Hal spent the rest of that day shaken, but not defeated. If anything, it was a wake-up call. The world wasn't going to wait for him to figure out his power. So he had to figure it out—now.
The academy gave him a reprieve from the usual classes, sending him to the isolated training zone near the northern cliffs, known as the Hollow Spire. It was a place reserved for concept awakeners like him—those with promising power but little control, where breakthroughs could be made or egos shattered. Hal wasn't alone here; others with dangerous, untamed gifts were sent too, but his training was to be solo, guided only by his ever-present manifestation, Haste.
The Spire was imposing: an ancient stone arena carved into the cliffs, surrounded by endless sky and jagged rocks. The wind whipped around him like a constant challenge, as if daring him to become faster, stronger, better.
Hal stood at the entrance, heart pounding. He called out, "Alright, Haste. You there?"
With a shimmer of light, Haste appeared beside him—now able to manifest directly into the real world, casually chewing a protein bar, wearing his signature jogger jacket.
"Ready for boot camp?" Haste grinned.
Hal nodded, gripping his fists tightly. "You're part of me, right? No more guessing. Teach me what I can really do."
Haste snorted. "Now you're talkin'. Let's start with the basics. Don't worry, I'll only beat the crap out of you mentally."
Month One: Physical Calibration
Hal's first week at the Hollow Spire was not a test. It was a dismantling.
The Spire was perched above the clouds, where the wind howled without end and the air thinned until each breath felt like an argument with death. It was a place shaped not for comfort but for confrontation—an arena carved into mountain stone where the sky looked down like a judge and the ground never forgave mistakes.
Raw potential meant nothing here.
On the first morning, Hal stood at the arena's edge, the wind tearing through his clothes, the cold biting into his skin. He was alone—except for the ever-present smirk of his trainer, tormentor, and unwanted mentor: Haste.
Manifested from Hal's Authority, Haste looked like a jogger from a dream gone wrong—running shorts, windbreaker, perpetually moving feet, and a grin that knew too much.
"Let's start with the classics," Haste said, tossing a heavy, charcoal-colored vest at Hal's chest. "Run until you puke. Then run some more."
Hal caught it with a grunt. "You serious?"
"Deadly," Haste replied, already jogging backward with the energy of someone who didn't understand pain. "Or you can go home. Find a nice safe bed. Maybe a warm bottle."
Hal pulled the vest on. The moment it latched, his body lurched forward.
The weight shifted as he moved—heavier when he sprinted, lighter when he slowed. It was like it knew how to punish him most efficiently. Every footfall was uncertain. Every corner turned promised new pain.
"This is insane!" Hal shouted between gasps.
"Insanity builds endurance," Haste replied. "You think the Calamity's gonna slow down when your knees hurt?"
Hal didn't respond. He bit down, forced his legs to move. The terrain was jagged and unkind—stones like razors, slopes that dared you to misstep. His thighs burned. His calves begged for mercy. His lungs clawed for oxygen that didn't exist.
He didn't stop.
He couldn't.
By the third day, Hal's body was a landscape of bruises, scrapes, and trembling muscle. His knees wobbled. His hands stung from countless falls. And every time he thought he could rest, Haste yanked him into the mindscape—a surreal version of the Spire, built from memory and imagination. Time slowed there, but the pain was always real.
In that dream realm, Hal fought. Or tried to.
Haste never held back.
The fights were one-sided. Haste moved like thought—impossible angles, teleporting flickers of motion, strikes that Hal didn't see until they already landed. The ground shifted beneath them, dream-soil and shifting stone responding to Hal's doubt. And in that space, Haste was ruthless.
"You keep fighting like you're afraid to hurt someone," Haste barked one day, pinning Hal to the cracked floor of the dream-arena. His foot was on Hal's chest, pressing just hard enough to remind him he was losing. Again. "What are you afraid of? Losing control? Or finding out you give a damn about people?"
Hal growled, his fingers trembling in the dirt. "Shut up."
