Liminality

The wooden practice sword cracked against Erel's ribs with enough force to drive the air from his lungs. He stumbled backwards, trying to maintain his guard, but Lyra was already moving, a fluid step forward followed by a thrust that would have skewered him if she'd been using steel instead of wood.

He barely got his blade up in time to deflect the attack, the impact sending shock waves up his arms. Before he could recover, her sword swept low, catching him behind the knee and sending him sprawling onto the dew-wet grass.

"Dead again," Lyra said, not even breathing hard. "What went wrong?"

Definitely me deciding to spar against you.

Erel rolled over and pushed himself up on his elbows, spitting out grass and dirt. His ribs ached where she'd struck him, and he could feel a new bruise forming to join the collection he'd accumulated over the past two weeks. "I dropped my guard after the parry."

"Before that."

He thought back through the brief exchange, replaying each movement. "I let you dictate the distance. When you stepped forward, I should have either stepped back to maintain range or moved inside your reach."

"Better." Lyra offered him a hand up. "But you're still thinking like someone who learned to fight in a gymnasium instead of someone whose life depends on it. In a real fight, that hesitation after your parry would have meant a blade through your heart."

Erel accepted her help and got back to his feet, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness. The abandoned farmhouse they'd been using as a base camp for the past week stood nearby, its windows dark and its roof partially caved in from years of neglect. They'd found it three days into their investigation of the local entity activity, and it made a decent staging area, close enough to their target to conduct reconnaissance, far enough away to avoid detection.

"Again," Lyra said, moving back into her guard position.

This had been their routine for two weeks now, ever since leaving the relative safety of the borderland road. Wake before dawn for conditioning - running, climbing, exercises that built the kind of functional strength needed for combat. Morning sword training, drilling forms and techniques until his muscles remembered them without conscious thought. Afternoon exploration and flux training, learning to use his abilities while moving through increasingly dangerous terrain. Evening sparring, where Lyra systematically dismantled every bad habit he'd developed during the day.

The sparring was the worst part. Not because of the physical punishment, though Lyra had a talent for finding new places to bruise, but because it made his progress feel negligible. Every day he got a little faster, a little more confident, a little better at reading her attacks. Every day she adapted her technique to maintain the same overwhelming superiority.

"You're getting stronger," she said as they circled each other, wooden swords held ready. "I can feel it in the way you move. More balanced, better footwork. Your mythic connection is deepening too."

Erel feinted high and cut low, trying to catch her off-guard. She read the deception immediately and countered with a pommel strike that he barely avoided by throwing himself sideways.

"But you're still fighting like a human instead of an anomalite," she continued, pursuing his retreat with measured steps. "Your fragment abilities, your cycle of rebirth - they're not separate from your swordwork. They're part of the same thing."

She attacked then, a combination of strikes that forced him to give ground rapidly. He managed to parry the first two, but the third caught him on the forearm hard enough to make his fingers go numb, the only reprieve being that he was quick enough to guide the serpent to coil against it. Nevertheless, his sword dropped from his nerveless fingers.

"The prowlers you killed last week," Lyra said, picking up his fallen weapon and handing it back to him. "Tell me about that fight."

Erel flexed his fingers until sensation returned, thinking back to the encounter. They'd been scouting the abandoned football stadium where intelligence suggested a pack of irregulars had taken up residence. He'd spotted movement in the collapsed section of the north stands and gone to investigate while Lyra circled around from the south.

"Three of them in the old concession area," he said, getting back into his guard stance. "Pack hunters, but they were spread out instead of coordinating."

"Why do you think that was?"

"They were feeding." The memory made him slightly sick even now. The prowlers had been tearing apart something that might once have been human, though it was too mangled to be sure. "They were distracted."

"And?"

"I approached from the blind spot we'd identified during reconnaissance. When I got close enough that continuing forward would have triggered an attack..." Erel paused, remembering the sudden flash of vision that had saved his life. The cycle had shown him the prowler detecting his scent, its leap from the shadows, claws raking across his throat. "My ability activated. Showed me getting killed if I kept moving the same direction."

Getting mauled to death was a first. Not the prettiest way to die.

"So you adapted."

"Changed my approach. Went up through the hole in the roof instead of trying to sneak across the floor." The vision had been brief but informative - just enough to know that his original plan would have been fatal. "Dropped onto the first one while the other two were still focused on their meal."

It had been his first real kill - his sword punching through the prowler's spine just behind its skull. The creature had dissolved into black mist that left behind a rush of energy that had made his essence cores sing with newfound power.

"The other two came at me together, but I'd positioned myself better. Used the support pillars for cover, isolated them one at a time."

