“Again.” He pushed himself upright, ignoring the ache already blooming across his shoulders. Grass clung to his obsidian-dark skin, and he brushed it away with a gesture that felt clumsy without the precision of his tail.
Kaede’s eyes narrowed. Something like approval flickered there—gone before it could take root.
This time, Zyxel bent his knees. Lowered his center. Tried to imagine roots growing from his feet into the earth the way his coils would have anchored him.
Kaede struck again.
Zyxel managed to deflect the first blow—barely. The impact rang up his forearm, jarring enough to rattle his teeth as the stun dagger’s hilt struck flesh no longer reinforced by true scales. The living suit absorbed the worst of the damage, dispersing the force in a dull thrum across his arm—but it couldn’t soften the impact itself.
Demi-human skin was fragile in a way his true form had never been. Where scales once drank in force and spread it wide, this body took the hitdirectly. Smaller, smoother plates surfaced beneath the suit’s adaptive layer—more akin to Kaede’s hybrid armor than the ridged protection of his Rkekh form—but even they weren’t enough to keep the shock from biting deep.
Pain flared. Sharp. Immediate.
Kaede hadn’t pulled the strike.
Good.
The assassin flowed around his guard like water, and a second strike caught him behind the knee.
Down again.
“You’re overcorrecting.” Kaede circled him, stun dagger still humming. “Your legs aren’t roots. They’re springs. You need to movewithan attack, not against it.”
Zyxel absorbed the instruction, turning it over in his mind the way he’d once dissected genetic sequences. Patterns. That’s what this was. Combat had patterns just like biology, just like the chemical reactions he’d spent his life studying. He simply needed to learn the language.
Again he rose. Again Kaede struck.
This time Zyxel movedwiththe blow—letting his body twist, channeling the force into a pivot that kept him on his feet. Not graceful. Not smooth. But upright.
Small victory. He cataloged it anyway.
Kaede’s next strike came faster. Harder. A silver blur that forced Zyxel to duck—another foreign movement—his spine bending in ways that felt wrong without the counterbalance of his tail. He spun away from the follow-up.
Blocked. Stepped. Blocked again.
The third blow sent him sprawling, but it took three this time instead of one.
Progress.
“Better.” Kaede extended a hand—an unexpected gesture that Zyxel stared at for a moment before accepting. The assassin’s grip was iron, hauling him upright with casual strength. “You’re thinking too much. Your body knows what to do. Trust it.”
Trust. A concept Zyxel had never applied to anything without evidence. But Kaede wasn’t wrong—his scholarly mind kept interfering, analyzing each movement instead of simplymoving.
In his natural form, he didn’t have to think. His coils knew how to strike, how to constrict, how to use his mass as both weapon and shield. The knowledge lived in his muscles, inherited from generations of Rkekh who had survived by instinct as much as intellect.
This body had no such inheritance. No ancestral memory to guide its movements. Only Zyxel’s will—and his willingness to fall until falling taught him how to stand.
They went again. And again. And again.
The sun sank lower, painting the sky in shades of violets and rose, bleeding over the horizon. Sweat slicked his unfamiliar skin—another wrong sensation, the moisture beading where it should have been absorbed, cooling where it should have warmed.
But with each fall, each correction, each grudging word of improvement from Kaede, something began to shift. Not comfort. He doubted he would ever feel comfortable in this form. But familiarity, at least. The beginning of understanding.
By the time Kaede stepped back, Zyxel could stay on his feet through five exchanges. Could read the assassin’s tells—those micro-movements that telegraphed attacks before they landed. Could move his new body with something approaching competence.
“Enough.” Kaede deactivated his stun dagger with a flick of his wrist. “Watch.”
Ryzen uncrossed his arms.
