The Master looked at us with that familiar, half-amused severity.
“Another day with you.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“Today you will attempt something none of you have truly mastered,” he said. “You will learn to focus your thoughts. A technique known as Limbo.”
“And what exactly is this technique?”
The Master stepped closer. His hands closed around my head. His thumb pressed firmly against my forehead—
and the world went black.
Where am I?
Suspended in nothing.
What is this place?
I grew tired of drifting in the void. I pictured a chair beneath me.
And it appeared.
“Well done,” the Master’s voice echoed through the emptiness. “You’ve taken the first step. You escaped the mental void through concentration alone.” “But how are you seeing my thoughts?” I asked. “You’re not even here.” “Limbo allows one to observe,” he replied. “And if you grow strong enough within it… you may paint upon the thoughts of others, like an artist upon a canvas.” A pause.
“Would you care for some tea?”
From the darkness, a cup drifted toward me.
“Enough,” I said. “I want out.”
“That,” the Master answered calmly, “is the difficult part. Leaving while the other refuses to release you. That is what you will learn today.” I decided to test the limits of this place. I imagined a door—an exit. It formed before me.
I opened it.
A ridiculous, mocking buzzer sounded. “I would advise you not to underestimate me so thoroughly, boy.” Fine. So that method was useless. Either he can read every thought, or he simply watches and blocks whatever I attempt. I sat down and drank the tea. “You can’t keep me here forever,” I said. “Actually,” the Master replied, “I can. Time holds little meaning in this place.” “Let me try a surprise.” I imagined the chair vanishing beneath me, sending me falling out of the void. Nothing happened. I remained suspended. So he could see my intentions and counter them at the same time. An idea struck me.

I summoned a sun into the darkness. Its light flared so brightly that for a moment the Master could no longer see me. I pictured the exit door again—then deliberately did the opposite of what I had shown him. Instead of fleeing through the door, I hurled myself into the heart of the sun. The world shattered.
I woke as if from a violent dream, the searing pain of the burn still racing across my skin. I twisted on the floor, gasping. The Master staggered back, pressing a hand to his own temple. The strain had reached him as well.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “The pain here is real.” He looked at the others. “Experiment. Find your own methods. That was a good first escape.” When the worst of the pain faded, I tried to stand. Ronya reached out to help me. I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
Sai watched me with that usual arrogant curiosity, clearly wondering what had happened inside.
The Master changed the exercise for the rest of them. He set a large canvas before us and ordered that we pull one another into Limbo, then paint whatever we created there—while also learning to control the body of the other. Arvin refused the test.
The Master paired me with Sai, and Ronya with Reny. Connecting with Sai was… difficult. Not truly difficult—he simply made it so. His mind was blunt, stubborn, limited in the way a clever animal’s might be. He resisted simply for the sake of resisting. I pulled him into Limbo.
The sensation was strange—almost intoxicating. It felt as though I held complete control over him, as if he were a figure inside a vast playground and I stood above it, free to reshape whatever I wished. All we needed was a measure of coordination so that we could also seize control of the physical body and paint.
Sai began with winter. Endless white. “Too pale,” I murmured, and started turning the snow to green. The color vanished at once, as if the brush had been ripped from my hand. Everything returned to white.
“I thought we were supposed to work together,” I said. “You’re ruining it,” Sai snapped. “I suspect I’m somewhat better at this than you.” (I had clearly underestimated him.) He continued building a winter forest. I tried to give it depth and realism the look of a true blizzard swept woodland—but every time I reached for the image, he shoved me back.
At last my patience broke. I hurled him into the snow. Sai answered by burying the entire world in white, thick enough that I could no longer see what he was doing. Then, suddenly, he stopped.
He stood perfectly still and looked at me. The old arrogance was gone from his eyes. In its place burned a quiet, focused anger. Wind rose. Mist began to coil and move. I tried to still the wind, but a barrier had settled over his entire realm. Nothing I did could pierce it. He poured every ounce of his strength into holding that shield, staring at me the entire time.
