The pristine, punishing silence of the mountains was no longer just a backdrop for training; it had become an amplifier for every thought, every doubt, every unresolved tension the three of them had carried from home. For days, they had immersed themselves in Master Kim’s rigorous, mind-emptying regimen. They moved in slow, deliberate patterns under the vast sky, their bodies hardening, their movements gaining a new, economical fluidity. But the core instruction, to still the mind’s turbulent water remained a maddening paradox. How could you consciously strive for unconsciousness?Ali, in particular, struggled. His mind was an engine; to ask it to idle was to ask it to cease being itself. One morning, he woke before dawn, a restless energy coiled in his chest. He slipped out of the shared room while Marwan and Laith still slept and went for a solitary run, not on the trail, but through the sleeping village, his footsteps the only sound in the frozen world. As the sky lightened to a p