Chapter 5 Chapter 5

The door clicked shut, leaving the room cold and silent. A thin layer of fog covered the floor before slowly fading. Jorren didn't move for a while. He sat quietly on the wooden stool, one hand resting over the codex hidden beneath his coat.

"He talks too much," Jorren muttered quietly.

"He's capable," the Keeper said as he walked over to the table and put out the lamp. Darkness quickly filled the room, with only faint moonlight shining through the dusty window. "And he's right about one thing. Climbing with broken bones is painful. Starting tomorrow, you'll find out just how painful."

The next two weeks were, honestly, nothing  but misery.

If Jorren thought life in the lower district was hard, the codex proved him wrong. The pre-ascension training wasn't some magical ritual where you sat around and became stronger. It was brutal, nonstop training meant to push his body to its limits until his soul had no choice but to adapt.

Every morning started long before dawn.

Behind the Keeper's grain shop was an old iron tub filled with water that had sat in the freezing air all night. A thin layer of ice covered the top every morning. Jorren had to break it with his bare fist, climb into the freezing water, and sit up to his neck for thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes doesn't sound long until your lungs seize up three seconds in.

The first time, Jorren lasted about forty seconds before panic took over and he tried to get out. The Keeper didn't say a word. He stood beside the tub and pressed a heavy wooden pole against Jorren's shoulder, keeping him in the freezing water.

"Your soul architecture is unstable," the Keeper said calmly. "It panics under pressure. The cold forces your essence inward. Control it, or freeze."

By the fifth day, Jorren had stopped screaming. He sat in the icy water with his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, watching the pale pattern beneath his skin flicker under the water like a dying candle.

Then came the hard part.

He ran up the steep stone steps of the lower district with heavy iron chains wrapped around his chest. He did push-ups on the broken stone behind the shop until his arms gave out and he fell to the ground. Even then, the Keeper didn't let him stop. He made Jorren hold himself at the bottom of a push up until he passed out, then woke him with a hard slap across the face.

"Again," the old man would say.

"I can't," Jorren gasped on the seventh day, blood dripping from his scraped elbows into the dirt. "My arms... they won't move."

"Your arms don't matter," the Keeper said coldly. "Your soul depends on your body. When your body gives out, your soul has to learn to stand on its own. Get up."

And Jorren got up. The other choice was going back to being nothing.

But the physical pain wasn't the worst part. Jorren was used to pain and exhaustion. What really got into his head was the third page of the codex: The Daily Toll.

Every night, before he was allowed to sleep on the hard floor, Jorren had to open the codex. The black leather cover felt warmer now, almost oily, as if it had soaked up his sweat and blood.

The words on the page would change, showing only one line: Document the sacrifice.

It sounded simple, but it wasn't. The codex didn't ask for big sacrifices. It wanted the small things that made life easier to bear.

The first thing to go was his morning tea. Jorren liked a cup of hot black tea. It was the one thing he treated himself to every few days at the corner stall. The codex made him give it up. From then on, he drank stale well water instead.

Then it took his money. Jorren cut his spending to the bare minimum, just enough for stale bread and dried fish. Every extra coin he earned helping the Keeper carry grain sacks had to be thrown into the harbor, one by one, as he watched them disappear into the dark water.

"Building pathways," the Keeper called it. "Teaching your mind that nothing truly belongs to you."

On the tenth night, the codex asked for something worse.

Jorren sat on the floor, his hands raw and shaking after carrying heavy iron bars up the spire steps all afternoon. He opened the book, expecting it to ask for another coin or another missed meal.

Instead, the silver words changed. A single name appeared: Marta.

Jorren froze. Marta was the old woman who lived two houses away from his family's broken shack. She had known his father. She was eighty, half blind, and every Tuesday Jorren brought her a small bundle of firewood so she wouldn't freeze during the night.

It was the only good thing he still did. The only part of his old life that didn't remind him of failure.

"No," Jorren muttered to the dark room. "She's old. She doesn't have anything to do with this."

The book didn't answer with words. It pulsed instead. A sharp heat shot up Jorren's arm, making the cracked lattice beneath his skin throb with pain. The message was clear. Let her go, or the training ends here.

He didn't sleep that night. He lay on the hard floor, staring at the ceiling as the cold crept through his thin blanket.

The next evening, Jorren walked past Marta's street on his way back from the harbor. She was sitting outside her house, wrapped in a thin, worn shawl. When she saw him, she smiled. Her cloudy eyes brightened as she reached for her old wooden basket.

"Jorren, boy," she called, her voice weak. "Did you find any dry pine today? The wind is getting colder..."

Jorren didn't stop. He didn't even slow down. He pulled his hood lower, kept his eyes on the cobblestone road, and walked past without saying a word.

He heard her call his name one more time, her voice filled with confusion and hurt, before the sounds of the market drowned it out. His chest felt empty, as if something had been torn out of him.

That night, he opened the codex with bleeding fingers. The silver words glowed brightly. The diagram of his soul changed slightly. One of the deep cracks near his chest grew a little smaller. It wasn't gone, but it was more stable.

He had paid the price.

The Keeper walked in with a bowl of cold water and a strip of clean cloth. He looked at Jorren's pale face, then at the glowing codex resting on his knees.

"You look terrible," the Keeper said, setting the bowl down.

Jorren slowly closed the book. His hands were steady now. "Does it ever stop asking?" he asked.

The Keeper gave a small, grim smile. "Only when you have nothing left to give," he said