Elara did not realize when the training stopped being about control and started becoming something else entirely. Because the shift did not come with a clear boundary but with a slow, suffocating pressure that built inside her chest, tightening with every movement, every failed attempt.
Every second she spent forcing her body to keep going long after it had begun to resist her, and by the time she understood what was happening. She was already too deep inside it to step back. Her breath uneven, her muscles trembling in a way that had nothing to do with weakness.
And everything to do with something unraveling beneath her skin, something that had been waiting for this exact moment, waiting for her to be stripped of everything she had been relying on so it could rise without interference, without restraint, without her permission.
