The first thing was the ache.
Not sharp. Not the violent pain he remembered from the fight. Just a dull, persistent throb that sat in his ribs and his shoulders and the back of his skull, present enough to remind him it was there every time he shifted.
His eyes opened slowly.
White ceiling. Spotless. Unfamiliar.
He stared at it for a moment, his mind blank in the particular way it goes blank before it remembers what it has to catch up to.
Then it caught up.
He turned his head.
The room was small and clean, the smell of antiseptic faint in the air. A medical room of some kind, though nothing in it looked like any clinic he'd been to before. The equipment was minimal. The light was even and cool.
He looked down at himself.
Bandages wrapped his ribs, tight and carefully done. His shirt was gone. Someone had cleaned the cuts on his side, the ones the Vyza's claws had left, and covered them properly. He pressed two fingers lightly against the bandaging, testing.
The pain was muted. Manageable.
He let out a slow breath.
Then he registered the others.
Erina stood against the far wall, arms crossed, completely at ease. Like she had been there a while and hadn't found it particularly interesting. A cigarette burned between her fingers, the smoke rising in a thin line toward the ceiling without her seeming to notice or care that she was in a medical room.
Sumi sat in a chair near the foot of the bed, one leg crossed over the other, her phone in both hands, scrolling with the focused detachment of someone killing time they had been given too much of.
Sado stood near the window. Still. Quiet. Looking out at something or nothing, it was hard to tell.
Kujo watched them for a moment.
They had stayed.
He wasn't sure why that landed the way it did. They barely knew him. He'd arrived less than a day ago and had immediately needed to be carried out of a fight. But they had stayed, all three of them, and were still here.
"You guys—"
His voice came out rough, scraped dry.
He cleared his throat.
"Thanks."
Sumi glanced up from her phone briefly. Sado turned from the window just enough to give a small nod. Erina's mouth moved into something that was almost a smirk.
"You did most of the work," she said.
Kujo looked at her.
"Sumi finished it in one shot."
"After you softened it up."
"For someone who awakened two hours ago," Erina said, "not bad."
Kujo didn't have a response to that. He looked down at his hand instead, turning it over slowly. His palm looked ordinary. No glow, no heat, no indication of what had come out of it.
"What was that?" he asked quietly. "The energy. What actually is it?"
Sumi locked her phone and set it on the bed beside her.
"You really came in knowing nothing, huh."
"I woke up this morning thinking the strangest thing in my life was going to be a history test," Kujo said.
Sumi paused. Then something shifted in her expression, brief and genuine, before she let it go.
"Fair enough," she said.
She leaned forward slightly, resting her forearms on her knees.
"Energy exists in every person," she said. "Always has. It's generated constantly, your body produces it, your thoughts produce it, your emotions. All of it. Most people go their whole lives without ever knowing it's there."
Kujo listened carefully.
"The amount varies," she continued. "Most people have barely anything. Some people have more. And some people—" she paused briefly, "—have enough that it can be used."
"Used how?"
"That's where it gets complicated." She glanced at him. "How it gets awakened first. That's different for everyone. Training, sometimes. Extreme stress. Trauma." She said the last word evenly, without weight behind it, but she held his gaze for just a second longer than the others. "Something that pushes the body and mind past a certain point."
Kujo's jaw tightened slightly.
He didn't say anything.
Sumi moved on.
"Once it's awakened it's yours. Permanently. And everyone's is different, not just in amount but in type." She held up one hand and a small tongue of flame curled lazily around her fingers, controlled and easy, gone a moment later. "Fire, for me. Always been fire, apparently." She nodded toward him. "Light, for you."
Kujo looked at his hand again.
Light.
He turned the word over. It felt right in a way he couldn't explain, like hearing your own name said correctly after a long time of people getting it wrong.
"What determines the type?"
Sumi shrugged. "Nobody completely knows. It's just yours. Born with it."
"And the fighting?" Kujo asked. "The way you used it, the bow, the arrow. That's not the only way to use it?"
"Not even close." Sumi glanced toward Erina and Sado. "There are a few different paths. Using energy directly, the way I do, shaping it, projecting it, channeling it through your body. That's what you did in the fight. But it's expensive. Burns through reserves fast, especially early on when you don't have control."
Kujo thought of the sword shattering. The sudden hollow emptiness that had followed.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed."
"The other path is weapons," Sumi said. "Infusing energy into something external rather than using it raw. More efficient. Better for people whose reserves aren't as large." She nodded toward Sado. "It's not a lesser option; it just takes a different kind of precision."
Kujo looked at Sado properly.
He was still near the window, but he was listening. His posture hadn't changed but his attention had shifted toward the conversation.
Kujo thought about the way Sado had stopped the Vyza's arm mid-swing. The complete lack of effort in it.
"What's his type?" Kujo asked.
"Ice," Sumi said simply.
Kujo blinked. "Ice."
"Through the katana. You'll see it eventually."
He filed that away.
"You said there was another way," Kujo said, looking back at Sumi. "Earlier. Back in the fight. You mentioned—"
"There's a third path," she said. Her voice shifted slightly, not cagey exactly, but more measured. "Rare. Most people never encounter it." She paused. "Some people can turn their energy inward differently, not toward their body, not toward a weapon, but toward other people. Their perception. Their mind."
Kujo frowned. "What does that mean?"
