Dawn had barely stretched its rosy fingers over the forest when Brest woke them with a sharp rap of his cane against a protruding root.
"Get up!" he growled. "The world won't wait for you to stretch. Today, the Four Steps begin."
The four heroes emerged slowly, their muscles still aching from the day before. No one spoke; fatigue had sewn their lips shut. Yet, in their eyes shone a new determination.
Rhea, since her encounter with Garma, held something deeper in her gaze: a quiet flame. Leopold, tense, struggled to hide the heaviness of his thoughts. Yabal had been gritting his teeth since daybreak, as if to prove to himself that he could endure anything. Angel watched the other three, silent, like a brother ready to shoulder the same burden.
Brest raised his cane and pointed toward the dense woods.
"First trial: running. Not on the ground, no. On the roots. Without falling. Without slowing down. Without breathing like an ox. You must feel the ground, not suffer it. Move!"
The roots formed a chaotic carpet, a living web. Thick, intertwined veins jutted from the earth, slippery and uneven, rising and falling like the muscles of a giant beast.
Yabal took off first, bounding like a cat—but his feet slipped almost immediately.
"Shit!"
Angel cracked a laugh as he caught him.
"Focus! The ground doesn't want you dead! Well... not today."
Leopold followed, heavier and clumsier. His ragged breathing echoed in the quiet morning. Rhea saw him lose his balance, and with a swift movement, grabbed his sleeve to steady him.
"Thanks..." he wheezed.
"We move forward together. No way I'm scraping you up like a sack of flour."
The run lasted two hours. Two hours of dodging gaps, jumping from one slick root to another, sometimes sliding into the mud only to scramble back up.
Two hours where Brest, relentless, followed behind them like a vulture, tapping his cane on the roots to quicken their pace.
By the end, all four collapsed to their knees, gasping for air.
"Pathetic," the Oracle scoffed. "But you are still alive. That is a good sign."
They left the forest to reach a clearing dominated by four abrupt mountains, their flanks pierced by thousands of natural handholds.
"No powers. No cheating. No whining. You go up. All the way to the top. And back down. Before noon."
Angel snapped:
"Brest, that's impossible!"
The old man planted his cane in the soil.
"Impossible is just an excuse. Climb."
They obeyed.
The rock was cold and sharp. The wind whistled in their ears.
Rhea moved slowly, her fingers burned by the friction. Her muscles trembled, but she continued, stubborn.
Yabal cursed through his teeth, but his natural agility gave him a slight advantage.
Leopold, however, was suffering. His arms weren't built to lift his own weight. Halfway up, he stopped, resting his forehead against the cold stone.
"I... I can't make it..."
Angel climbed down slightly and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Shut up, Leo. Your mother is waiting."
A simple sentence.
An electric shock.
Leopold resumed climbing.
When they finally reached the summit, the sun was already high. They gazed out at the landscape: deep jungles, smoking volcanoes, illuminated waterfalls...
Then, from the valley far below, Brest roared:
"GET DOWN!"
The descent was worse than the climb. Two near-fatal falls, bloody hands, bruised knees. But they made it.
The volcano rumbled, a glowing colossus spewing suffocating waves of heat.
"Run across the valley. The ground is scorching. Do not stop, or your feet will cook."
Rhea felt Garma vibrating somewhere in her heart, but she forced herself to remain natural: no powers.
They ran.
The heat crushed them.
The ground cracked beneath their steps, spitting sparks.
Breath became short, as if filtered through embers.
Yabal screamed:
"I'm going to melt! I'm sure I'm melting!"
Angel, though almost as exhausted, chuckled breathlessly:
"If you melt, I'll scoop you up in a bowl."
But everyone felt the same thing: fear.
Panic.
The sensation that their muscles would give out with every step.
They reached the end of the valley stumbling, drenched in sweat, their clothes sticking to their skin.
The waterfall crashed down from two hundred meters, a roaring column of silver whipping the ground like a rain of stones.
"Under the falls. For ten minutes. Not a second less. You will come out purified... or broken."
They stepped forward.
The water struck them like a divine slap.
Leopold fell to his knees.
Rhea clenched her teeth to keep from screaming.
Angel tried to laugh, but the water choked him instantly.
Yabal clung to a rock, shaking like a leaf.
Time became a blur.
Everything was just noise, pain, cold, and vertigo.
When Brest finally pulled them out of the current, they collapsed into the grass, unable to move.
"You aren't dead. That is... encouraging."
That evening, around the fire, they cooked simple roots and mushrooms.
Angel rubbed his aching shoulders.
"Do you think we can last four months like this?"
Yabal burst out laughing, even though his jaw was trembling.
