Two weeks had bled into the violet glass of the Grotto.
Outside the light-pavilion, a massive waterfall cascaded from the golden dunes above, crashing silently into a basin of violet obsidian.
The air here was so thick with energy it felt like walking through warm honey.
Water was mixed with golden sand giving amber colour to it.
Vyan sat cross-legged on a flat basalt rock near the heavy spray, his bronze skin glistening under the amber haze.
He looked entirely different—the lingering softness of childhood was being ruthlessly hammered away by the sheer density of the environment.
He was a statue of pure focus, his chest rising and falling in the rhythmic, ancient pattern his mother had beaten into him.
He was learning to refine prana through meditation.
Inside the pavilion, hidden behind the shimmering curtains of solid light, Ansh stood.
He wasn’t leaning on his dark wooden staff today.
He was standing tall, his cracked lips pulled back in a grin so wide it looked like an open, jagged wound across his face.
Without the mask of the gentle Dharma sage, he looked absolutely malicious, haggard, and unsightly.
His sightless, milky eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the distant silhouette of the boy.
A Grade 1 Yogi, Ansh hissed in the silence of his mind, a manic tremor running through his remaining hand.
Two weeks in the Gilded Horizon, and the brat has already achieved what takes mortal’s years of agonizing failure.
Of course…
it is all thanks to his dead mother’s unorthodox breathing technique.
He closed his eyes, his mind drifting greedily back to the violent breakthrough a week prior.
He vividly remembered the boy’s screams—not of broken bones, but of sheer, overwhelming power forcing its way through flesh.
Ansh had sat directly behind Vyan, his lone, gnarled hand pressed firmly against the boy’s spine, guiding the wild Prana that had been roaming Vyan’s blood like an untamed beast.
“Shatter the seven fires! Force them to bow to your will!”
Under Ansh’s expert, predatory guidance, Vyan had violently collapsed his seven chakra points.
The mini-spindles hadn’t just broken; they had violently fused, imploding inward to form the singular, roaring cosmic furnace of a proper Spindle.
It hadn’t been a gentle or safe process—it was simply efficient.
Brutal.
Ansh remembered the exact millisecond the Spindle stabilized.
He had felt a surge of energy erupt along Vyan’s spine so pure, so immensely dense, that it had nearly blinded his Yogi’s sense.
The woman who taught him to breathe…
she was an genius, Ansh thought, his grin twitching with dark awe.
With those specific breathing techniques, the boy naturally recovers point one percent of his massive Prana pool every one hour just by inhaling.
It is completely unheard of.
His body functions like a self-sustaining reservoir.
A dark, obsessive fire flickered and roared in Ansh’s rotting chest.
I must never let go of this child.
I will tether his very soul to mine.
I would betray the Dharma, the Asura path, even my own mother before I let this walking treasure walk away from me.
He remembered the lie he had fed Vyan immediately after the breakthrough, his voice dripping with false, tearful pride.
”You have a Celestial Spindle, Vyan,” he had whispered to the trembling, exhausted boy.
“A living sun held within a porcelain jar. But it is currently full of wild, unrefined Prana. You must learn to refine it—to polish the energy until it is as sharp as a ritual blade. Go to the waterfall. Meditate until the heat doesn’t just sit in your belly, but completely obeys your command. I must remain here to heal my own broken spirit-knots while you practice.”
That had been the perfect hook.
He hadn’t just been “helping” Vyan during that breakthrough.
While the boy was blinded by the white-hot agony of his mini-spindles fusing, Ansh had reached deep into the spiritual tear.
He had covertly siphoned ten percent of Vyan’s raw, celestial Prana, dragging it into his own scorched Spindle and rapidly refining it to patch his own broken channels.
It was the first time in ten agonizing years that Ansh hadn’t felt like a dying, withered root.
He had been living pathetically scrapping here and there.
I thought he would refine the rest of the pool quickly, Ansh mused, his liver-spotted fingers drumming a restless, hungry rhythm against his saffron robes.
But he is still going at it.
The sheer density of his vessel is too great for a novice.
Even if he refines all the Prana or learns its nature, he has absolutely no idea how to use it as a weapon.
Good.
Stay right there, little brat.
Keep stoking the fire for me.
Every single time I “help” you, I will squeeze more out of you.
I will keep doing it until I regain my strength.
A single Prana Knot a week from the Grotto Spirit doesn’t suffice for my hunger.
Outside, near the crashing waters, Vyan remained entirely motionless.
He felt the heavy, vital Prana of his new Spindle spinning like a top in his gut.
He had absolutely no idea that his “Humble Teacher” was a parasite latching onto his soul.
He only knew that for the first time since his mother’s death, he felt the strength to truly protect her memory.
He breathed in deeply, the ambient, amber spray of the waterfall coating his bronze skin, completely unaware of the devil grinning horribly in the shadows behind him.
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