Haste leaned down, grinning. "Hit a nerve, huh? I'm just you, remember? Me, without the shame or self-pity."
Hal roared and shoved him off, adrenaline surging. But the hit didn't land. Haste vanished into smoke, only to reappear five feet away, arms crossed.
"Learn faster," he said.
After each session, Hal crawled back into the waking world with more bruises and more clarity.
His problem wasn't just physical. His body would catch up. It was his mind that needed breaking—and rebuilding.
Every time he hesitated before a punch, every time he flinched when an opponent charged—it wasn't fear of pain. It was the memory of his past. Of caring too much. Of being punished for it.
That fear had a face. A name. A voice.
His father.
The man who sold him at thirteen for a pouch of powdered escape. The man whose betrayal carved a wound into Hal's soul that never stopped bleeding.
That wound whispered: Don't trust. Don't care. Don't love. Survive.
But something about the Spire's silence—the way it let you hear yourself think—made it harder to lie to yourself.
One night, Hal collapsed near the Spire's jagged edge. The wind raked across his battered form, and above, the stars shimmered like distant promises. He lay there, every inch of him pulsing, the cold seeping into his bones.
"I don't wanna just survive," he whispered to no one. "I want to live. Without being scared all the time."
Surprisingly, Haste didn't smirk this time. He sat down beside Hal, quiet. Almost reverent.
"Then run toward that," he said. "Not away from it."
By the end of the second week, two familiar silhouettes appeared at the cliff's edge.
Astrid and Haiden.
Astrid tossed something down—a bundle wrapped in linen. Food, still warm.
"Yo, loser," she called, hand on hip. "Eat before you drop dead. You look like death with abs."
Hal cracked a weak smile. "You miss me?"
"Like a rash," she replied. "Persistent. Slightly contagious."
That day, they sparred with him.
Astrid fought like a blade unsheathed. Her movements were wild but deliberate—each strike aimed to teach, not destroy. Her fists stung, her kicks landed hard, but there was a kind of respect behind her aggression. Like she wanted Hal to get better.
Haiden was different. Quieter. More tactical. He moved with stillness—waiting, watching, punishing every mistake with sudden bursts of precision. His eyes never left Hal, and when Hal overextended, Haiden punished him not with force, but with lesson.
They trained until dusk.
Then sat, shoulder to shoulder, drenched in sweat and silence.
Astrid punched Hal lightly on the shoulder. "You're getting better. Still slow, though."
Hal rolled his eyes. "Nice to see you too."
Haiden passed him a water bottle. No words. Just the gesture.
And that said everything.
Later that week, someone else came.
Hal sat near the cliff again, arms resting on his knees, body still aching. The breeze brought no comfort, only questions.
He heard the steps before he saw her.
Cali.
She approached carefully, standing just at the edge of his awareness, hesitant like someone unsure of her place.
"Hey," she said.
Hal turned, guarded. "You come to fight too?"
"No." She sat beside him. "To talk."
The silence stretched, a fragile thing between them.
"I…" She hesitated. "I'm sorry. About before. About how I treated you. I needed to win. And I thought beating you would… prove something."
Hal tilted his head. "Prove what?"
"That I mattered. That I wasn't weak. That I deserved to be here."
She didn't look at him as she spoke.
"I thought I was strong," she continued. "But hurting you—winning—just made me feel more insecure. I was scared of going back to who I was before this. Hungry. Powerless. A nobody."
Hal's breath caught.
She glanced at him, hesitating. "You're from the slums, right?"
He nodded slowly.
"So am I," she said. "Adopted. Buried the past. Changed my name. I never wanted anyone to know. But watching you fight… hearing where you're from… it brought her back. The girl I used to be."
Hal didn't say anything. His chest ached—not from bruises, but from resonance.
"You reminded me of her," Cali said softly. "Of someone who survived. And I hated that. Because I thought I had to kill that part of me to move forward."
They sat like that, side by side. Two broken pasts shaped into present scars.
