The old man's palm cracked across Ren's chest like a flat lesson.
Air spilled from Ren's lungs and he tasted grit.
The cliff wind chewed at his hair while Hano's silence tightened into an instruction.
"Again," Hano said, voice like a hammer on cooled metal.
"Not for glory. For the hand that holds the hammer."
Ren pushed up, knuckles white, and lunged into the next drill.
The world narrowed to breath and joint.
"You call yourself a disciple?" Hano asked between repetitions, never looking pleased.
His forge was gone, but his rhythm remained.
"I—" Ren tried to catch breath. "I'm not a disciple. I need to learn to move."
"You already know how to break things," Hano said, tapping Ren's forearm where pale scars still lived.
"You don't know how to hold them together."
Hano's hands were deceptively light as he showed Ren the basics.
"Clouds cut one way," the master murmured, palm striking a practice post so that the post thrummed.
"You move like a falling stone. We teach the stone to ride wind."
"Why the cloud style?" Ren asked, chest heaving.
Hano spat a little; the salt of old sea breath.
"Because we live on edges. Because our blows must be soft and end hard. Because the beast inside you is a hammer—learn to be the hand."
Ren fell into the grind—endless, small corrections.
Hano ignored Ren's draconic strikes.
"The beast breaks," Hano said once.
"The hand keeps us living after we fight."
Between strikes there was talk.
"Your father swung a different way," he said once, not unkind.
"Left his notes, left his tools. You have his stubbornness; that is not a bad inheritance if you learn restraint."
Ren's fingers kept finding the pendant at his throat.
The scar under his jaw twitched in time with Hano's beat.
Nights slid into repair: Ren and Kira side by side, hands numb.
They hammered and spoke sparse words so sadness didn't grow a language.
"You're strong," Kira said once, hand steady on a rivet.
"You just—move like you're waiting to be crushed."
"You fix wings," Ren grunted, tightening a strap.
"Teach me to move so I can come back and fix more."
Kira's laugh was a short friction.
"Fine. But don't come back with horns bigger than my toolbox."
He worked until muscle memory buried itself in tendon.
Each night Ren slept hollow and wakeful.
Hano's training followed a clean, brutal logic.
"Breathe from the belly," he said, demonstrating a footwork pattern that made Ren's knees whisper protest.
"When they aim for joints, you answer with knees that won't fold. When they strike, you move the space."
"Move the space?" Ren echoed once.
"Yes." Hano's palm struck his thigh.
"Make your opponent miss the man and meet the air. Use the ground. Use the ropes. Use the clouds. And when you strike—strike where it stops."
Hands bled.
Sweat stung his eyes.
Each repetition hollowed out a part of the old, clumsy movement.
The beast inside him still wanted to hammer; Hano taught the hand instead.
"You have the kind of durability they envy," Hano admitted one dust-choked evening.
"But durability without grace makes a corpse of stamina. Learn to be lithe."
Ren's ribs ached where earlier fights had bitten him.
He stumbled once and Hano did not scold.
"Pain is a teacher with a harsh voice," the master said. "Listen, don't obey."
Kira watched from the workbench, chewing a rag between her teeth.
When Ren flowed through a sequence clean, she clapped hands once.
"See? Less like a falling rock. Less likely to snap a wing."
"At least you can solder and fight," Ren panted, laughing despite the rasp.
"The perfect man would be hated by mechanics," Kira shot back.
Days slipped.
Repairs finished.
The glider's seams held.
The village's edges mended.
On the last evening before departure, Li came by with a slow gravity in his step.
He held a small pair of bracelets, light metal polished with a lifetime of hands.
"These were from your father's first hull," Li said.
"Leftover alloy. Light, but honest. Wear them so you remember the ground."
Ren slid them on and the metal fit as if measured to his bone.
The bracelets were not armor; they were a promise.
Kira stood close, silent.
Her fingers found Ren's sleeve for a spare second and then left.
"You come back," she said, succinct as a vow.
"Not as a legend. Come back as the idiot who owes me a new wing."
Ren offered a crooked grin.
"I'll come back," he said.
They walked to the dock at dusk, ropes and tools slung like neutral flags.
Lin's odd skiff waited, patched balloons bobbing like lazy fish.
Hano slapped Ren's shoulder once with the flat of his hand.
"Don't swing the hammer like a stove lid," he grumbled. "Use the hand."
Li held Ren's gaze, thumb tapping the pendant lightly.
"Remember the map. Remember the journal. Do not hand your name to men who trade in relics."
Kira hugged him in a way that none of them could see as anything but practical.
"If you get sentimental, I'll unzip you and see what's inside."
Ren felt the weight of every small thing.
The Echo pulsed soft and patient at the edge of his mind.
He turned to find Kira absent from the cluster of send-off faces.
She wasn't among the hands that pushed the skiff.
He looked along the moored glider and then to the hull of his small craft.
There, on the bench nearest his pack, a neat parcel waited, tied with a strip of leather.
He untied it with quick fingers.
Inside lay a pendant—metal cast to mimic the fossil scale.
At its center a small, clever mechanism clicked faintly when tilted.
A scrap of paper lay folded beneath it.
His eyes skimmed her handwriting, crooked and blunt.
"This is a tuner. It adjusts the energy emission. Don't be a beacon, be a shadow. And come back, you idiot."