I almost smiled. He was finally showing what he could do. Yet something about the look in his eyes had changed again. The arrogance returned, sharper now. He was trying to seize greater control. From outside, the Master observed.
“As always, you two insist on being stubborn… and yet you find the fastest path forward. You may defend against the other’s mental intrusion while still attempting to leave. But understand—this drains your focus. You will not be able to act freely while holding the barrier.” His words settled in my mind.
If I wanted to break that shield, I would have to rise above Sai’s level entirely. He had earned a greater investment of my strength. I gathered everything I had and struck the barrier with a massive mental blow. The first impact left only a hairline crack. The second widened it.
Sai staggered, but the shield held. Fear flickered in his eyes. He turned toward the Master’s voice. “How far may we go?” “As far as your mind will allow,” the Master answered. A thin smile touched Sai’s lips. He released the shield—and chained himself to the ground of his own world.
My third strike shattered the barrier with a sound like breaking ice. In that exact instant, something pulled at my attention. Ronya and Reny had finished their trial. Ronya was walking toward us, her face tight with worry.
That single moment of distraction was enough. The shield collapsed completely. But instead of an open, controllable space, a black vortex erupted from the heart of Sai’s realm. It tried to swallow everything. Sai remained anchored by his chains; the vortex could not take him. It took me instead. I fought to hold my ground, but my focus had not fully returned. I felt my body itself being dragged. The wall between our minds tore open, and I was flung through. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer above him. I stood beside him. In a shared Limbo.
Sai was breathing hard, yet a short, bitter smile crossed his face. For the first time, we were truly equal. The Master’s calm voice reached us from outside: “You have discovered a new system. You succeeded in dragging your opponent inside. Now you understand—neither of you holds absolute power here. Only true strength of will can dominate the other… or both of you will be pulled down together.”
I looked at Sai.
What now?
He was still struggling for breath, yet he tried to bind me with the same chains. Black, frost-covered links erupted from the ground and reached for my wrists. Before they could lock, I tore them free from the earth and spun them around me. The heavy chains whirled through the air like metal lashes, striking one another with cold, ringing impacts that echoed across the Limbo.
Sai leapt upward and tried to collapse the ground beneath my feet, seeking to drag me into a black pit. I hurled the chains at him. He twisted aside, but one struck his shoulder and sent him tumbling.
As I fell, I formed a broad slab of ice beneath me and landed hard upon it. Before I could rise, Sai dropped from above and drove me into the ground. His hands locked around my head as he tried to force me deeper into his own Limbo. “It’s time you learned you’re not always the best,” he growled. The moment he reached for my mind, I summoned the sun again and blinded him. Then I drove my forehead into his face. Something cracked. Sai reeled backward. I stood.
“I see you’re finally using that head of yours,” I said. “Unfortunately, it still isn’t enough.”
I hauled him up and launched him skyward, then met him in the air with a kick to the stomach that sent him crashing down. The great sheet of ice split beneath the impact. Sai rose again, gasping, his body already failing. The storm and the mist thickened until I could barely see. Something unseen shot toward me. I caught it with a chain. A second projectile followed an icicle that punched through the flesh between my forearm and wrist, lodging deep in the joint of my elbow. Pain exploded up my arm. Control of my left hand faltered; the agony threatened to scatter my focus. Suddenly he was behind me, arms locking around my neck, trying to break it. I threw myself forward and hurled him over my shoulder. We crashed together again, grappling. The storm howled louder under his will. “No,” I said. “Enough.”
A vast wave of heat erupted from my body. Snow vanished in an instant. The storm melted into steam. Sai was flung several meters backward, sliding across the ground until his back struck a frozen tree. The Limbo around us was no longer his, nor mine. It had fractured patches of his winter forest standing beside stretches of dark stone and faint, stubborn light. Blood ran freely from both of us. The Master pulled us out.
The pressure of the sudden extraction slammed us to the floor of the real world. We lay there, staring at each other, chests heaving. Together, almost in the same breath, we spoke:
“This isn’t over.”