Zander
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Chapter 110 – Meditation Beyond the Veil
🕑 Added 2025-07-11 08:43:29 +0000 UTCChapter 110 – Meditation Beyond the Veil
The days stretched quietly in the sun-bleached ruins of Rōran. Dust danced lazily through the air, catching the fading desert light as Hajime sat in silence atop a broken pillar near the heart of the city. Without battle or command, time passed slowly, peacefully. The chaos that once gripped the ancient land had given way to calm.
Sakura had slipped into a steady rhythm. She would wake early, gather what little food the desert offered, and spend the afternoons exploring the ruins with practiced caution. Her supplies were almost entirely weapons and combat tools, she hadn’t packed for survival. But somehow, they made do. Meals were simple. Water was rationed. And their conversations were light.
It wasn’t awkward. The silence between them was the kind that came from comfort, not tension. She would sometimes glance at him during the day, sitting unmoving like a statue near the energy well. And other times, he would watch her from a distance.
They weren’t teacher and student anymore. Not exactly comrades either. Something in between.
In the mornings, she often found Hajime already seated in meditation, his massive armored frame reflecting the golden light. But unlike before, his helmet now rested on a nearby slab of stone. With it removed, his face was exposed to the warm desert wind. His expression was always calm, eyes closed, breathing slow. He hadn’t said much these past few days. But he didn’t need to.
Sakura walked up one morning with a bundle of prickly fruit and dry root in her arms. “Still at it?”
Hajime gave a faint nod but didn’t open his eyes.
She sat nearby, quietly placing the fruit in a cloth pouch. “You know,” she said, “if you’re trying to out-sit the rocks, I think you’re winning.”
Still, no answer.
She smiled to herself and leaned back against the stone, letting the heat of the day settle in. Despite alone here with hajime, strangely she felt wanting the time to stop.
But Hajime wasn’t idle. His silence was just the surface.
In the depths of the immaterium, the Warp of this world, Hajime’s astral form drifted through endless light.
Here, thought became motion. Intention became law. Unlike the corrupted cesspit of the Warhammer Warp he remembered from his past memories, the Warp of this world felt untouched, unspoiled by hunger or gods. It was young. Pure. The possibilities stretched in every direction.
Hajime hovered in this endless sea, reaching with his mind and shaping the energy around him.
He began to mimic the structure of the Dragon Veins, the ancient energy lines beneath Rōran. He had studied them for weeks, traced their rhythms with his senses, and recorded every pulse. Now, in astral form, he recreated them. Not with chakra, but with raw psychic energy from the Warp.
A ring of floating light formed beneath him, strands of energy weaving through it like veins.
He watched, comparing its flow to the one he remembered. The result was close, but different.
The Dragon Veins pulled from the world’s life force. The Warp didn’t. It existed beyond matter, outside space, and time. That difference changed everything.
As Hajime pressed further, replicating the balance of time-space energy, the psychic plane around him began to ripple. He pushed harder, and the sensation deepened.
It was like standing on the edge of a cliff and realizing the sky had no bottom.
Then came the visions.
They weren’t dreams or memories. They were real. Distant. But real.
A boy wielding dual blades soared through the air, slashing at a colossal humanoid creature towering above a walled city.
A man walked alone in a broken city of gothic towers, coated in blood, under a bleeding moon.
A ship sailed across a sea so wide it might never end, its captain with a straw hat and a grin that defied gravity.
A man in red and gold flew between towers of steel and glass, a beam of light trailing behind him.
Each vision burned into Hajime’s mind, flashes of lives and places he had never seen before. But they weren’t figments.
They were echoes.
He steadied himself, focusing his will to retreat before the storm of vision overwhelmed him.
The Warp wasn’t just a tool.
It was a gateway.
He could feel it now. With enough Warp energy channeled for an hour or two, he could pierce the wall that separated this world from another. Not just through time, but to alternate dimensions.
He could traverse the multiverse.
But he didn’t.
Not yet.
Because there were people here he cared about. Dangers still lurked in this world. And if he left for too long, the balance could be lost. Sakura, Shizune, Tsunade, and many more, too many threads still tied him to this place. So for now, he stayed.
His body shuddered once as his mind snapped back to reality.
Hajime’s eyes opened slowly. The blue glow of psychic energy faded from them, leaving only calm behind. He sat still for a moment, his breath evening out. His helmet sat to his right, untouched.
The wind picked up slightly, and the ruins around him hummed with old energy.
He looked up toward the broken sky above the tower.
“I’m close,” he whispered, mostly to himself.
Sakura appeared from one of the side paths, holding a wooden stick with roasted desert meat skewered on it. She looked slightly dusty but content.
“Lunch,” she said, handing it to him. “Might be a little dry.”
Hajime took the stick and looked at it for a moment. “You’re adapting.”
“I have to. All I packed were medical scrolls and explosives.” She smirked, taking a seat beside him.
They ate quietly for a moment. Sakura didn’t ask any questions about his meditation or the strange glow that sometimes surrounded him. She had learned that some things, with Hajime, didn’t need explanation.
They sat side by side, under the desert sun. The ruins of a lost city around them. Nothing to chase. No one to fight.
Just for now.
And above them, the world spun silently… while the Warp whispered beyond the stars.
End of Chapter 110
