Chapter 15: 15 Gralash training

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15: Gralash training 15: Gralash training Misael was learning to wage war.

Gralash gave him no respite: every day, in the fiery depths of his abode, the God of War pushed the young prince beyond his limits, and Misael, fueled by the hatred that grew within him like a fire, pushed him further and further.

Further and further, day after day.

One day, Gralash decided it was time to subject him to a different test.

He led him into the depths of Ignimurus, into an immense cavern carved into the incandescent rock, where the heat was so intense that even a demon could barely breathe.

There, chained to a wall with chains as thick as tree trunks, stood a creature: a golem of magma and obsidian, built centuries before for an emperor, forgotten, and then sealed away because too dangerous to control.

Its body, stretched out, seemed infinite.

Its eyes were craters of fire, its fists could pulverize a hill.

“Defeat him,” Gralash commanded.

“Alone.

Or die trying,” he said, and broke the chains.

The golem roared, a sound that caused the ceiling to collapse, and lunged at the boy.

Misael narrowly dodged the first punch; the blow created a crater in the rock where he had been standing a moment before.

He rolled, stood up, and gathered within himself the dark energy he had learned to control.

Whirls of black flame curled around his arms.

He knew he wasn’t as strong as Kairan yet, and that thought, instead of discouraging him, filled him with icy fury.

The golem struck again; Misael parried the blow with both arms, and the impact sent him knee-deep into the rock.

His bones cracked, but they didn’t break: months of Gralash’s brutal training had made them as hard as steel.

“Defense is not enough!” Gralash thundered from above.

“A warrior who merely parries is a warrior who has already lost!

Attack!” Misael snarled, concentrated all his dark energy into a single fist, and struck the colossus’s knee.

The explosion of black flames staggered the golem, which fell to one knee with a roar.

Misael didn’t stop: he leaped onto the creature’s arm, ran along it as if on a bridge, and reached its head.

There, with a cry of triumph and hatred, he plunged both incandescent hands into the monster’s fiery eyes.

The golem thrashed, trying to shake him off, but the prince resisted, sinking his fingers into the magma skull, the black energy devouring the creature from the inside, until, with a final tremor, the light in its eyes went out and the magma and obsidian colossus collapsed to the ground, motionless.

Misael fell into the rubble, exhausted, his hands burned and his breathing labored.

But he was alive and victorious.

Gralash stepped down from his pedestal and studied him for a long time.

Then, for the first time, something resembling a smile appeared on the God of War’s scarred face.

“Good, you won alone.” He paused.

“But do you know what your brother would have done?” Misael stiffened.

“He wouldn’t have fought,” the master continued ruthlessly.

“He would have looked at the golem, and the golem would have knelt.

Not from a blow, but from fear.” Misael’s smile faded, the fury returned, blacker than before.

“Do not speak his name,” he hissed.

Gralash studied him in silence.

And he thought, but said nothing: “This boy will become very strong.

Perhaps the strongest the kingdom has ever forged.

But there is a crack in his heart, and one day, through that crack, something terrible will pass.”