The barracks was a hum of early morning silence, broken only by the rhythmic whistle of Henry's blade cutting through the air. He had been up an hour before the bugle, his body moving through the Lower Regium forms with a mechanical, almost desperate precision.
"14! 14! Helloooo! Why are you ignoring me?"
Ana's voice finally pierced the veil of his concentration. Henry stopped mid-thrust, his chest heaving. "Oh, hey. Good morning, An.. 14," he corrected himself, the near-slip of her name catching in his throat.
Ana frowned, her eyes scanning his sweat-soaked tunic and the dark circles under his eyes. "What's wrong? Why did you skip stretching and go straight into form walkthroughs?"
"Nothing's wrong," Henry replied, his voice clipped. "I just feel I can work harder. And I didn't skip stretching; I've just been out here longer than usual."
Ana was taken aback. "You already do the supplemental training because of me! You're the hardest worker here, 14."
Henry merely shrugged, his gaze distant. "I still have more to give."
He turned back to his form, effectively ending the conversation. Ana stood there for a moment, a flicker of hurt crossing her face before she bit her lip and began her own stretches in silence.
The shift in Henry was tectonic. For the rest of the day, he became a ghost within the unit. He avoided the small talk that usually lubricated the friction of camp life, ignoring Recruit 4's worried glances and the sneers of Recruit 7.
After the brutal supplemental lessons, Ana tried one last time to reach him. "Good work, 14. I think we both need a long bath after that."
"Yeah," Henry nodded, not looking at her. "I'm going to stay out here a little longer."
Recruit 4, who had been watching Henry push himself to the point of collapse all day, finally spoke up. "Dude, you sure? I've been with you all day. You're always a grinder, but today... the intensity was different. You look like you're fighting an invisible war."
"I'm sure. Don't worry. See you guys tomorrow."
His tone left no room for argument. They left him alone under the flickering torchlight, a solitary figure swinging steel against the encroaching dark.
That night, sleep was a battlefield Henry couldn't win. Despite the bone-deep ache in his muscles and a mind frayed by exhaustion, he lay staring into the darkness of his dorms ceiling.
His rational mind knew the vision of the redwood door was a dream, but his heart screamed that it was a warning. He saw that potential future self happy, comfortable, and devastatingly weak. To Henry, that version of success felt like a trap. Choosing comfort felt like the same subtle, slippery slope that had led to his original descent into degeneracy in his past life. He refused to let history repeat itself.
But the part that truly haunted him was the moment he had frozen. The image of himself standing paralyzed as the trolls tore through his home was irreconcilable with the man he was trying to build. He had to find a way to kill that fear, no matter the cost to his body or soul.
The following days were a repeat of the first hyper-focus, total social isolation, and a training schedule that bordered on self-flagellation.
By the third day, the atmosphere in the unit began to shift. Recruit 7, driven by a toxic mix of pride and fear, realized that if he let Henry continue this solo grind, the gap between them would become an unbridgeable abyss. He began staying late, his eyes following Henry's every move with competitive spite.
By Day 53, the obsession had spread further. Ana joined the midnight sessions, her own drive reignited by Henry's stoicism, and even the quiet Recruit 13 began to linger in the training pad seeing it as a way to be around Ana more.
Only Recruit 4 held his ground, watching them from the barracks with a shake of his head, convinced they were all charging toward a collective breakdown, that he hoped wouldn't lead to any permanent damage.
Henry's obsession bore fruit that was both undeniable and terrifying. Through sheer, unrelenting repetition, his execution of the Lower Regium style began to touch the heels of Recruit 1.
His movements lost their mechanical stiffness, replaced by a predatory fluidity that allowed him to flow from a defensive parry into a killing thrust with the kind of grace that usually took years to cultivate.
However, the price of bridging that gap was etched into his very skin. His hands wrapped in tape everyday as his hand skin ripped everyday from the constant full powered reps. While Recruit 1 performed with the effortless ease of a natural-born prodigy, Henry was fueled by the frantic energy of a man trying to outrun a ghost.
Sir Red watched from the the corner of the training pad no longer directly involved with the training and more like an overseer, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes, usually burning with a chaotic spark, were now narrowed in a cold, analytical squint. He didn't miss a single detail.
The deep, bruised bags under Henry's eyes spoke of a man who hadn't seen true REM sleep in over a week.
He noticed the slight, nearly imperceptible twitch in Henry's lead hand whenever he held a low guard, a telltale sign of central nervous system fatigue.
Sir Red's gaze flickered to 7 and 13. They were pushing harder, yes, but they lacked Henry's singular, trauma-driven focus. They were flagging, their forms slipping as they tried to keep pace with a pace that was unsustainable for the human body.
Still he didn't say anything seemingly wondering how far they would really take this type of torment in the form of training.
Ten full days passed in this feverish, silent arms race of effort. Ten days of pushing past every limit, until the morning of the eleventh day, when the routine didn't just break; it shattered. Everything was about to change.