It startled me so badly I nearly leaped to my feet.
“Yes,” Giichi said, and though his voice was meant for all of us, I felt it directed at me. “You begin to see.”
I didn’tseeanything, but I had definitely felt something.
I closed my eyes again as the master moved around our circle. I heard his robes whisper against the floor. “In battle, whatdetermines victory? Strength? Speed? Technique? All three, perhaps?” His voice was closer now. “These are tools, but a master sees not only the tool but also the pattern the tool will create.”
He was behind me now. I could feel him there, looming like a mountain.
“Observe,” he said.
His hand touched the crown of my head—the lightest pressure, barely there.
And the world shattered into light. Not light I could see with closed eyes, but something else. Patterns erupted around me like fireworks made of thought.
The meditation hall expanded in all directions, and I could sense its true shape—not walls and floors but currents of energy, flowing like rivers of light through ancient wood and stone.
Where my classmates sat, I saw—no,felt—their essences.
Daichi burned hot and red, his anger a forge that never cooled.
Kenta was solid earth, brown and steady but resistant to change.
Teshi flickered in wind, yellow-bright but forever threatening to extinguish.
And Hiroshi was strangest of all—a perfect mirror, reflecting everything around him while revealing nothing.
Beneath it all, flowing through Giichi’s fingers into my mind, was something else, something more. Something that made the temple’s ancient power look like a candle beside the sun. It was vast, infinite, andalive—and it recognized me.
It seemed to whisper one word.
Finally.
“The wise general,” Giichi crooned, his hand still on my head though his voice addressed everyone, “sees not the army before him but the patterns of its movement, not the fortress but theweaknesses in its design. This sight comes not from the eyes but from understanding the threads that connect all things.”
The power flowing through his touch swelled, and suddenly I understood the rice convoy attack with crystalline clarity. Three routes, five possible ambush points, but only one where the rebels could strike and retreat without being caught.
The pattern was so obvious now—how had we not seen it?
Someone in the temple had to have known—someone who understood guard rotations, supply schedules, and the rhythm of our defenses must have seen.
“When you face an opponent,” Giichi said, his fingers lifting from my skin, the vast awareness contracting without disappearing, “you must see not just his sword but his intent, not only his stance but his design, not his raw strength but the shape of his thoughts.”
I opened my eyes, gasping. The world looked normal again, but not quite. At the edges of my vision, I could still see faint threads, the connectionsbetweenthings, like seeing the current in still water once you knew where to look.
My classmates were blinking, looking confused.
Daichi rubbed his temples.
Kenta frowned at his hands.
Teshi seemed dazed.
But none of them looked transformed, none of them were gasping for breath as if they’d just touched the divine. Only I had seen.
“What did you perceive?” Master Giichi asked the group.
“Darkness,” Hiroshi said carefully. “Nothing more.”