Then Cali leaned just a little closer.
"I want to be better," she said. "Maybe we can help each other."
Hal didn't speak.
But he didn't move away either...
Month Two: Velocity Manipulation
With the brutal foundation of physical conditioning behind him, Hal entered the next phase of his training: velocity manipulation.
If the first month was about surviving his own body, this one was about bending the laws that governed it. This was no longer a matter of moving fast. It was about control. About making speed obey.
Haste stood above him on a rocky ledge one morning, arms crossed, for once not smiling. The usual glint of playfulness in his eye was gone, replaced by something quieter. Sharper.
"Alright, kid," he said. "Time to mess with the world."
Hal, standing below and already drenched in sweat, raised an eyebrow. "Sounds ominous."
"Good. It should."
Without further warning, Haste pulled a smooth river stone from his jacket and held it out over the edge.
"Catch this."
He dropped it.
Hal's body responded before his mind did. He reached out automatically, eyes following the falling motion.
The stone zipped past his fingertips.
"Sloppy," Haste said. "You're still thinking with meat and muscle. Try again. But this time, slow it down first."
Hal blinked. "You want me to use speed… to slow something down?"
"Velocity is just motion over time," Haste said. "Mess with the right part, and you control the outcome. You're not just fast anymore. You're velocity. Get it?"
Hal nodded slowly, eyes narrowing as Haste let another stone fall.
This time, he reached not with his hands, but with his Authority—reaching outward, through the space around him. His aura flared softly, a ripple like heat above asphalt. Something flickered around the rock. Its descent shuddered, just for a second.
Then—
CRACK.
Pain exploded behind his eyes. Blood poured from his nose.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his skull, vision swimming.
"Good," Haste said, unconcerned. "You're starting to influence external kinetic fields. The fact that it hurt means you actually did something."
Hal wiped his face, muttering, "Feels like someone stabbed me in the brain."
Haste crouched beside him, grinning now. "Pain's just tuition. Welcome to graduate school."
The next three weeks were a blur of rocks, walls, collapsing brain cells, and exhaustion. Hal practiced in the academy's gravity-dampened training chamber—a cube of white stone lined with kinetic sensors. Here, gravity could be reduced or redirected, making every misstep a potential disaster and every movement a floating lesson in balance.
Haste watched from outside the chamber, arms folded, barking commands like a coach gone mad.
"Again. Faster this time."
"Too fast—control it. Don't rip the damn air."
"You're overcorrecting. Use finesse, not panic!"
Inside the chamber, Hal struggled to find equilibrium. The absence of gravity made movement strange—like swimming through syrup. Worse, he had to regulate his own speed. He couldn't just go fast anymore. He had to pick his acceleration, change it mid-flight, let objects curve around him like bullets caught in suspension.
"Now," Haste said one afternoon, gesturing to the vertical training cliff that rose inside the chamber's far wall, "run the wall."
Hal gawked. "With no gravity?"
"Exactly."
The first attempt was a disaster. He bounced off halfway, flipped mid-air, and hit the opposite wall like a sack of wet clothes. By the fourth day, he made it halfway. By the seventh, he reached the top and landed in a forward roll—shaky, but standing.
On the eighth, something flickered behind him—a soft shimmer of blue. Not a full phantom trail, but the promise of one. A spectral echo. It vanished before Haste could say anything, but Hal had felt it.
Like time itself had hiccupped.
Between training sessions, Astrid and Haiden began to visit more frequently.
"You still alive?" Astrid called on one breezy afternoon, tossing him a protein bar wrapped in foil.
Hal caught it with fumbling hands. "Barely."
"You here to fight or to bully me?"
"Both, obviously," she grinned, cracking her knuckles. "What's the point of friendship if not mutual suffering?"
Their sparring sessions became more than just training—they became rhythm. Communication. Each exchange of fists and feet felt like a conversation written in momentum and muscle memory.
