Chapter 44

  The days passed in streaks of heat, motion, and repetition.

  Ren’s mornings began before dawn. Leo insisted on it—not out of cruelty, but because that was when the tower’s ambient mana was at its lowest ebb. “If you can pull your Threads in starvation,” he’d said, “you’ll thrive in abundance.”

  So Ren cooked in near-darkness. Fingers trembling with the chill of predawn air, hair damp from the stone bath, a pan heating too slowly over magical stones. He cracked eggs with practiced indifference and tried, for the thirteenth time, to separate the yolk midair using Threads alone.

  It split apart slimily, yolk slumping wetly onto the stone floor.

  Ren sighed, wiped it up, and started again.

  By the fourth day, he could catch it. By the fifth, he could do it without thinking.

  Leo wasn’t gentle, but he wasn’t harsh either. He hovered at the edge of Ren’s awareness like a hawk with spectacles, muttering corrections mid-motion.

  “Don’t push the Threads Ren, let them loose. They’re not force—they’re your own intent.”

  Or:

  “If your mana is splashing like that, then something in your stance is wrong. Reroute it through the prosthetic’s stabilizer node and then spiral.”

  Or, worse:

  “That tasted like disappointment and burnt ambition. Try again.”

  And Ren did. Again and again.

  But it wasn’t just cooking anymore.

  He started picking up the bow and dagger to train once more, relearning from him time under Sinclair.

  Those early lessons hadn't vanished completely. They clung to the muscle memory of his body—half-erased but not gone. He remembered the pivot of the foot before a knife thrust, the way Sinclair had barked about "the line of intent" in every shot. He remembered the bruises too. Sinclair never pulled his strikes.

  Now, Ren drilled alone.

  He trained when Leo was off experimenting or sleeping—or ranting at walls while chasing spell permutations. He trained in the edge courts past midnight, sometimes when the frost still curled along the tile and his breath came out in clouds.

  The dagger was hardest. Not because of form, but because of balance. The prosthetic was too heavy. Too stiff. He tried to adjust with Threads, syncing the weight, compensating with leverage. But even then, his strikes were slow. Precise, but slow.

  The bow was worse. His draw was uneven, even the smooth movements of his prosthetic unable to keep up with his will. He had to hold the string with his real hand, then awkwardly aim with the metal one. He got used to the sting of the bowstring rebounding due to poor control yet he never gave up.

  Days passed. Then a week. He got a little better. Not much. But enough to hit a training dummy center-mass three times out of ten.

  No one said anything. No one watched.

  Until one morning.

  Ren didn’t hear Sinclair approach.

  He’d just loosed another arrow, which clipped the edge of the target before falling with a wooden clunk.

  “You’re holding the bow like it insulted your mother.”

  Ren spun. His heart stuttered.

  Sinclair was standing at the edge of the range, arms crossed, looking—irritated, mostly. Maybe tired. But there was something else behind his eyes. Not pity. Not surprise. Something quieter.

  “You’ve been doing this every night,” he said. “And still your form looks like it was taught by a drunk goat.”

  Ren straightened. He didn’t speak.

  Sinclair stepped forward, eyes flicking to the prosthetic. He grunted once, almost thoughtfully. Then he reached down, picked up a spare practice blade, and tossed it toward Ren without warning.

  Ren caught it awkwardly with the metal hand. Not fast. But he didn’t drop it.

  “That thing’s not your weakness,” Sinclair said flatly. “Stop treating it like one.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are,” he snapped. “Every time you flinch before striking. Every time you shift your weight too far back. You’re training like someone trying to recover what he lost.”

  Sinclair’s voice softened. Just slightly.

  “Start training like someone who means to survive anyway.”

  There was a pause. Ren said nothing. But his grip tightened.

  Sinclair reached out, adjusted Ren’s elbow, then turned his wrist with careful, practiced movements.

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  “Again,” he said.

  And for the next hour, Ren didn’t train alone.

  ____________

  By the time Sinclair dismissed him, the sky was soft with early dawn—clouds like smoke-stained gauze drifting over the horizon. Ren’s arms ached. His legs trembled. A fine sheen of sweat clung to the back of his neck despite the chill.

  He sat down on the edge of the practice court, metal fingers unclasping the dagger with a quiet clink. Across from him, Sinclair wiped down a blade with casual efficiency. He didn’t speak. Just nodded once, curtly, then walked off toward the tower without another word.

  Ren watched him go, shoulders rising and falling in slow rhythm. There was a strange comfort in the man’s silence. Not approval. Not praise. Just acknowledgment.

  He stayed there long after Sinclair left, the court slowly lighting with the day.

