Martial Demons Ascension

In the space of a breath, everything blackened.

Not the black of night, not the dim of closed eyes this was a void His perception didn't dim, it plummeted, like his senses had been shoved off a cliff.

It was full sensory deprivation.

Horrible Suffocating A coffin without walls.

And in that darkness, the voice spoke closer than ever, pressing against the inside of his skull.

"See, child. For the first time… see the true boundary of the world."

The world stopped.

Not slowed Not paused.

Stopped.

The sky hung mid-glimmer. A drifting petal froze in mid-sway The scent of roses lingered in the air like perfume trapped in glass.

And then

Everything changed.

Rhyka's awareness detonated.

There was no rush of light, no tunnel, no sense of rising or falling.

There was only everything.

And he was inside it.

His mind split and multiplied, tripled, quintupled fracturing, reforming, and expanding all at once Perception unfolded in layers he had no language for Sight bled into sound Sound merged with touch Touch became comprehension.

He saw movement not as a blur, not as action, but as a sentence. Every twitch of a finger, every shift in balance, every flex of the spine was a word in a language he suddenly understood.

A punch didn't travel in a line anymore it spun through spiraling echoes, wrapped in invisible vectors of intent that curved through the bones of the earth itself.

He could see force.

He could see mass.

He saw the dance of momentum violent, elegant the way pressure coiled in a stance, the way center of gravity wasn't a theory but a flame burning just behind the ribs.

Then came color.

Not colors of sky or skin or fabric, but hues that represented truths.

A swirl of impossible shades, each one carrying meaning beyond words. One in particular caught him it shimmered with a clarity that pulsed in time with his own thoughts It wound itself through everything he perceived, neither above nor beneath the others, but interwoven.

It looked like him.

Not his body Not his face.

Him.

His thread. His essence A flicker of what he could be if given form.

Tears welled before he could stop them.

Not from sorrow.

Not even from awe.

But from the unbearable realization that this had always been there Always, just beyond reach.

And now it was his.

Then he saw it.

The Line.

A single golden filament running through everything Not just through space, but through the laws themselves. It pulsed. It sang. It cut through chaos with untouchable, perfect precision.

It was not magic.

It was not divine.

It was Martial Essence.

The tears broke free, streaking down his cheeks.

He bowed once.

Twice.

Three times.

Not from obligation Not just gratitude.

But deliverance.

For the first time in his life, he saw a path—

A path not given.

A path not meant for blessed children or divine heirs.

A path carved by force, by mastery, by will alone.

---

He raised his head, eyes still wet but burning now with purpose.

"…Thank you," he whispered.

The voice receded, but its final words lingered like heat in the bones:

"You see the path now… goodbye, child."

Rhyka woke to the sound of his own breathing.

Slow Steady Controlled

The ceiling above him was the same cracked timber he'd stared at a hundred mornings before. The light spilling in through the blinds was the same pale wash of dawn he'd woken to countless times. The cot beneath him still creaked if he shifted his weight wrong.

And yet…

It was different.

The world wasn't louder or brighter—it was clearer. Like the air had been rinsed clean. His head no longer felt clouded, even after the strange, suffocating void that had swallowed him the night before. There was no panic in his chest. No frantic urge to chase what he'd just seen.

Because he understood.

The "glance" was gone. A gift shown once and then taken back, its edges already beginning to blur in his memory. But the path it had revealed… that would never fade.

The vision had been a map without landmarks only direction It was up to him now to reach it, to carve his way toward that golden filament until he could touch it again. And he knew the price.

Work.

Not the kind that left your body sore but the one that would have you trying to understand everything comprehend everything

It would be agony.

And yet the thought didn't weigh on him. It steadied him.

For the first time in his life, he was not lost.

He pushed himself upright, the thin blanket sliding into his lap. His body still ached from the previous day's beating, but the pain no longer felt pointless. It was proof. A starting point.

He swung his legs off the cot and planted his feet on the cold floorboards. The chill seeped into his skin, grounding him.

Rhyka crossed the room without hurry. Each step was deliberate, his posture loose but balanced.

He poured himself a glass of water from the ceramic jug on his desk. The sound was soft just the quiet splash against the inside of the cup but it felt almost sharp in the stillness of the room He lifted it to his lips and drank slowly, letting each swallow settle before taking the next.

It wasn't thirst that drove him it was the simple act of doing.

When the glass was empty, he set it down and reached for the object on the far corner of the desk.

The Bible.

The same one the temple had given him when he was old enough to read. Its leather cover was worn, the gilding on its edges faded. The glyph of the Threads was embossed deep into the front, still visible despite the scuffs and fingerprints from years of handling.

He turned it over in his hands once.

It was heavier than it looked. Not in weight just in what it represented.

The prayers he'd whispered into its pages as a boy. The verses he'd memorized until they bled into his thoughts unbidden. The belief that if he was good enough, faithful enough, patient enough, she would notice him.

That belief had been his leash. His chain.

And now it was nothing.

Rhyka crouched beside the cot and reached under it, pulling out a small iron tray he used for burning scraps in the winter. It was blackened from past use, the edges warped slightly from heat.

He placed the Bible in the center of the tray.

For a moment, he just stared at it. The urge to hesitate came once then was gone.

He took the flint and steel from his desk drawer and struck it once, twice Sparks leapt On the third strike, the flame caught on the edge of a scrap of cloth he kept for kindling. He fed it to the corner of the Bible.

The fire licked the leather first, slow and uncertain Then it found the paper, and the pages curled almost instantly, turning black at the edges before collapsing into themselves.

The ink bled in the heat, words melting into shapes, prayers dissolving into smoke.

The smell was sharp charred paper and scorched leather mingling into something acrid It filled the room fast, stinging the back of his throat.

Rhyka didn't look away.

He watched until the pages were no longer pages, until the cover slumped in on itself and the gold embossing warped into twisted lines. Until the prayers were nothing but ash.

When it was done, he set the flint and steel aside and let the ashes cool He didn't stir them Didn't touch them.

They would stay there until the wind or his own hand carried them out.

He straightened, the heat of the tray fading at his back.

And in that moment, he knew there was no going back not to the temple's lessons, not to the empty prayers, not to the life of waiting for something that would never come.

His loyalty was burned with those pages.

Now, there was only the path.

And he would walk it.

No matter how far

No matter how long.