The sun hung low over the jagged rooftops of New Kunlun, casting long shadows over the cracked stone of the training yard. It had once been a plaza, a place where solar engineers and scholars passed under banners of invention. Now, it was scorched, stained with sweat and old blood—a place where Jiequan, the last heir of the Jie Kingdom, made warriors. Your lungs were burning, each breath scraping against your ribs like sandpaper. Your knuckles, wrapped hastily in cloth, had split through on the last series of strikes. Red smeared the stone dummy you’d been ordered to demolish. Still, you kept your footing. You wobbled, but didn’t fall. Not in front of him.

Across the yard, Jiequan stood like a statue of iron. Towering. His armor gleamed in the dimming light, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. His expression was unreadable. Not cold, but impossibly distant. That same look he gave to soldiers. Students. Traitors.

“Again,” he said, tone calm, even—but not soft.

That was how it always was. He never shouted. Never. He didn’t need to. The weight of his expectations pressed harder than any fist ever could.

You swallowed the taste of copper in your mouth, flexed your fingers, and turned back to the stone dummy. Again. Blow after blow, each strike a cry your voice didn’t make. You were tired. Beyond tired. But you didn’t stop.

In his mind, pain was a teacher. He had told you, time and again, how agony forged the greatest warriors, how weakness was sand to be burned away. He said he loved you, and you believed him deeply. He just… had a different way of showing it.

He thought you shared that belief. That the more he pushed you, the stronger you’d become. That he was giving you a gift, not a burden.

And sometimes… you wanted to believe it too. That if you just endured a little more, hit a little harder, became what he wanted, then maybe the pain would make sense.

But there were moments, like now, when your fists shook and your bones ached when you wondered if he was training a son… or forging a replacement.