Chapter 10 – “Preparation”

  A few days later.

  We hadn’t forgotten the fight.

  Not for a second.

  Not with the creature’s blood still frozen outside Shelter 17’s reinforced airlock.

  Not with the lingering scent of dark mana that no one wanted to admit they could still smell.

  Not with the knowledge that we had survived by inches—not mastery.

  The W.M.B. had found us once.

  Others would follow.

  That realization became a trigger.

  We can’t stay locked up forever.

  And we won’t survive the next hit by luck alone.

  Inside, the storm still screamed against the walls—but for the first time, the shelter felt like a barracks.

  Routine set in. Discipline hardened.

  And that meant training.

  Greg demolished reinforced scrap panels like they were paper.

  Jake tried to turn his frost into blades, experimenting with control and range.

  Jasmine sculpted her illusions into moving doubles—ghosts that fought like smoke.

  Yuri moved like always—silent, meditative, surgical. Her steps were a dance you couldn’t follow until the cut landed.

  Chris buried himself in glyphs, experimenting with mana loops and portal stabilization diagrams—his eyes red from sleepless nights.

  And me?

  I was still trying to figure out what I even was.

  I stood alone in the padded chamber—converted from a storage cell. The walls were lined with reinforced foam and worn mats.

  My jacket was off, shirt soaked in sweat, rifle slung on the rack behind me.

  My breath came in slow. Controlled.

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  I clenched my fists, flexing my arms. The familiar sensation bubbled up—mana pressure threading beneath the skin like coiled electricity.

  I focused. Commanded.

  Enchanted combat—Activate.

  A pulse shot through me.

  The world jerked. My vision bent.

  Suddenly I was six feet forward. A blur of motion. My boots left skid marks across the floor.

  I gasped, hitting one knee.

  My thighs were cramping. Knees locked. Elbows shaking.

  Every time I used it, my body surged, like someone floored the gas while my frame was still bolted together with duct tape.

  “Five seconds of power,” I muttered, “followed by a full-body meltdown.”

  Not exactly what you want in a fight.

  I had the skill. The technique. Even the sigils now.

  Small, glitchy patterns flickered near my feet when I activated—tiny digital-looking runes, unstable and flickering blue.

  But I didn’t have control.

  It was like trying to fire a sniper rifle while sprinting through fire. It worked, technically.

  But it felt like suicide every time.

  I’d tried learning mana manipulation the way Chris explained it—flow diagrams, internal circuit logic, mana paths.

  I could sense it now—mana inside me. I could move it. Redirect it.

  But I couldn’t refine it.

  I was like a guy holding a grenade with no pin, trying to time the explosion just right.

  “This ain’t soldier work,” I muttered, pushing myself up again.

  “Mana control’s for specialists. Wizards. Guys with lab coats.”

  So I did what I knew.

  Push-ups.

  Planks.

  Isometrics.

  Burpees.

  Sweat soaked into the floor.

  I burned through the pain, through the tightness, through the shakes.

  “If I can’t control the power… I’ll outlast the side effects.”

  Later, I sat cross-legged on the mat, a cold bottle of reclaimed water pressed to my neck.

  My arms were shaking slightly.

  My muscles ached in a good way.

  But my mind was sharper.

  I’d learned something today. Even if I couldn’t name it yet.

  Mana didn’t care who you were. It only cared what you could handle.

  So I was going to make my body handle more.

  I looked at my hands.

  Calloused. Bruised. Steady.

  “If I can’t master it yet… I’ll build the engine until it stops breaking.”

  No shortcuts.

  No magical fixes.

  Just sweat.

  Just grind.

  Just like before.

  Later, I found Greg in the makeshift gym—if you could call a room with a bench rack, loose bars, and repurposed fuel canisters “a gym.”

  The clank of weights echoed like a heartbeat—slow, deliberate, unshaken.

  He was bench-pressing twice my body weight with calm rhythm, sweat gleaming off his dark skin under the dim lights. Beside him, carefully laid on the bench, sat a worn photo laminated in plastic—a woman with soft eyes and two laughing kids clinging to her shoulders.

  I didn’t interrupt right away.

  He noticed anyway.

  “Evening, soldier-boy,” Greg said without looking. “Thought you’d be out there again, brooding by the snow like some tragic action hero.”

  “Needed to move,” I said, walking in, rolling my shoulders. “Trying to get a feel for… something.”

  “Something?”

  “My body feels different,” I admitted. “Stronger. Denser maybe. Like the cold’s not biting as hard. Like my joints don’t creak after Enchanted Combat.”

  Greg racked the bar and sat up, cracking his neck with a grunt. He gave me a knowing look.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve felt it too. Didn’t notice at first… but I don’t flinch as much. The air stings less. My body just… holds up better.”

  “Like we’re adapting,” I muttered.

  He nodded. “Maybe the magic. Maybe the fights. Maybe just the world forcing us to harden.”

  I glanced at the photo. “They your family?”

  His smile was soft. Sad. “Yeah. I think so. Don’t know their names. Don’t remember birthdays or voices. But I feel them right here.” He tapped his chest. “And that’s enough to keep me going.”

  I nodded.

  No more words needed.

  I ended my round at the viewing panel—where the shelter stared into the white wasteland like a caged animal.

  The W.M.B.'s corpse was still out there.

  Half-buried in the snow, but still whole. Still wrong. As if the world itself was refusing to let it vanish. A monument to what we survived.

  Or maybe a warning.

  The wind screamed harder tonight.

  The clouds overhead churned like bruises across the sky, hiding even the fake sun we’d grown used to.

  I squinted into the white beyond the glass.

  For a second, I swore I heard something.

  A whisper.

  A pull.

  “Come out and find me.”

  But beneath that, another voice.

  Quieter. Sharper.

  “You’re not ready.”

  I turned from the glass.

  Exploration would happen soon.

  The world was waiting. But so was everything that wanted us dead.

  We had no maps. No backup. No second chances.

  If we were going to walk into hell, we’d have to sharpen ourselves first—mentally, physically, magically.

  And me?

  I couldn’t keep waiting for a miracle.

  I had to forge one.

  I had to master this power.