He dodged everything thrown at him.
The spear passed inches from his shoulder as he leaned away.
It swept past his knees as he stepped lightly over it.
It thrust toward his heart and found only empty space as he rotated his torso just enough.
Always inches away.
Never touching.
Never even close to touching!
And as he began to move, truly move, it felt like something he had not expected.
It felt like a dance!
Watching the Mana coursing over the skin of Uncle Adam became part of the rhythm. Each flare of blue power told him where the next attack would come from, gave him a heartbeat of warning that his body used to prepare its response.
Watching the flicker of ambient Mana in the surroundings became part of the melody. The swirling currents of power that filled this mountainside clearing moved with them, disturbed by their passage, creating patterns that were almost musical in their flow.
Watching the small, faint tendrils of Mana moving over his own skin became the harmony that tied it all together. His power wasnt as heavy compared to Uncle Adam’s, but it was his. It responded to him. It made him part of this ancient tradition in ways he had been denied for eight long years.
It all felt so surreal.
At a certain point, Damian dropped his axe.
The weapon fell to the moss-covered stone with a soft thud, forgotten.
He did not need it.
He did not want it.
He simply wanted to move in this dance of life and death with profound enjoyment, to feel what it meant to be a Warrior again, to remember what it was like to exist in the space between strikes where everything was possible and nothing was certain.
Uncle Adam did not slow!
If anything, the old warrior increased his ferocity, pushing himself harder as he realized that his Young Lugal could handle it. Could handle him. Could dance with death itself and emerge unscathed!
The spar became something more than practice.
It became a celebration.
Around Damian and Uncle Adam, the whooshes of the spear cut through the air with sounds like tearing silk. The crackling of Mana exploded in the surroundings as Uncle Adam pushed his power to levels he had not accessed in some time. Blue lightning seemed to dance between them, arcing from the spear to the air to the stones beneath their feet.
And in this region of the Roaring Stone Mountain, something extraordinary began to happen.
Misty Mana began to gather.
It descended from the canopy above, filtering through leaves that glowed brighter in response. It rose from the earth below, seeping up through stone that pulsed with the mountain’s ancient heartbeat. It swirled in from all directions, drawn to this clearing by the intensity of what was occurring within it.
The mist thickened until it was visible even to ordinary eyes, a luminescent fog that wrapped around the two figures locked in their dance. It pulsed in rhythm with Damian’s heartbeat, that heavy DUM that had become the drumbeat of his new existence.
As if even the Ancestors were watching this.
As if the spirits of Warriors long dead had gathered to witness something they had never seen before. A Young Lugal without a Physique, written off as a failure, dancing with one of their own and matching him step for step.
Uncle Adam’s strikes grew faster, more desperate, more joyful. Each attack was a question: Can you handle this? And each dodge was an answer: Yes. More. Give me more!
Damian moved through the storm of violence like water flowing around rocks in a stream. He twisted and turned and stepped and spun, his body remembering forms he had learned as a child and adapting them in real-time to this new reality where he could see Mana itself.
The dance continued.
The mist pulsed.
The Ancestors watched.
And somewhere deep in Damian’s chest, his heart beat with a heaviness that proclaimed to anyone who could hear it:
It wanted more!
The dance continued for minutes as the surroundings became more and more surreal.
The misty Mana nearby seeped into Uncle Adam’s skin, drawn to him like water to parched earth. And this was when Damian noticed it fully.
...!
He was shocked.
This was a phenomenon he had seen a few times before. In his childhood, watching his father spar with the greatest Warriors of the empire. In the training grounds where masters tested themselves against each other for the honor of the Vakochev family.
The Ancestral Veil.
That was what the shamans called it. The Blessing of the Ancestors in the tongue of common folk.
It occurred when Mana gathered like mist in the surroundings of a battle between Warriors or beasts, coalescing from the ambient energy of the Lands of Stone into something visible and tangible. This phenomenon only manifested when Mana was being used by lifeforms in an extremely pure way, when the intent behind the power was so focused and so harmonious that it resonated with the very fabric of the atmosphere.
Normally, it only occurred when Warriors of the Fourth Circle or above engaged in combat. Only those who had achieved Marrow Crystallization possessed the refined control and concentrated output necessary to induce such a response from the environment.
Yet here it was.
Swirling around a peak Flesh Awakening Warrior and a young man who had only begun cultivating hours ago..but had also bathed his heart with Mana!
The Ancestral Veil was more than merely beautiful. It was profoundly beneficial. When this misty Mana gathered, it represented a pure form of power that was extremely dense and concentrated. Warriors who fought within its embrace could draw it into their bodies with remarkable ease, the energy seeping in and infusing them in a smoother manner than normally drawing in Mana would allow.
It was like the difference between forcing water through cracked stone and having it flow naturally into a waiting vessel.
Warriors bathed in the Ancestral Veil could fight longer, harder, faster. They recovered from exertion more quickly. Their techniques became sharper. Their bodies responded with greater precision.
And some...made breakthroughs in battle because of it.
The stories spoke of Warriors who entered combat at one Circle and emerged at the next, their cultivation advanced by the pure Mana that the Ancestral Veil provided during their moment of greatest need.
...!