The training ground was a frozen river.
Once, water had flowed here—Sejin could see the shapes of it, the carved banks, the smoothed stones. Now it was a scar of black ice, wide and flat, perfect for killing practice.
Sora had chosen it. She stood at one end, sword drawn, her Ventus aura stirring the frost around her boots.
"Again," she said.
Sejin raised his right hand. A shadow blade formed—flickering, unstable, thinner than it should be. His left arm hung at his side, the crystal claw scraping the ice.
He attacked.
Sora sidestepped. Her sword whipped toward his ribs. He blocked with the claw—not the blade, the claw—and the impact sent shockwaves up his shoulder. The crystal held. His bones creaked.
"Faster," she said.
He tried.
The shadow blade lunged. Sora parried, spun, kicked his legs out from under him. He hit the ice hard, his breath exploding from his lungs. The claw cracked against the frozen surface, sending purple sparks into the grey air.
"Slower than yesterday," Sora observed.
Sejin pushed himself up. His right arm shook. His left arm—the claw—had left a gouge in the ice.
"I know."
"Then why aren't you improving?"
He didn't have an answer.
---
"She's right," The Other said as Sejin limped back to the edge of the river. "You're slower. Your Source is thinner."
"I'm tired."
"You've been tired for seven years. That's not the problem."
Sejin sat on a boulder. The camp was visible in the distance—tents, fires, the thin smoke of cooking fires. People moved between the spires, small as ants.
"What's the problem?"
"You're fighting like you still have two human hands. You don't. Your left arm is no longer a limb. It's a weapon. A tool. A door. Stop trying to use it as a shield."
Sejin looked at the claw. The black crystal caught the dim light, refracting it into purple fragments.
"How do I use it as a door?"
"You open it."
"I don't know how."
"Then learn."
---
Sora approached. She sheathed her sword and sat on the boulder beside him—close enough to talk, far enough to retreat. Her face was flushed from the exercise, but her eyes were calm.
"You're thinking too much," she said.
"I'm always thinking."
"That's the problem. Fighting isn't thinking. It's reacting." She pulled a knife from her belt, flipped it, caught it. "When I was young, my mother used to tie my hands behind my back and make me fight with my feet. I hated it. But it taught me that my body knew what to do. My brain just got in the way."
Sejin watched the knife spin. "Your mother sounds like she was cruel."
"She was practical. There's a difference."
Sora stood. She walked onto the ice, turned to face him, and spread her arms.
"Again. But this time, don't use your right hand. Only the claw."
Sejin stood. His right hand dropped to his side. His left arm—heavy, awkward, pulsing with purple light—rose.
"I don't know how to fight with this."
"Then you'll learn."
She attacked.
---
The first exchange was humiliation.
Sora's blade slipped past his claw like water through fingers, cutting his shoulder, his thigh, his ribs. Not deep—she was pulling her strikes—but enough to sting. Enough to bleed.
Sejin swung the claw like a club. Too slow. Too predictable. Sora ducked, rolled, came up behind him.
"You're swinging. Don't swing. Reach."
"Reach for what?"
"The shadows. The ice. The cracks."
Sejin didn't understand. But he tried anyway.
He stopped thinking about the claw as a weapon. He stopped thinking about blocking, parrying, striking. He just... reached.
The claw pulsed.
The ice beneath Sora's feet cracked. Not from weight—from something else. Something underneath. A shadow that wasn't his. A cold that wasn't the frost.
Sora stumbled. Sejin's claw caught her sword arm—not cutting, just... holding. The crystal touched her skin.
And for a moment, he felt her.
Not her thoughts. Not her memories. Her Source. Her Vein. The shape of her, the texture of her, the small cracks where she had been hurt and healed imperfectly.
He let go.
Sora stepped back, breathing hard. She looked at her arm. There was no wound. No mark. But her eyes were wide.
"What was that?" she whispered.
Sejin looked at his claw. The purple light was brighter now, pulsing faster.
"I don't know."
