When he opened his eyes, the world was the same. But he was different. He had not conquered his mind. He had simply refused to be conquered by it.

He took a breath and tried an experiment. Instead of fighting the thought "I am failing," he imagined the thought as a wet leaf landing on the onyx. He saw the leaf land. He saw the stone not react. Then, he saw the leaf slide away.

For ten minutes, he just breathed. The thoughts still swirled, but he wasn't inside the swirl anymore. He was the stone at the bottom of the river, watching the current pass overhead.

Desperate, Kael sat on his floor, placed the onyx disc on his knee, and stared at it. He watched how it did not tremble. It did not argue with the light or the shadow. It simply was .