path itself is one.
He continued, and in the silence of his small, humble hut, something began to shift. Something that had been waiting. Something that was only beginning to stir.