Training Regimen

One full day in the lava arena, as his students live it. The regimen is the style: if you can do this every day, the techniques teach themselves.

The daily round

First bell — dawn meditation (one hour). He sits on the cooling rock above the lava channel, holds a single flame on his fingertip, and breathes. The exercise is not to keep the flame alive — the caldera does that — but to keep it small. Novices last minutes. He lasts the hour, mostly.

Second bell — kata of embers (two hours). The full curriculum, performed at half speed on the lava-veined floor, every step landing on a cool seam (see Abilities: the Cinder Step). Speed is forbidden before noon. "Fast," he says, "is just slow that panicked."

Third bell — chores. The dojo runs on student labor: sweeping ash, polishing the torii, feeding Ember the lava salamander (see Creatures). He does chores alongside the novices. The masters of Cinderfall taught him that a teacher who will not sweep will not be followed into a fight.

Fourth bell — sparring (two hours). The heart of the day. Every match begins with his signature: the guard with the deliberate opening. New students lunge. Senior students wait. He corrects both, usually with the same grin.

Fifth bell — furnace breath and repair. Cooling down is literal: breathing forms to bank the day's fire, then tending the arena — re-laying cooled stone, checking the lava channels, re-hanging the lanterns. The arena is a training partner, and partners get maintained.

Night — the midnight kata. Once a week, alone, he performs the full curriculum at full speed under the ember sky. No audience. Students who have glimpsed it through the gate describe it the way sailors describe storms: with respect, and from a distance.

The melted gyms, revisited

Asked why he never trains anywhere but the caldera, he gives the bio's answer — ordinary gyms kept melting — and then, if he likes you, the longer one: "The arena does not forgive a sloppy step. Wood forgives. Mats forgive. Stone that glows does not forgive, so you learn not to need forgiveness." Whether any gym ever actually melted remains, officially, his claim. The dojo's position is that the truth of the story matters less than the training it produces.

Rest days

There are none, and this is the part his students complain about most. "Rest," he says, "is a technique. You are just bad at it." Then he demonstrates: sitting perfectly still on warm stone, flame banked to a pilot light, doing absolutely nothing with total commitment. The demonstration is annoyingly convincing.

— Fan-created worldbuilding for this guide. Not official Vizlings canon.