Astrid struck like wildfire—bold, unpredictable, loving the chaos. She moved as if daring Hal to miscalculate. When he did, she smirked and pushed harder. When he didn't, she smiled like he'd passed some unspoken test.
Haiden, as ever, was quieter. His motions were elegant, minimal. Where Astrid danced, Haiden flowed. He redirected Hal's strikes rather than blocking them, using angles instead of force. Watching him fight was like watching water mold itself around rock—gentle, but impossible to stop.
After one especially intense match, Haiden helped Hal to his feet and said, "You're starting to move like someone who trusts his own body."
Hal blinked, catching his breath. "Yeah. Feels weird."
"Get used to it," Haiden replied, a rare smirk tugging at his mouth.
Cali joined them occasionally, quiet but observant. She stood at the edge of the arena, arms crossed, golden-brown eyes narrowed with unreadable thought. She didn't spar, but she watched everything. Especially Astrid.
When Astrid threw an arm around Hal's shoulders after a match, Cali's jaw tensed slightly. When Astrid tackled Hal in a laughing grapple during warm-up, Cali looked away.
Hal noticed.
He said nothing.
Month Three: Phantom Trails
The third month brought with it a peculiar shift—not just in Hal's training, but in how he understood himself. Progress, if it could even be called that, came not in leaps, but in strange echoes.
Haste introduced the new technique casually, mid-way through one of their usual mock battles in the ever-shifting realm of the mind.
"When you move fast enough, you leave a mark," Haste said, stepping effortlessly around Hal's lunging strike. He tapped Hal's shoulder with the flat of his palm. A gentle, humiliating reminder of how off-balance he still was. "Not just in memory. In space. Learn to use it."
Hal blinked, catching his breath. "A mark… in space?"
"Phantom trails," Haste said simply. "After-images of yourself. Delayed impressions left behind when you move with intention. Ever wonder why your enemies seem confused after a well-timed dash? That's not adrenaline. That's Authority." He smiled. "A trace of you, still fighting—even when you're gone."
The phrase stuck in Hal's mind like a hook: a trace of you, still fighting—even when you're gone.
Hal's first attempts were pathetic.
He dashed across the clearing of their conjured training ground—a forest that looked vaguely familiar, though the trees shimmered with dream logic. He imagined the blur of himself lingering behind like the streak of a comet, but all he left behind was a puff of wind and dust. The after-image blinked into existence for half a second—then dissolved like a mirage.
"Again," Haste said, lounging on a branch above, one leg swinging lazily. "Try with intent. Move like you mean to leave something behind. A shadow. A warning."
For hours, Hal repeated the same motion. Leap. Dash. Lunge. Each time trying to pour more of himself into the movement. Eventually, the echoes began to form—wispy outlines that hovered for a moment longer, trailing his limbs like ghost-fire. Still unstable, but real.
On the fifth day of practice, Hal managed to feint with a trail that looked just real enough to draw a counter from Haste. It didn't land, of course—Haste pivoted mid-step, caught Hal by the wrist, and spun him into the ground. But the phantom trail had lasted nearly a full second.
He groaned, sprawled across the grass. "You really enjoy beating me up, don't you?"
Haste dropped down beside him, a smirk playing across his face. "Of course I do. You get better each time, lover boy."
Hal turned his head, squinting. "Lover boy?"
Haste raised an eyebrow, grin widening. "So. How's your crush?"
Hal narrowed his eyes. "I don't have a crush on Cali."
"Didn't say anything about Cali."
Hal stared at him, mouth slightly open. Then: "You fucker."
Haste laughed. "I'm literally a hallucination born from your Authority. I only know what you know. I speak what you won't admit. So, when you say 'I don't feel anything', I hear 'I think about her constantly and it makes me want to dig a hole and scream into it.'"
Hal shoved him. Haste barely budged, still chuckling.
"You're the worst manifestation of speed anyone's ever invented."
"And yet," Haste said, stretching back with a yawn, "you keep summoning me."
