Chapter 226: Breathing Exercise

The river was calm.

Too calm.

Kael crouched by the edge, dunking the clothes into the water, scrubbing them against the stone with slow, irritated movements. The rings made it harder than it should have been, his grip slipping, his fingers cramping as he tried to maintain control.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered. "This isn’t training. I’m just making your life easier while mine gets worse."

He scrubbed harder, frustration bleeding into his movements.

"I’m basically a slave at this point. No pay, no breaks, just... A slave under some god damn demon with a human shape... hell with that size if he is really human I’d eat my own fist."

Something hit his back.

The world vanished.

The cold was immediate, absolute.

Water swallowed him whole, the weight on his limbs dragging him down before he could react properly. Panic surged through him, his body moving on instinct, arms flailing, legs kicking uselessly as he tried to reach the surface.

The air left him too quickly.

His chest tightened, his vision flickering as the need to breathe became overwhelming.

Then...

He was pulled out.

Kael broke the surface with a violent gasp, coughing, choking as he dragged air into his lungs in ragged bursts.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he rasped, glaring at the old man through wet hair and blurred vision. "Are you trying to kill me?"

The old man looked down at him. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Stay there for ten minutes."

Kael stared at him, disbelief turning into anger.

"I can’t stay..."

The kick came again.

And the river swallowed him once more.

The cycle began.

And this time, Kael understood something immediately.

This was not separate from the rest.

It was just another part of it.

***

The second time Kael was thrown into the river, there was no confusion left in him about what was happening.

The cold swallowed him just as violently as before, but this time his body reacted even faster, as if it had already learned to fear the sensation of losing control. The iron rings dragged him downward with brutal certainty, stripping away any illusion that he could fight his way out through strength alone.

His limbs moved before his mind could intervene, arms cutting wildly through the water, legs kicking without direction, every motion desperate and useless at once. He could feel the air leaving him faster than it should, not because it was being taken, but because he was throwing it away.

The pressure in his chest came almost immediately, sharp and overwhelming, the kind of sensation that demanded action even when action only made things worse. He opened his mouth instinctively, and water rushed in, choking him from the inside as his body convulsed in reaction.

The surface above him flickered, distant and distorted, something he could see but not reach. His thoughts fractured under the pressure, losing coherence as the need to breathe took over everything else. By the time the hand seized him and dragged him upward, he had already lost any sense of time.

When he broke through the surface, the air tore into his lungs in uneven bursts, his body rejecting and craving it at the same time. He coughed violently, struggling to stabilize himself as his chest burned and his throat tightened from the water he had swallowed. His eyes found the old man immediately, anger rising through the exhaustion without restraint.

"You’re trying to kill me," Kael said, though the force behind his voice was weakened by the struggle for breath. "This isn’t training. This is just..."

The interruption came before he could finish, not with words, but with the same unceremonious kick that sent him back into the water.

There was no warning, no pause, no space given for recovery. The river accepted him again without resistance, closing over him as if nothing had happened.

This time, the panic came even faster, because now his body anticipated the drowning. It did not wait for him to process the situation. It reacted immediately, violently, burning through what little control he might have had.

His limbs moved again, uncontrolled, his chest tightened faster, and the urge to breathe became unbearable almost instantly. It was only when he was dragged out again, coughing and gasping for air, that something in his mind began to connect.

The river was not doing this to him.

He was.

That realization did not save him that day. It did not prevent the panic, nor did it grant him control. He still thrashed, still wasted his breath, still needed to be pulled out before he blacked out completely.

But the thought remained, stubborn and unwelcome, refusing to disappear even as he lay on the riverbank afterward, his body trembling from the strain.

By the time the old man finally allowed him to crawl away from the water, Kael had nothing left to say. His anger remained, but it had shifted, no longer directed solely outward. There was something else now, something quieter and more frustrating, because it suggested that there was a pattern he was missing. He hated that idea more than anything else.

The following day did not offer him time to dwell on it. The routine began before his body had fully recovered, and the river was only one part of it now.

He descended the cliff with the rings still weighing down his limbs, his movements slower at first, not from lack of knowledge, but from accumulated fatigue.

His muscles resisted him, but they obeyed, carrying him downward with a precision that had not been there in the beginning. At the base, he hunted, failing more often than not, his timing still slightly off, his movements still just a fraction too heavy when they needed to be light.

The failure frustrated him, but not in the same way as before. He no longer reacted by forcing the issue, no longer tried to overpower the problem through effort alone.

Something in his approach had changed, though he refused to acknowledge it directly. He waited longer before moving, adjusted his positioning more carefully, and when he acted, it was with less wasted motion than before. The results were still inconsistent, but the difference was there.

There was change...