Chapter 6

Rex woke slowly, his consciousness returning in pieces. First came the ache—deep in his bones where the broken arm was still knitting itself back together. Then the taste of copper in his mouth, dried blood from when he'd bitten his tongue during the collapse. Finally, the awareness of cold floor beneath him and something being pressed to his lips.

"Drink." Riasha's voice, uncharacteristically gentle. "Slowly."

The water was lukewarm but might as well have been ambrosia. Rex managed a few sips before his stomach clenched in warning. He'd pushed too hard, too fast. His body was still catching up.

"How long?" His voice came out as a croak.

"Three hours. Your body needed time to process what happened." She helped him sit up against the wall, movements careful. "The healing is working, but even pact-enhanced bodies have limits."

Rex flexed his previously broken arm experimentally. It moved, though stiff and sore like a weeks-old injury rather than hours-old. The other wounds from the gorilla beast had closed to pink lines. He took another sip of water, steadier this time.

"You did well," Riasha said, settling back on her heels. "Surviving an encounter with something of foundation strength as a mortal is... unusual. Most would be dead."

"Didn't feel like doing well. Felt like running for my life."

"Sometimes they're the same thing." She produced something from her belt—the polished stone shard she'd placed in his hand before he'd passed out. "Are you ready for this? Your body is stable enough, but if you need more time—"

"No." Rex pushed himself more upright. The room spun briefly, then settled. "Whatever's in that thing, I need to see it. I need to get stronger."

She placed the crystal in his palm. It was warm, almost alive feeling. "When you're ready, focus on it. Let it pull you in."

Rex closed his eyes, feeling the crystal's warmth spread up his arm. The sensation grew stronger, pulling at something behind his eyes. He didn't fight it. His consciousness loosened, drifted, and then—

His vision swirled and refocused. The room around him dissolved, replaced by narrow alley walls slick with condensation. He was watching from above—no, not watching. Moving. The perspective shifted and swooped like a drone weaving through the scene, giving him glimpses from impossible angles.

Five men had cornered someone against a dead-end wall. The victim's features came into focus: small horns jutting from his temples, a bovine snout that flared with each heavy breath. A minotaur, young from the look of him, maybe early twenties. His clothes were a contradiction—ratty leather pants and scuffed boots paired with an immaculate satin waist wrap that gleamed even in the alley's dim light. No weapons visible, but his hands were wrapped in stained cloth, and red energy billowed off him in waves.

Rex studied the energy. Similar to his own rage, but not quite. This had a different texture to it, more focused, like anger that had been sharpened into a tool rather than let loose as a storm.

The five aggressors weren't human either. Their skin had the gray, mottled texture of granite, no hair anywhere on their bodies. Stone men. The city around them pulsed with neon and chrome—a cyberpunk sprawl of towering screens and buzzing power lines—but these stone men carried medieval weapons. Two with curved daggers, one hefting a massive two-handed sword, another with an axe, and their apparent leader bearing a sword and shield combo that looked ancient despite the polished sheen.

Their clothes matched the city better than their weapons did. Sleek streetwear in blacks and silvers, each piece marked with the same glowing insignia—a spiral that pulsed with its own inner light. Gang colors, Rex realized. Territory markers.

"You owe us, boy." The leader's voice scraped like rocks grinding together. "Pay up."

The minotaur's stance shifted slightly, weight moving to the balls of his feet. "My father always told me never owe anyone anything." His voice was younger than Rex expected, with a slight tremor underneath the bravado. "And I owe you nothing."

"Oh, you owe us." The leader took a step forward, shield raised casually. "You owe us for not killing you the second you disrespected us in our own territory. But I'm feeling generous. I'll make you a deal—hand over that girl you brought with you and we can call it good."

Rex watched the change happen. The red energy swirling around the minotaur suddenly condensed, pulling tight against his skin like armor. Then something else—a yellowish energy Rex hadn't noticed before—began flowing down his arms. It solidified around his wrapped hands, forming what looked like translucent boxing gloves that crackled with barely contained power.

"Never." The word came out as half-growl, half-promise. The minotaur's stance dropped lower, muscles coiling.

The leader laughed, a sound like gravel in a tumbler. "Really? You're a child carrying the flesh curse. What could you hope to do to us? We're stone, boy. You're meat."

"Watch closely."

The minotaur exploded forward. No warning, no tell—just sudden, violent motion. He leaped at the leader, both fists coming down in a hammer blow. The stone man got his shield up just in time, but the impact drove him to his knees, cracks spider-webbing across the metal. Before the others could react, the minotaur had already pivoted, slamming into the nearest dagger-wielder. His fist connected with the stone man's head, and Rex heard the crack—like a sledgehammer hitting concrete. Chunks of stone face scattered across the alley floor.

