Axiom’s training protocols (circa 2789–2810 Galactic Standard) were not about skill acquisition in any conventional sense. Instead, “trainees” underwent — a process designed to strip away extraneous personality layers until only a “pure decision engine” remained.
Day 14’s central trial was the mirror pool, a basin of obsidian water that reflected not one’s face but the sum of all practiced motions. Here the Aegis tested not merely muscle memory but the integration of will. Each trainee stood at the pool and was told to enact their perfect defense against an imagined strike, and the water answered with images: some clear, some warped. The pool showed what one’s body knew and what the mind still fled from. the training of oamber rayne day 14 5115 51 updated
He wrapped his hands with the same worn linen that had seen countless drills and a dozen different instructors. The linen carried old knowledge: the scent of sweat, the scrape against armor, the faint memory of blood that had dried and been forgotten. Oamber tightened the wrap until the tension matched his pulse, steadying himself as he always did before the first exercise. Today’s ledger in his head listed the metrics: endurance, precision, reflex, and the one they never named loudly — resolve. Here the Aegis tested not merely muscle memory