The Peak of the Solstice was not just the highest point in the North; it was a "thin place" where the veil between reality and the primordial soup of existence was transparent. The old man, whose name remained a secret held by the mountain itself, didn't start the training with swords or spells. He started it with a question that felt like a burial. He asked Mushi who he thought he was, claiming that the boy named Mushi died the moment he stepped into this world. He told him that what stood before him was a hollow shell filled with a stolen hunger, and he challenged him to consider what would remain if his rage and his memories were stripped away.
Mushi didn't answer immediately, feeling a surge of indignation. He argued that his memories defined him and his rage was his fuel. The old man laughed, a sound like dry bones rattling in a jar, and told him that his rage was actually his leash. He explained that as long as Mushi remained leashed, he would be a slave to those who had hurt him. He commanded Mushi to sit, declaring that the first battle was not against the demons of the Cathedral, but against the ghost of the boy who had allowed himself to be broken.
The old man placed a small, cracked obsidian bowl on the ground between them, filled with a liquid that didn't reflect the sky, appearing darker than the night itself. He commanded Mushi to stare into the "Void-Well" and not to look away until he saw the truth of his own nothingness. As Mushi looked into the liquid, the world around him began to dissolve. The emerald sun, the snow-capped peaks, and even the presence of the old man vanished. He felt himself falling, not through space, but through the corridors of time.
Suddenly, he was back in his old world, feeling the cold, damp concrete of the alleyway behind his school. He felt the sting of the rain on his face and the familiar, agonizing ache in his ribs. Above him stood the shadows of his bullies, their faces blurred by time but their voices crystal clear, calling him a waste of space and questioning why he even bothered to breathe. He felt the old "Miserable" Mushi trembling inside him. He wanted to scream, to unleash the Void and turn these phantoms into ash, but he realized with a shock that he had no power in this mental landscape. He was once again a defenseless boy.
For hours that felt like decades, Mushi was forced to relive every humiliation and every moment of starvation he had ever endured. The old man's voice echoed in the darkness of his mind as a relentless commentator, telling him that he carried these memories like treasures to justify his hunger. He pointed out that Mushi had embraced his suffering because it was the only thing that felt real, making "Misery" his entire identity. He warned that as long as he remained "Mushi the Miserable," the Void would only be a hiding place rather than a power to command.
Mushi watched as the phantoms of his past began to morph into the forms of Sovereign Solarius and the demons who had taken Raima. They laughed with the same cruel voice, suggesting that he wasn't trying to save her out of love, but because he wanted to prove he wasn't a failure. The words cut deeper than any blade, and Mushi felt his will eroding. The Void energy within him began to turn inward, starting to consume his own consciousness in a terrifying collapse.
In the depths of this psychological torment, Mushi reached a breaking point. Instead of fighting the phantoms or shielding himself from the pain, he leaned into the nothingness. He whispered to the darkness that if he was truly nothing, then their insults had no target, and if he had no identity, their history had no weight. He decided that if they called him a waste of space, he would become the space itself, and if he was a failure, he would be the end of all success.
He looked at the phantoms with a terrifying, clinical indifference, realizing that the "Miserable Mushi" was just a story he had been telling himself—a story that could be ended. One by one, the phantoms began to flicker and dissolve as he withdrew the energy of his attention from them. The darkness of the obsidian bowl began to clear, and Mushi opened his eyes to find himself back on the Peak of the Solstice. His face was covered in a cold sweat, but his eyes had changed, replaced by a crystalline, obsidian-like stillness.
The old man watched him with a trace of respect, noting that Mushi had stayed in the Well longer than most. Mushi spoke, his voice sounding as if it came from a great distance, stating that the boy the old man spoke of was dead—not killed, but realized as an illusion. The old man nodded, taking the bowl away and explaining that Mushi had achieved "Mental Vacuity." He told him that his mind was now a clean slate that the demons would find impossible to manipulate.
Mushi stood up, feeling lighter yet infinitely heavier. His emotions hadn't vanished, but they were now tools rather than masters. The old man announced that the mental siege was over, but reminded him that the mind was merely a tenant in a house of clay. He warned that they must now see if his body could survive the pressure of the nothingness he had just embraced. He looked toward the Northern horizon, where the Hollow Cathedral waited like a mathematical certainty, and Mushi knew he was ready for the next layer of his unmaking.