The damaged stone man staggered, gray dust leaking from the wounds like blood. Dazed but still standing. The minotaur frowned—he'd expected more damage. That moment of hesitation cost him. A dagger slipped past his guard, opening a gash along his ribs. He grunted, more annoyed than hurt, and shoved the attacker away.

Back against the wall now, cornered again. The minotaur snorted, nostrils flaring wide, and Rex saw him studying the damaged stone man with new focus. Something shifted in his eyes—understanding dawning. The yellow energy around his hands grew brighter, denser. It concentrated over his knuckles first, then spread back across his hands, reshaping itself. No longer gloves but gauntlets, with raised studs across the knuckles that looked designed to shatter rather than simply strike.

"We'll give you one more chance." The leader had regained his feet, though his shield arm hung at an odd angle. "Jonky will be fine—that little smack won't leave a scar. But that girl you came here with? She could make us a fortune. There's nothing like her around these parts. Maybe we can even work out a royalty deal on her services. Split the profits."

The change was instantaneous. A new energy burst from the minotaur's body—not the red rage or the yellow destruction, but something else entirely. The air in the alley grew thick, oppressive. Rex felt it even through the vision, a primal fear that made him want to run. The stone men flinched back as one, their confident postures crumbling. They couldn't see the energy like Rex could, but they felt it. Oh, they felt it.

The minotaur moved again, but this time Rex could track him. He charged the leader, aiming not for the man but for his shield. When his gauntleted fist made contact, the yellow energy didn't just strike—it cascaded over the shield's surface like water, seeping into every microscopic crack and flaw. The shield shattered. The arm holding it shattered. The leader went down screaming, clutching the pulverized remains of his limb.

The scream cut off when the minotaur's next strike took his head.

The remaining stone men rushed in together, trying to use their numbers. But now the yellow energy was everywhere, spreading from the minotaur's fists with each impact. It invaded their stone bodies, found the weak points, the stress fractures, the places where their solid forms were vulnerable. They crumbled from the inside out, that strange yellow energy eating through them like acid through chalk.

In seconds, it was over. Four more bodies on the alley floor, leaking gray dust that mixed with the puddles to form a thick sludge.

The vision ended, and Rex found himself back in his parents' living room, heart racing. His hands were shaking—not from fear, but from something else. Excitement? Anticipation? The memory of that power, that controlled destruction, sang in his blood.

"Cillian was a good friend of mine." Riasha's voice came from the darkness in the corner where she'd been sitting so still Rex had almost forgotten she was there. "His youth was tough, but it made him strong. That's the same opportunity you have now. I gave you this vision to inspire you."

Rex wiped sweat from his forehead, still processing what he'd seen. "What did he do to those guys? That yellow energy—it didn't just hit them. It destroyed them from the inside."

"Killed them," Riasha said simply.

"But that burst of energy at the end. That didn't seem like a power, not like the energy that wrapped his hands."

Riasha sighed and stood, her four arms unfolding as she moved into the dim light filtering through the boarded windows. "It's not. It's a side effect of his life, and probably of yours now too. When you kill, you are marked. This marking grows as you kill more. You can eventually flex these accumulated marks to show prowess. It's called killing intent."

She began to pace, her movements liquid and predatory. "It shows you have the power and ability to kill. It shows your opponents that you are the predator, not the prey. Showing this can have an effect on people, as you saw. It caused those men to pause, and that pause led to their deaths." She stopped, fixing Rex with her covered gaze. "What else did you see?"

"The way he used his inner energy. It was like he could direct it, shape it."

"Dao."

"What?"

"It's called dao. Really it's called many things in many places, but dao is the most common term."

Rex frowned. "We have the dao here, but not like that. There's an entire religion oriented around it. Taoism."

Riasha gave him that look of disbelief that was becoming familiar, even through her blindfold. "If that's the case, how are you all so weak?" She pressed two of her hands to her temples, thinking furiously. "This makes no sense."

"It's obscure," Rex offered. "Only in certain regions. Most people have never heard of it."

Her mouth fell open. "Who did this to you all?" She began pacing again, faster now, agitated. "These half-truths have poisoned your entire species. Crippled you."

Rex felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. "Wait. You're saying someone did this deliberately? Someone kept us weak on purpose?"

Riasha stopped pacing, seeming to realize she'd said too much. "I... that's not something I can fully explain yet. Just know that your world's isolation wasn't entirely natural." She waved two of her hands dismissively, clearly uncomfortable. "Focus on what's in front of you for now."

But Rex couldn't let it go entirely. The implications were staggering. Everything humanity thought it knew, every limitation they'd accepted as natural—all of it might have been imposed. He filed the thought away, another piece of a puzzle he was only beginning to see.

She pulled the spear from her back in one smooth motion, and the air in the room changed. Runes began cycling along the weapon's length, glowing with that same golden light Rex had seen during their pact. "The dao encompasses everything. It is how beasts and men become gods."

