Mateo had never reflected on the mechanisms that created fire. Even so, when Salda began to explain the process, he... knew. Not with clarity, but with a raw, almost primitive intuition—as if his body remembered something his mind did not yet understand.

Salda, perceiving this, decided it was time for the next step. To use the Death Blessing's fire—a dark fire that did not warm, but consumed—Mateo first needed to master the foundation: classic elemental fire manipulation. This required refined control of Ki, not just internally, but externally.

"To create fire, you need more than energy," said Salda, sitting before him with a flame floating calmly over her palm. "You need to understand how to provoke combustion. The air is full of oxygen. And oxygen... burns. But only when stimulated in the right way."

She explained: channel Ki out of the body, envelop it with oxygen, and then, with immense concentration, compress a portion of the air to the point of forcing atomic separation—a micro-explosion that created enough heat to initiate combustion. A process nearly impossible for beginners, but not for Mateo.

"Try with your hands first. It's where your Ki flow is most present and stable," she said, handing him a thin sheet of parchment paper.

And then she left him to practice.

For an entire month, Mateo locked himself in his own obsession. He would sit in the garden or the meditation room, with the leaf in the palm of his hand, trying, failing, trying again. His fingers trembled. Sometimes, he managed to make the paper warm up. Other times, nothing happened. But he didn't stop.

On a quiet night, the sky hidden by clouds, Mateo sat in his usual spot, panting and frustrated. The paper rested between his fingers, already crumpled and worn. But there was something different about that night. He didn't force it. He just felt.

His Ki flowed like a dance. He focused on a point in the center of his palm and pushed the air out with precision. Compressed it. The heat grew. A spark appeared.

Boom.

The leaf burned up in seconds, turning to ash in his hand. He recoiled, both frightened and amazed at the same time.

"I... did it," he whispered, as if afraid of waking the gods.

From that moment on, his progress was meteoric. Two days later, he could already form small flaming spheres spinning between his fingers. Salda, seeing this, crossed her arms, satisfied.

"Now you can throw them. And later... you'll be able to imbue that fire into your sword. Mold the flames to your style."

Mateo laughed, tired but happy.

"Like 'Mateo, the kid who will set his enemies on fire until they turn to dust.'"

While Mateo immersed himself in the world of fire, Salda turned her attention to Nai. Unlike the boy, whose blessing carried violence and darkness, Nai exuded a kind of energy that was alive, serene... but no less powerful. Her blessing was that of life—and, paradoxically, she wanted to learn to fight, to injure, and even to kill, if necessary. It was this contradiction that made her so unique.

"Let's duel," Salda said one afternoon, handing a wooden sword to Nai. "I want to see how you move. Don't think. Just feel."

Nai nodded. She was no longer the frightened little girl from months ago. The pain of loss still lived in her eyes, yes, but there was also something new there—a quiet determination. A purpose that grew with each dawn.

The first clash was almost a dance. Salda attacked with measured precision, and Nai responded with light, almost feline movements. She didn't follow a traditional style. Since the beginning of her training, Nai had begun to mold her own way of fighting—a fusion of evasion, fluidity, and sudden bursts of speed. It was as if she floated around her opponent, waiting for an opening that only she seemed to see.

"You don't fight like someone who wants to kill," commented Salda after the third duel. "But you also don't fight like someone who just wants to survive. You dance between the two."

"I don't want to kill, teacher," Nai replied, firmly. "But I want to protect. And, if I must... cut."

Salda smiled, surprised by the maturity of the answer.

"Then learn to cut without hesitation. Because the enemy won't."

In the following days, the training intensified. Salda taught direct thrusts, diagonal defenses, ways to redirect the opponent's weight and use Ki to reinforce tendons and muscles in the joints. Nai absorbed it all with a silent hunger. And in the midst of it all, she found time to experiment with her own steps, her fluid combinations. She spun her body at improbable angles, used the environment to her advantage, took short jumps with soft landings. Sometimes, Salda would just watch, arms crossed, as if seeing a new school of combat being born before her eyes.

"This style... is yours alone. Give it a name when you feel it's ready," she suggested one night. "A true warrior knows who they are by the way they wield their blade."

Nai didn't reply. But that night, she sat for hours in silence, looking at the wooden sword leaning against the wall.