Outside the mind realm, the real world moved on, and so did the training.
Astrid visited more frequently that month. Their sparring sessions had grown more physical, more kinetic—not in brutality, but in closeness. Movement blurred. They circled and struck, limbs colliding, sliding past each other, twisting in that edge between combat and choreography.
They didn't talk much during the fights. Words would have broken whatever unspoken tempo they moved to. There was something in the way Astrid moved around Hal—effortless, like she was reading him before he made a decision. And Hal, still growing, followed her lead like a dancer still learning the steps. Sometimes he caught her off-guard. Rarely. But when he did, her eyes lit up, and she grinned like a wolf.
One afternoon, their sparring spilled into a more chaotic form. Hal lunged. Astrid ducked, swept his legs. He twisted midair, used a phantom trail to make her hesitate. The real Hal landed behind her, sweeping low. She blocked with a forearm, but the momentum pushed them together—torso to torso, both breathing heavily.
Her brow grazed his. She didn't move away immediately.
Hal swallowed. His thoughts blurred with the echoes of Haste's laughter in the back of his mind.
Then she stepped back, gave a low whistle, and said, "You're getting good at this."
"Guess I have a good teacher."
She smirked. "Damn right."
From the edge of the training circle, someone else watched.
Cali stood with her arms crossed, partially shaded under the eaves of a crumbling archway. Her expression was neutral—too neutral.
Her fingers twitched slightly as she watched Astrid close the distance with Hal again. The way their limbs moved in tandem, how their bodies collided and bounced apart like magnets in play… It was precise, yes. It was training. But it was also intimate in a way that words didn't quite cover.
Cali's thumb scraped her wrist.
"They look good together," Haiden said, appearing at her side, arms full of practice gear. His voice wasn't mocking. Just observant.
Cali didn't look at him. "She's always touching him," she said, her voice quiet. "Like it means nothing."
"It does mean nothing," Haiden replied. "To her."
She turned her head slightly. "You sure?"
"I've known Astrid longer than either of you. She's like that with everyone. Fast and close. It's her rhythm. Hal's just… the only one keeping up right now."
Cali nodded slowly, but something in her eyes didn't fully accept the words.
She wasn't angry. Not exactly. But watching Hal fight like that—free, focused, seen—it stirred a restlessness in her chest. Like she was being left behind, not in strength, but in something else.
Connection. Alignment. Whatever this dance between Hal and Astrid was, she wasn't part of it.
Not yet.
That night, Hal sat alone near the edge of the cliff that overlooked the training fields. The stars were out, scattered like shards across the sky. A breeze tugged at his hair, and he leaned back, arms behind him.
He didn't notice Cali until she sat down beside him.
They didn't speak at first. The silence between them had become familiar. Not cold. Just… fragile.
"You're getting better," she said after a while.
Hal gave a soft laugh. "At being punched, you mean."
"No. The phantoms. They look like you now."
"Still flicker too fast," he said, then looked sideways at her. "But thanks."
She hesitated, then asked, "Do you like training with Astrid?"
Hal blinked, surprised. "Yeah, I guess. She's fast. Challenges me."
Cali looked out over the field. "She touches you a lot."
Hal frowned slightly. "She's physical. It's how she teaches."
"And you don't mind?"
He was quiet a moment. Then: "I notice it. Doesn't mean I understand it."
Cali nodded again. "She's not into you, you know."
Hal glanced at her. "That supposed to make me feel better?"
"I don't know," she said, almost bitterly. "Do you want her to be?"
"No." He didn't say it immediately, but he meant it when he did.
They sat in silence again.
"I'm still figuring things out," he added after a while. "Authority. Myself. Everything else… kind of takes the backseat."
Cali's voice was softer now. "You don't have to figure it all alone."
He turned to her. For a moment, their eyes met, unguarded. And for the first time in weeks, there was no tension. No confusion. Just quiet understanding.
"Thanks," he said, and meant it.
