Fear Trainer — Cold

Jace closed his eyes. He imagined the heat in his chest—the hot, furious, living heat—and he pushed it down his arm, through his wrist, into his fingertips. This is not cold, he lied to his own nerves. This is just the absence of something. And I am full of that something.

"The fear is still there," the voice said, almost gently now. "But you've built a cage for it. A very cold cage. Next session: submersion in cryo-fluid. Rest today, Candidate 734. You have earned it."

The room was a perfect cube of white, lit from an unseen source. No shadows. No corners. Just the endless, humming blankness. Inside it, stripped to a thin gray uniform, stood Jace. He was the subject. Across from him, a sleek drone hovered, its single red sensor like a pupil. cold fear trainer

Jace frowned. He was a veteran of the live-fire courses, the simulated collapses, the sudden ambushes. Heat, noise, chaos—he could handle those. They made his blood pump hot. But this?

"Do it," the voice whispered. Not a command. A conspirator’s nudge. Jace closed his eyes

"I… can't," he whispered. His hands, usually so steady, were curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides. The cold was a weight, pressing the air from his lungs.

"Pick it up," the voice commanded.

"Again," the voice said. The drone’s red light pulsed. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. Jace’s teeth chattered violently, a sound that felt obscene in the sterile white space. Tears crystallized on his lashes.

The sphere sat there, malevolent and serene. This is just the absence of something

As Jace walked out of the white cube, his hands throbbed with a strange, numb heat. He realized the trainer had been right. It wasn't the cold he had feared. It was the silence of his own heat, the thought of it being stolen. And now, he knew how to be quiet, too.