The transition was instantaneous and violent.
Carson expected a room; he found a nightmare. He was standing on a narrow obsidian platform suspended in a void of absolute darkness. Five hundred meters below, he could hear the rhythmic, terrifying thrum of the Earth's core. The air was so dense it felt like breathing warm oil.
"The world above believes in the Nine Realms of Ascension," Hobs' voice echoed, though he was nowhere to be seen. "They call them 'Mortal Foundation' to 'Godhood.' They are wrong. There are no realms—only the depth of your connection to the Flow."
Hobs materialized from the shadows, holding a rusted iron rod. He threw it at Carson's feet.
"That is a Tier-0 training saber. It is worthless. It is heavy. It is blunt. For the next twelve months, you will not eat. You will not sleep. You will sit in the dark and find the 'Heart' of that iron."
"No food?" Carson's voice cracked in the heavy air. "I'll die."
"You will only die if your will is weaker than your hunger," Hobs countered. "The Earth provides a different kind of sustenance. In this chamber, the atmospheric pressure is ten times the surface. To survive, your body must learn to pull energy—Chi—directly from the pressure itself."
The first three months were a descent into madness.
Carson's skin began to bruise and peel under the weight of the air. His muscles felt as if they were being ground between millstones. Every time he tried to stand, the gravity of the chamber slammed him back down. He sat in the dark, clutching the rusted rod, his mind teetering on the edge of a hallucination.
He began to see things. He saw his father's steady hands. He saw the way the Tier-1 sensors looked under a microscope. He realized the rusted rod wasn't a solid object—it was a vibrating collection of atoms, a "flow" of metallic intent.
In the sixth month, the hunger stopped hurting. It became a cold, hollow void that started to pull.
One night—or perhaps it was morning; time had lost all meaning—Carson felt a microscopic "tick" inside his chest. It was a spark. It wasn't heat; it was a sharp, biting cold.
He gripped the iron rod. He stopped trying to lift it with his muscles. He tried to "talk" to it.
Find the flow.
A faint, violet hum began to resonate from the obsidian floor. The hair on Carson's arms stood up. He visualized the pressure of the room—the millions of tons of earth above him—and tried to funnel it into the rod.
SNAP.
A single, hair-thin thread of violet light erupted from his palm, coiling around the rusted iron like a glowing serpent. It was beautiful. It was lethal.
"One strand," Hobs' voice whispered from the darkness, sounding satisfied. "The Mortal Foundation is breached. You have tasted the Saber-Qi. But remember, Carson... one strand makes you a warrior. Ten strands make you a monster. Thirty strands... and the world becomes your whetstone."
Carson looked at his hands. They were no longer stained with grease. They were glowing with a soft, predatory light.
"More," Carson whispered, his voice sounding like two blades sliding against each other. "I want more."