Each kill had brought the same energy rush, the same sense of his mythic connection growing stronger. By the time the fight was over, he'd felt fundamentally different - more confident, more attuned to his abilities, more certain of his place in this dangerous world.

"Good," Lyra said, and he could hear genuine approval in her voice. "You fought smart instead of brave. Used your abilities to avoid fatal mistakes, picked your battlefield, isolated your targets. That's how you survive encounters with entities that are faster and stronger than you are."

She moved into an attack stance, but instead of coming at him immediately, she started talking again. "Today we make our move on the main pack. Intelligence says there are fifteen prowlers in the stadium, plus the kin that's been organizing them."

Erel felt his stomach tighten. Fifteen entities was more than he'd ever faced at once, and a kin was a full tier above anything he'd fought so far.

"The good news is that we know where they came from," Lyra continued, beginning a slow advance that forced him to backpedal. "Small gate opened about three kilometers north of here five days ago. Class 1 Crack, probably based on some kind of pack hunting mythology."

"What's the difference between the classes?"

"Size and complexity, mainly." She paused her advance, using the moment to explain. "Class 1 Cracks are small and generally contain irregulars. Usually based on minor myths or story fragments. This one's probably something like 'wolves in the woods' or 'things that hunt in packs.'"

"And bigger classes?"

"Class 2 Breaches are based on more complete mythologies - full fairy tales, complete legends. Class 3 Resonators are major myths with spawns populating them." She resumed her attack, forcing him to focus on defence while she talked. "Class 4 Realms are foundational myths - entire cultural worldviews made manifest like the one in Mumbai. Till now, they are the highest we have seen."

Her sword work was relentless but educational. Each strike came with just enough warning that he could attempt a defense, but she varied her timing and angle enough that he never got comfortable.

"What about Class 5?"

"Gates. Direct connections to the Imaginarium itself, based on primordial myths that transcend specific cultures. They can potentially expand without limit and become permanent parts of reality." She landed a solid hit on his shoulder that made his arm go dead. "We are yet to see one, hell, we are not even sure if they exist."

"And the interaction classifications?"

"Alpha gates have stable rules you can learn and navigate. Beta gates force you into predetermined roles within the myth - you might find yourself playing Little Red Riding Hood, whether you want to or not. Gamma gates require cooperation between multiple people to resolve. Omega gates are composites where multiple myths overlap - extremely dangerous because the rules conflict."

"What type is our target?"

"Probably Alpha-stable based on the entity behavior patterns. Simple pack hunting dynamics, consistent territory markers, predictable feeding schedules." She stepped back and lowered her sword, signaling the end of the sparring session. "The kin will be the real problem. Kin-class entities can think and plan. It won't just throw its pack at us in a mindless charge. It'll try to separate us, use the stadium's layout to create ambush points, maybe even attempt to communicate."

Erel lowered his own weapon, grateful for the respite. His entire body ached from two weeks of constant training and combat.

"You're ready," Lyra said, studying his face. "I can see it in how you hold yourself."

"Your mythic resonance is stabilising too," Lyra continued, packing away the practice weapons. "If I'm not wrong, you should unlock your Adept trial soon, maybe in two to three months."

It was true. Over the past week, his ability had activated several times during their reconnaissance and training. Each time, he'd gotten better at interpreting the visions - understanding not just that continuing his current course would be fatal, but why, and what alternatives might be safer. The ability was evolving from a desperate survival mechanism into a tactical advantage.

"Your fragment is responding too," she added, pointing to his left forearm where the ouroboros tattoo had begun to change. What had started as a simple black serpent eating its own tail was now developing details - scales that seemed to shift in the light, eyes that occasionally appeared more vivid, coils that sometimes seemed to move.

"Is that normal?"

"Fragment evolution accelerates with mythic integration and combat experience. By the time you reach Tier Two and become an Adept, it'll probably be able to manifest as an actual weapon rather than just a marking." Lyra shouldered her pack and started walking toward the stadium. "But first, we need to clear out this infestation before it spreads beyond the original Class 1 area."

As they left the farmhouse behind and headed across the overgrown fields toward their target, Erel found himself moving with a confidence that would have been impossible two weeks ago. His sword hung at his side with familiar weight, his armor felt natural rather than cumbersome, and his senses were attuned to the subtle signs of entity presence that Lyra had taught him to recognize.

The stadium rose ahead of them like a concrete monument to humanity's abandoned pastimes. What had once been a place of celebration and community was now a lair for creatures from humanity's darkest myths. But for the first time since awakening his abilities, Erel wasn't walking into danger as a victim hoping to survive.