"Means you can make someone see something that isn't there. Feel something. Believe something." She said it plainly. "It's not well understood. Hardly anyone can do it and the ones who can don't advertise it."
Kujo sat with that for a moment.
"Has anyone here—"
"No," Erina said from the wall. Her voice was flat and final in a way that closed the door on the question without slamming it.
Kujo looked at her.
She took a slow drag and exhaled toward the ceiling.
The subject was done.
Kujo let it go. For now.
Sumi sat back in her chair, the explanation portion of the conversation apparently concluded. Erina pushed off the wall, dropped the cigarette and pressed it out under her shoe on the clean floor without a second thought.
"Alright," she said. "Lesson's over."
Kujo looked at her. "That was a lesson?"
"Everything's a lesson," she said. "Get up. We're not done."
"I just woke up."
"And you're awake now, so."
Sumi was already standing, stretching her arms above her head. Sado had turned from the window completely.
Kujo looked between them.
"You're serious."
"The longer you wait," Sado said quietly, "the longer you stay where you are."
Nobody argued with that.
Kujo got up.
The training area outside was wide and open, the packed dirt ground worn flat and smooth from long use. The edges of it were marked faintly, the boundary of a space that had seen a lot of impact. A few weapons rested along the far side, untouched.
The air outside was cooler than the medical room. Sharper.
Kujo stood in the center of it and felt, not for the first time today, very small.
Erina stopped in front of him.
"Summon it," she said.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
Kujo raised his hand.
He reached for the feeling he remembered, the heat, the pressure, the thing that had come rushing up from somewhere deep when he had been pinned on the living room floor with no options left. He knew it was there. He had felt it twice now, felt what it could do.
He focused.
A flicker.
Faint. Barely a pulse of light before it collapsed and was gone.
His hand trembled slightly.
"Again," Erina said.
He tried.
Nothing.
Again.
A flicker, slightly longer this time, and then nothing.
Frustration rose in his chest, quiet but insistent.
"I don't understand," he muttered. "In the fight it just—"
"Came out when you were terrified and running on nothing," Sumi said from the side. "Yeah. That's not a reliable method."
Kujo lowered his hand slightly.
He knew she was right. That wasn't a strategy. That was desperation producing something he couldn't replicate or control.
He raised his hand again.
Focused harder this time.
A glow. Steadier than before, holding for two full seconds before it dimmed and died.
His breathing had grown heavier.
"Why can't I hold it?"
Erina's expression hadn't moved through any of this.
"Because you're trying to force it," she said. "You don't understand what you're reaching for yet. You're grabbing in a direction without knowing what's there."
Kujo lowered his arm fully.
The training ground was quiet around them. Distant sounds from other parts of the campus drifted over, muffled and far away.
He thought about the living room. About the creature's weight on his chest. About the moment something had broken open inside him, and the light had come from nowhere.
He hadn't been thinking then. He hadn't been reaching or focusing or forcing anything.
He had just been out of everything else.
"I'm weak," he said.
It came out flat. Not self-pity. Just an observation, stated plainly, the way you'd describe the weather.
Nobody in the group disagreed.
That landed differently than he expected.
Not painfully. Just clearly. Like a line drawn in clean ink.
He looked at his hand.
Ordinary. Still.
He closed it slowly into a fist.
"Then I'll change that."
Erina's expression shifted, the first genuine movement it had made in a while.
"Good answer," she said.
She stepped to the side and nodded once toward Sado.
Sado moved to the center of the training ground without being asked, settling into position across from Kujo with the unhurried ease of someone who had done this ten thousand times and expected to do it ten thousand more.
"Use your energy as much as you can," Erina said to Kujo. Then to Sado, "No energy. Baseline only."
Sado nodded once.
Kujo looked at him across the short distance between them.
No energy.
Baseline only.
He swallowed.
"Right."
Sado moved.
Kujo barely registered it. One moment there was distance between them, the next there wasn't, and a strike came in toward his ribs that he got his arm up for half a second too late.
It stopped an inch from contact.
Sado lowered his arm.
"Again," he said.
They went again.
And again.
Kujo tried to summon the light between exchanges, managed weak inconsistent flickers that came and went without pattern. His lunges were readable. His footwork was slow. Every time he thought he had found an angle Sado had already closed it, shifting with an economy of movement that made Kujo feel like he was fighting in slow motion.
He hit the ground three times.
Got up each time.
By the end his breathing was ragged, and his ribs ached through the bandaging, and his energy had sputtered out entirely, leaving his hand dark and unresponsive.
Sado stood across from him, completely composed.
"You think before you move," Sado said. "Every time. I can see it."
Kujo pressed a hand to his knee, catching his breath.
"Your body telegraphs what your mind is deciding," Sado continued. "By the time you act, I already know what's coming."
"So what do I do about that?"
Sado was quiet for a moment.
"Stop deciding," he said. "Let your body move first. The mind catches up after."
Kujo straightened slowly.
He looked across at Sado.
The gap between them was enormous. He knew that clearly now, without room for comfortable self-deception. It wasn't discouraging exactly. It was just the truth of where he was standing and how far there was to go.
He'd been further from things before.
He held Sado's gaze.
"Again," he said.
Something moved in Sado's expression. Not a smile. Just something that wasn't quite neutral either.
He settled back into position.
And they went again.