  And then, for no reason at all, Ren found himself thinking about traffic.

  Not the brutal, screeching kind from the backstreets of Osaka—but the slow, suffocating crawl of his life before. Michelin stars. Prestige. Paparazzi cameras that caught him mid-scowl outside tastings he hadn’t wanted to attend. A hundred interviews asking what his “culinary philosophy” was, as though ambition had a flavor profile.

  He used to be a three-star chef. He had been wealthy. Ren Saito—prodigy, perfectionist, restaurateur. One of the youngest in the world to ever do it.

  And he had been miserable.

  Chained to a rhythm of fourteen-hour days and velvet-curtained expectations. Every dish he plated was art, yes, but art that had to sell. Trends changed monthly. Investors wanted novelty. Magazines wanted personality. Staff wanted his name on their resumes and customers wanted experiences they could post online and forget.

  Somewhere in the middle of that whirlwind, Ren had stopped remembering why he’d started cooking in the first place.

  And then one day, the world ended.

  Or rather, his world ended.

  He rubbed his face, now rough with sweat and grime.

  The training fields were starting to empty out, and the sun began to dip below the horizon.

  It had been… what, a year and two months? Maybe three? It had gone by quickly, yet it felt like ages.

  He thought of Farin, how he had helped him through everything, even when he knew he was an outsider.

  He thought of the Sleazy Snake—its cozy, cluttered stall. After he disappeared, the regulars had even scraped together money to look for him.

  Of the Order, the promise of a family which he could rely on in this new world.

  Of the wolves, the cave, and of course his arm.

  Of Ethan.

  Ren’s throat tightened. He didn’t move.

  So much had gone wrong. So much had hurt.

  And still—

  He was happy.

  Not always. Not even often, maybe. But deeper than the fleeting highs of critical acclaim or the clean lines of a perfect soufflé—this life meant something.

  People had nearly died. People had died. He’d lost an arm. Nearly lost himself.

  But somehow, despite it all…

  He was freer here.

  No velvet prison. No awards. Just heat, and hunger, and the chance to make something that mattered.

  Ren stood up slowly, his body sore but balanced. He tucked the practice blade back into the rack and looked out toward the path that curved toward the gardens. Somewhere behind him, Leo would be waking up soon, eyes wild with half-solved equations and theories about Aether. The kitchens would be empty still—mana stones cold, shelves half-stocked.

  And he’d be there. Cooking. Training. Learning.

  Living.

  He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulder, then started walking back toward the tower. Behind him, the practice court lay quiet, lit gold by the rising sun.

  Ahead of him, the day waited.

  And he was ready.

  _______

  The stone beneath his feet was still cool with morning dew as Ren made his way across the courtyard. His muscles ached in that satisfyingly heavy way—like a dish well-balanced with spice and weight. Tired, but not overcooked. Pushed to the edge, but not broken.

  He had purposefully made sure to not check his status these past few weeks and now it was time to check the benefits of his training.

  [You have reached Level 18!]

  [Stat Growth Applied: +2 Intelligence, +2 Perception, +1 Dexterity, +2 Free Stat Points]

  [You have reached Level 19!]

  [Stat Growth Applied: +2 Intelligence, +2 Perception, +1 Dexterity, +2 Free Stat Points]

  Status :

  Class: Arcane Sommelier

  Level: 19

  Stats:

  ? Strength: 11

  ? Dexterity: 23

  ? Constitution: 13

  ? Perception: 32

  ? Intelligence: 28

  ? Charisma: 9

  ? Free Stat Points: 5

  Skills:

  ? Culinary Knowledge

  ? Flavor Sense II

  ? Mana Pulse

  ? Flavor Control

  ? Mana Threading

  He blinked at the numbers for a moment.

  Level 19.

  Huh.

  The last time he’d checked, he’d been 17. Apparently, Sinclair’s mad training schedule—and all the intense cooking he’d been doing—had paid off after all.

  He also just realized he had 5 unspent Free Points, counting the one he’d been saving from earlier.

  He rubbed his thumb along his knuckles, absently flexing the fingers of his mechanical arm. The arm was somehow adapting to the changes brought on by the new stats—to both his body and his Mana.

  Ren considered his Free Stats. He could distribute them now—lean into more Dexterity for control, or Intelligence for better precision with his Threads and general Mana manipulation. Perception could help too, both with cooking and the increasingly demanding archery training.

  But something Leo had said stuck with him:

  “Stats are tools, not solutions. You don’t heat the forge mid-smelting. You adapt, you study—and when the forge is calm again, you adjust.”

  Wise advice from someone who often forgot to sleep or blink during lectures.

  So, he saved his points for a rainy day.