"We'll last... or we'll die. But if I die, bury me far away from that volcano."
Rhea smiled weakly.
"I'm proud of us. We didn't stop."
Leopold stared at his bandaged hands.
"I'll do better tomorrow. I have to do better. For her."
Angel nodded, but a shadow passed through his eyes.
Since he had made the connection between Tiger and the white hoods, his mind found no rest.
Brest observed the scene from a nearby rock, silent and pensive.
The following week opened under a pale sky, as if even the light hesitated to enter the territory where Brest put their bodies to the test and laid their spirits bare.
A Week of Trials
The days followed one another with an almost ritualistic brutality.
The training left no room for respite.
At dawn, they were woken by the sharp crack of Brest's cane against stone.
"Up. The world does not adapt to those who sleep."
They learned to run on slippery roots where every misstep sent Yabal or Angel tumbling into the ferns.
They climbed mountains where the air grew thin and sharp, legs trembling under the effort.
They crossed extinct volcanoes, walking for hours on black earth that was still warm, their clothes covered in dust.
They threw themselves under freezing waterfalls that lashed their backs like thousands of needles.
come evening, Brest forced them to sleep on wind-swept beaches or in marshes where mosquitoes feasted on their exhausted skin.
Yet, camaraderie grew in this shared suffering.
Yabal complained more than anyone, but was always the first to offer a hand to Angel when he fell.
Leopold, despite his air of a fragile scholar, surprised the group with his silent tenacity.
Rhea was sometimes harsh, sometimes gentle, but always determined to face the trials head-on.
"If we survive this week," Angel whispered one night, collapsing into a makeshift hammock, "I swear I will never run for no reason again."
"You'll run anyway," Rhea replied, amused. "You have no discipline."
"Oh yes I do," he protested. "I have... I have..."
He fell asleep before finding an argument.
Even Brest, occasionally, let a glimmer of pride filter through his roughness.
At the end of the week, when their bodies were nothing but pain and stiffness, Brest had them sit around a meager fire.
His silhouette was cut against the night, resembling an old tree that had seen everything.
"Listen well. Until now, I have broken you to empty you of your illusions."
He paused.
"Now, I will teach you what binds you to the world."
He drove his cane into the earth.
"Every living being carries a natural element within them. It is their root, their soul. Fire, Air, Earth, Water, Lightning... these are not external forces. They live inside you. They guide your temperament, your destiny, and your harmony."
His gaze swept over the group.
"As long as you do not listen to them, you will remain weak."
The four remained silent, surprised, intrigued, almost intimidated.
"Starting tomorrow," Brest continued, "the trials will no longer target your endurance. They will target your resonance. You will learn to walk with nature, not against it."
Rhea felt a shiver run through her.
An intuition.
As if something in those words was calling to her.
The following days were of a different nature.
They walked barefoot now, feeling the pulsations of the ground like a heart buried beneath the earth.
They ran with the breath of the wind in their ears, trying to follow its rhythm.
They stood motionless under the scorching heat of a relentless sun, learning to breathe so as not to falter.
Other times, Brest made them sit in the high-altitude snow to listen to the frozen creaking of the world.
"Nature speaks," he told them.
"But you never learned to hear."
Their nights filled with strange sensations.
Vibrations.
Breaths.
Rips in the air.
Distant echoes.
Sometimes, Rhea felt heat rising from her chest for no reason.
Yabal dreamed of dark flames surrounding his hands.
Leopold perceived electrical arcs at the corner of his vision.
Angel... he felt a breeze passing under his skin.
A Month Later.
It was at the sunrise of the thirty-second day that everything changed.
Rhea stopped suddenly in the middle of a march.
The heat within her became a torrent.
A red light, faint but real, enveloped her body.
Her aura.
"I... I see it," she whispered, amazed.
Yabal, hearing her cry, tried to reproduce the sensation.
And his aura burst forth: dark red, almost black, burning and untamed.
"That... that is me?" he murmured, frightened and fascinated at the same time.
Leopold, for his part, felt his vision tremble.
A golden lightning bolt vibrated around him, like a luminous cage ready to explode.
Angel remained for a long time without seeing anything.
Then, as the wind passed between the trees, a white breath enveloped him.
Almost invisible.
Almost unreal.
"I think... I think I am linked to the air," he said in an uncertain whisper.
Brest, who was observing them from the heights, nodded without smiling.
"You are only at the threshold. Aura is not a power. It is only a language. You have just learned a single word."
End of the First Month.
And so ended the first phase of their training.
Their bodies were marked, their spirits transformed.
They were no longer the ignorant young travelers who had entered the forest of Ryu.
An invisible bond united them now to nature, to their elements, and to one another...