Back in the mind realm, Hal faced Haste again.
This time, he led with a phantom trail that split into two, baiting Haste left while he circled right. The feint worked. For a moment.
But only a moment.
Haste corrected mid-motion, flipped over Hal's strike, and pinned him flat with a palm to the chest.
Still, Hal grinned up at him. "That one got close."
"Closer," Haste agreed. "Still not enough."
"One day."
"Maybe." Haste leaned closer, smirking. "Your mind's finally getting faster. Shame your heart's still ten steps behind."
Hal rolled his eyes. "And you never shut up about it."
"Never will, lover boy," Haste said cheerfully. "I live in the echoes you leave behind. Make them count."
Month Four: Concept Clashing
Hal had grown faster.
Faster than his doubts. Faster than his injuries. Faster than the whispers in the back of his head that said he'd never measure up. But Haste—ever the frustrating, laughing shadow of his Authority—wasn't impressed.
"Speed's a knife," Haste said one morning, twirling a spectral blade in his fingers. "But what do you do when someone shows up with a flamethrower? Or a gravity well? Or hell, a story they wrote about your death before you even arrived?"
Hal wiped sweat from his brow. "I outrun them."
Haste grinned. "Wrong answer."
Hal raised an eyebrow. "Then what?"
"You out-concept them."
The phrase hung in the air like a challenge.
They were in the mindscape again—an arena that shimmered and morphed to Haste's will. Trees became stone pillars. Clouds hardened into glass canopies. The sky shimmered between gold and violet, like the dream was struggling to hold one form.
"Your Authority is Haste," Haste explained, now pacing a glowing circuit in the air. "But Authority isn't a trick or a spell. It's how you impose yourself on the world. Concepts are more than powers—they're philosophies. Worlds unto themselves."
Hal tilted his head. "So what, every fight is a debate now?"
"In a way," Haste said. "You're arguing your existence against theirs. If Flame says everything burns, you say not if I'm gone before the fire catches. If Gravity says everything falls, you say not me. If Memory says you forgot your own name, you scream it louder until the world remembers with you."
Hal took a breath. It wasn't just about being fast anymore. It was about being undeniable.
They began simulated clashes immediately.
Haste conjured enemies made of force and metaphor—archetypes of Concepts Hal might one day face.
First came Flame.
A being wreathed in infernos, molten breath twisting the air. Each step turned the ground to blackened glass. Hal charged, but the air turned blistering in seconds, oxygen burning away faster than he could draw it in.
He collapsed the first few attempts—lungs screaming, skin reddening. But Haste only laughed from the edge of the arena.
"Too slow," he called. "You're running through the fire. Think. What does fire need?"
Air. Heat. Fuel.
Hal adapted.
He moved in bursts now—zig-zagging through paths that carved low-pressure zones behind him. He ran so fast he sucked the air away, starving the flames before they could reach him. The battlefield dimmed as the fire flickered and gasped, no longer able to roar.
"Beautiful," Haste said with a grin. "You vacuumed the lungs out of a god."
Next was Sound.
This enemy shimmered like broken glass and sang in endless layers. Vibrations echoed from its limbs. Every step sent pulses through the ground, every movement an auditory assault. Hal could feel the world telling on him—his footsteps amplified, his breath traced, his every twitch betrayed by echo.
He tried to dodge, but no matter how fast he moved, the sound followed.
"Sound isn't slow," Haste warned. "You think you're fast? Try beating instant."
Hal shut his eyes. Stopped moving.
Then moved before the next echo.
He adjusted—not just to speed, but to timing. Predictive motion. Silence wasn't his ally, but misdirection was. He left phantom trails to trip the enemy's sonar, made his footsteps collide at the same time from three different locations. The sound-wielder's attacks missed more and more, chasing ghosts.
Eventually, it screamed and scattered like a broken tuning fork.
"Not bad," Haste muttered. "Outran the music."
Then came Gravity.
