The planet did not ease its grip.
It never did.
Days passed—not marked by sunrise or sunset so much as by the rhythm of storms and the slow crawl of shadows across fractured stone. Time on this world felt dense, compressed, as if each moment carried more weight than it should.
Raizen grew quiet within that weight.
Not passive.
Intent.
Sarela noticed it first in the smallest ways.
The way his breathing adjusted before she shifted her stance.
The way his fingers tightened just before the ground trembled—never after.
The way the seal no longer snapped into place defensively, but slid into alignment as if anticipating his needs.
It unsettled her.
And yet… it worked.
The tremors stopped escalating. The cracks in the stone ceased spreading. The planet still moved, still groaned beneath tectonic stress, but it no longer reacted violently to Raizen's distress.
He was learning the shape of restraint.
Each morning, Sarela would take him outside the shelter, carefully, always watching. The guards protested at first—quietly, respectfully—but Kaedor's final orders echoed in their minds.
Let the world do its work.
Raizen responded to the open air differently now.
Where the sky had once unsettled him, it now seemed to calm him. His gaze followed the movement of clouds, the roll of distant thunder, the way ash drifted and settled. The fire within him mirrored that behavior—burning steady, contained, never surging.
Not extinguished.
Disciplined.
Sarela knelt with him near the edge of a shallow fissure one afternoon, the ground warm beneath her knees.
Raizen's eyes fixed on the crack in the earth.
He leaned forward slightly.
The seal stirred.
Sarela held her breath.
Nothing happened.
No tremor. No pressure spike. No response from the world.
Raizen frowned—just a little.
Then he adjusted.
His posture changed almost imperceptibly, his tiny body shifting weight until it aligned more naturally with the pull beneath him.
The fissure remained still.
Sarela exhaled shakily.
"You figured it out," she whispered.
Raizen's hand lifted, hovering over the stone.
Not reaching.
Measuring.
The fire compressed again, tighter, denser, its heat folding inward rather than outward. The seal responded by loosening a fraction—not because it failed, but because it no longer needed to overcorrect.
Raizen's fingers brushed the ground.
The stone did not crack.
It did not tremble.
It did not react at all.
The world accepted the contact.
Sarela's eyes burned.
That night, the guards spoke in low voices near the shelter.
"This isn't normal," one said. "Not for a child. Not even for… whatever he is."
The other guard shook his head. "Nothing about this was ever going to be normal."
"And when he grows?" the first pressed. "When his body can actually move?"
The second didn't answer immediately.
"When that happens," he said finally, "we'll find out whether restraint stays a lesson… or becomes a choice."
Above them, far beyond storm and stone, Whis observed with quiet satisfaction.
"How very interesting," he murmured.
Beerus grunted. "You keep saying that."
Whis smiled. "Because it keeps becoming more so."
Beerus's tail lashed. "He's still sealed."
"Yes," Whis agreed. "But seals shape what they hold."
Beerus frowned. "And what is this one shaping?"
Whis's eyes followed the faint ripples of probability radiating outward from the planet.
"A being who understands limits," he said. "Which means…"
He paused.
"…one who will know exactly when to break them."
Back on the surface, Sarela lay awake long after Raizen had fallen asleep.
She watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, the way the faint warmth beneath his skin no longer spiked or fluctuated.
The fire was still there.
But it had a shape now.
A boundary.
A center.
She realized, with a tightening in her chest, that the most dangerous thing about Raizen was no longer his power.
It was his patience.
The world continued to push back.
And Raizen, quietly, learned how to push back only as much as necessary.
The universe took note.
Because restraint was never meant to be permanent.
It was meant to be mastered.