The pressure in the room increased. Rex's skin prickled, sweat beading on his forehead. "Can you feel it in this?"

"Yes." Rex struggled to get the word out. His lungs felt compressed, his bones aching.

"How does it feel?"

Rex closed his eyes, trying to put words to the sensation. "Sharp. Righteous. Like I'm being executed, but it's justified. Like the universe itself is passing judgment."

Visions flashed behind his eyelids—not his memories, but something older, deeper. A man hanging upside down, pierced by a spear. A figure on a cross, a soldier's spear finding his side. Stories made real, myths given flesh and weight. The energy in the room grew denser still. Abstract patterns appeared in Rex's vision—scales of justice, charging horsemen, the weight of law itself made manifest.

Then, with a sound like breaking glass, it all vanished.

"Sorry," Riasha whispered, and Rex heard genuine regret in her voice. She looked around as if remembering where they were, then locked eyes with Rex. "That was my path. As you accumulate dao, you form an intricate lattice that is commonly called a path. What you saw in Cillian's vision was the genesis of his path. Did you get a sense of what he was using?"

"No, but it made him punch much harder. Made his strikes do more than just impact."

"Good observation. Now, normally you can't see energies like that unless they're of a certain density, but these types of visions are for the benefit of the viewer. They're usually crafted by the person whose memory you're experiencing, made easier to digest. And no, it didn't make him punch harder exactly. It made his punches more destructive. There's a difference." She gestured to the floor. "Now sit."

Rex was already seated, had been since the vision ended. Riasha seemed to notice this a beat late, her attention still partially elsewhere.

"You have received both a blessing and a curse," she continued, refocusing. "Your anger is a dao foundation you've been infected with when these invaders forced themselves through. This can happen sometimes to mortals. The fact that it's an emotional dao is unfortunate—they're harder to control, more likely to control you instead. But if you can wrangle it under your control, it can become incredibly powerful."

She settled into a cross-legged position across from him. "First, let's deal with the vision properly. Close your eyes and breathe steadily. Not fast, not slow. Bring the vision back into your mind. Don't force it, let it surface. Analyze it. Find something that resonates with you and focus on that and only that."

"That's it?" Rex couldn't help the skeptical laugh that escaped.

Riasha smiled, and for once it wasn't sinister or mocking. "Yep. Just that. Good luck."

Rex shifted until he found a comfortable position, closed his eyes, and began to breathe. For the first hour, nothing happened. His mind wandered to his parents, to the puppets outside, to the strange reality his life had become. Every time he tried to grasp the vision, it slipped away like smoke.

Rex forced his shoulders to relax, deliberately slowed his breathing. In for four counts, hold for four, out for four. The rhythm became hypnotic.

This went on for eight hours. Eight hours of Riasha's occasional corrections, of Rex fighting his own impatience, of the vision dancing just out of reach. His legs had gone numb. His back ached. The light outside had shifted from mid-morning to late afternoon, casting long shadows through the boarded windows. His stomach cramped with hunger—when had he last eaten? The dry cereal from yesterday morning seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Are you sure this is how it's supposed to work?" Riasha muttered at one point, more to herself than to Rex. "Cillian picked it up in two hours. But then again, he'd been fighting since he could walk..." She trailed off, then spoke louder. "Keep going. Every path is different."

Finally, the memory clicked into place. Clear and sharp, like he was living it rather than remembering it.

He studied every detail now. The way Cillian moved, the flow of that yellow energy, the precise moment it shifted from enhancement to destruction. The energy wasn't wild or chaotic—it had purpose, intelligence almost. It knew exactly where to strike, how to unravel the stone men's forms from within.

Another two hours passed. Sweat soaked through Rex's shirt. His head pounded with the effort of maintaining focus. But he couldn't let go now. Something was pulling him deeper, past the surface of the vision into its essence.

And then it clicked.

The energy around Cillian's hands wasn't just destructive—it was tactical destruction. Controlled. He could direct it, shape it, choose how it distributed across his target. If Rex had to put a name to it, he would call it Demolishing. The ability to unmake with precision.

The moment he named it, something flared to life in Rex's body. A hot tingling sensation cascaded from his chest to his extremities, and he felt something new take root in his gut. Like his anger node but separate, distinct. This new demolition node sat quiet until he engaged with it, responding to his mental touch without the emotional flood that came with anger.

He tried to push the energy into his body the way Cillian had, but it wouldn't respond. It slipped away from his muscles, refused to bond with his bones. Frowning, Rex grabbed his weapons. The moment the bone clubs touched his palms, the demolition energy surged toward them, eager and hungry. The weapons swallowed it greedily, their red glow taking on yellowish undertones.

"It takes practice," Riasha said, that sinister smile returning to her face. "But at least you can use it now. Let's go try it out."

She moved toward the door, and Rex felt his own smile matching hers. Whatever came next, he was ready for it.