"You touched her Vein," The Other said. "The claw isn't just a weapon. It's a key. You can open other people's Source. Feel their wounds. Their weaknesses."
"How?"
"You just did. Now learn to do it on purpose."
---
They trained until the light failed.
Not the sun—there was no sun here, only the bruise-colored glow of the sky. But the glow dimmed, faded, became the purple-black of deep twilight. The camp fires flickered to life. The soldiers gathered around them, eating, talking, pretending tomorrow might be better.
Sejin sat apart. His body ached. His right hand was raw from gripping the shadow blade. His left arm—the claw—was warm, almost hot, and it hummed with a frequency he could feel in his teeth.
Sora brought him food. Bread. Dried meat. A cup of water that tasted like iron.
"You're improving," she said.
"I'm surviving."
"Same thing, different words."
Sejin took the bread. He didn't eat. He held it, felt its weight, its texture.
"The claw," he said. "It showed me something. When I touched you. Cracks. In your Source. Where you've been hurt."
Sora's expression didn't change. But her hand moved to her side, where her ribs had been broken in a fight three years ago.
"I was stabbed," she said. "A Shade. The wound healed, but the Source didn't. It's... knotted. Like a scar."
Sejin looked at his claw. "I could feel it. The knot. I think... I think I could untie it."
Sora's eyes widened. "What?"
"I don't know how. But the claw knew. It wanted to pull. To unravel."
"Don't," The Other said sharply. "Not yet. You don't understand what you're doing. Unraveling a Source knot could heal her—or kill her. You're not ready."
Sejin lowered his hand.
"Maybe someday," he said. "Not today."
Sora nodded slowly. She didn't ask what he meant. She didn't need to.
---
The night was cold.
Not the cold of winter—the cold of absence. The Ura King's dreams were leaking upward, freezing the world not with ice but with stillness. The camp fires crackled, but the heat didn't spread. The soldiers huddled close, but their breath still crystallized in the air.
Sejin lay in his tent, staring at the canvas ceiling. His claw rested on his chest, rising and falling with his breath. The purple light pulsed in the darkness.
"You're thinking about the King again," The Other said.
"I'm thinking about what you said. That the claw is a door."
"It is."
"Then what's on the other side?"
The Other was silent for a long moment.
Then, quietly:
"Me. Not the part of me that talks to you. The part of me that existed before the Origin Weavers. Before the world had shape. Before there was light to cast shadows."
Sejin's heart slowed. "You're saying you're not whole."
"I'm saying I'm fractured. The seal your mother placed didn't just trap me inside you. It broke me. The voice you hear—the one that mocks you, warns you, watches you—is only a fragment. The rest of me is... elsewhere."
"Where?"
"In the cracks. In the spaces between Source and Void. In the dreams of the Ura King, who was my enemy before your ancestors learned to walk."
Sejin closed his eyes.
The claw pulsed. The tent walls seemed to press closer.
"If I open the door," he said, "will you become whole again?"
"Yes."
"And what happens to me?"
The Other didn't answer.
---
Sejin didn't sleep.
He lay in the darkness, feeling the claw's warmth, listening to the distant hum of the King's heartbeat. Somewhere in the camp, a child cried out—a nightmare, quickly soothed. Somewhere beyond the ice, the Deep Uras swam in circles, waiting for something they couldn't name.
He thought about Sora's Source knots. About the cracks in her Vein. About the way the claw had wanted to pull, to unravel, to fix.
He thought about his mother. About the moment she turned to dust. About the seal she had placed—not to trap The Other, but to protect Sejin from the rest of him.
"You're afraid," The Other said.
"Yes."
"Of becoming a monster."
"No. Of becoming nothing."
The Other was silent.
Sejin sat up. He looked at his claw in the darkness—the black crystal, the purple veins, the faint glow that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his bones.
"I'm going back," he said. "To the Expanse. To the King."
"You're not ready."
"Then I'll get ready."
"How?"
Sejin stood. He walked to the tent flap, pushed it open, and stepped into the cold.
"I'll start by learning to open the door."