Not a being—more like a presence. A shifting zone where space bent, folded, pressed. Hal's limbs grew heavier the closer he approached. His balance tilted. The arena warped into impossible geometry.
He stumbled. Collapsed. Every step felt like he was moving through mud that reached up to pull him under.
"Faster," Haste said.
"I can't," Hal growled. "It's like the air's fighting back."
"Then cheat," Haste whispered.
Hal looked around. The ground bent. So he stopped using it.
He climbed an upward fold of warped space, sprinted sideways along planes that curved at impossible angles. Gravity tried to drag him in all directions—but Hal moved between them, never fully committing to any single pull. He flickered. Glided. Skated through the curves of warping space like a comet choosing its own orbit.
He didn't overpower gravity. He slipped past it.
"That," Haste said, clapping, "was poetry."
By the end of the second week, Hal's body had begun to change in subtle ways. It wasn't physical strength, not exactly. But when he moved, the air around him shimmered—light blue flickers trailing him even when he wasn't trying to create phantom trails.
It looked like he was shifting reality slightly every time he made a decision.
During one session, he noticed it consciously for the first time.
"Hey… this aura. It's not just phantom stuff, right?"
Haste nodded, arms folded. "Aura's blooming. You're entering the stage where your Concept isn't something you use. It's something you are."
Hal stared at his hand. The air bent ever so slightly around his fingers. Speed wasn't just motion anymore. It was presence.
"What does that mean?" he asked quietly.
Haste's grin was lopsided, almost fond.
"It means someday, someone will blink… and when they open their eyes, their fate will already be behind them."
That night, Hal found himself at the Spire's highest ledge.
The winds were sharp up here, slicing through the fabric of his shirt and threading his thoughts with cold clarity. The Spire wasn't tall for the sake of grandeur—it had been built to give a perspective no other place could. You could see the whole fractured horizon, the training grounds far below, the thin glow of Authority drifting in the night sky from other Liberators mid-practice.
And you could sit in silence. Think. Or forget to.
Cali was already there when he arrived.
She sat cross-legged, her hair whipping in the wind like a banner too stubborn to fall. She didn't turn when he approached—just patted the stone beside her.
He sat.
For a while, they didn't speak.
Then: "You're different lately," she said, watching the horizon.
Hal gave a soft snort. "That obvious?"
"Mm."
He nodded slowly, letting his gaze settle on the stars. "Training's been… intense."
"I heard about Concept Clashing," she said. "You went up against simulated flame. Gravity. Sound."
"Yeah. Lost to most of them. Then figured it out."
"That's new too," she said.
"What is?"
"You talk about losing like it doesn't bother you anymore."
Hal considered that. "Maybe I've lost enough to stop panicking about it."
She smiled. "You used to take every hit personally."
"I still do," he admitted. "I just hide it better now."
More silence. Then she asked:
"You still think caring is weakness?"
The question came from nowhere. Or maybe it had been circling between them for weeks, just waiting for the wind to push it loose.
Hal didn't answer immediately.
He stared forward, eyes unfocused, seeing more than the horizon—seeing the simulated flames, the gravity that tried to flatten him, the sound that wanted to name him before he could act. Concepts that tried to assert themselves over him.
"I used to," he said at last. "Caring slows you down. Makes you hesitate. Makes you want to stay. That's dangerous."
"But?" she asked.
He inhaled sharply. Exhaled. "But I think maybe… I don't care anymore."
She turned toward him, eyebrows raised. "You don't care about not caring?"
He shrugged. "I don't know if I can keep pretending like distance makes me stronger."
There was a beat.
Then she said, "You care too much."
He looked at her. Really looked.
She didn't say it with mockery. She said it like it was a strength. Like she knew he did—about her, about the others, about all the things he claimed didn't matter.
And he didn't deny it.
Not this time.
In the dream realm, Haste leaned on a glowing wall, watching it all.
"He's almost there," he muttered to no one.
Then, grinning to himself: "Let's see what happens when speed meets love."