Kieran studied him for a long moment, like he was sizing up a particularly stubborn piece of iron that refused to bend.

Whatever he saw in Phei's face—stubbornness, maybe, or the faint glow of someone who'd already stared death in the face and told it to fuck off—must have convinced him. A slow, predatory smile crept across Kieran's features. Not the warm, customer-service grin he'd been wearing all day.

This was the smile of a man who'd just been handed the keys to the torture chamber and told, "Go wild."

"Got it," Kieran said, voice low and almost gleeful. "One more thing before we start—we've got a full pharmacy-grade supplement line for residents. Pre-workout stacks that'll make your veins look like road maps, protein isolates purer than a nun's conscience, recovery boosters that laugh at DOMS. Top-shelf stuff. Some clients swear they see gains twice as fast."

He nodded toward a sleek very long glass cabinet that looked like it belonged in a sci-fi movie prop department. Rows of bottles glowed under soft LED lighting, each label screaming money and promises.

Phei didn't even glance at it. "Not interested."

Kieran blinked. Third time today the poor bastard had been caught off guard. He was probably mentally filing Phei under "weird teenage contrarian" or "future masochist."

"You sure? It's all included in your residence package. No extra charge."

"Positive." Phei shook his head like he was swatting away a fly. "No powders. No pills. No chemical shortcuts. I want my own rise."

Kieran tilted his head. "Your own rise?"

"I want to feel every gram of muscle I earn. Every drop of sweat. Every time my body screams and I tell it to shut up and keep going. I want to know I built this body with my own hands and blood, not some lab-grown shortcut that'll vanish the second I stop paying the subscription."

Kieran was quiet for a beat.

Then he laughed—real, surprised, almost delighted. "You know, most kids your age are begging for the quick fix. Hell, 99% of adults are too. They want the Instagram body without the Instagram effort. They'll chug the pre-workout, pop the creatine, and then wonder why they deflate like a punctured tire the moment they skip a dose."

He shook his head, still grinning. "You're a rare breed, Phei."

You have no idea.

"Gonna be a problem?" Phei asked.

"Problem?" Kieran's smile sharpened into something dangerous and approving. "Nah. It's gonna make my job harder. But it'll make your results mean something. Natural gains stick. They become part of you. The supplement crowd? They look like gods until they stop paying the toll, then they just… deflate."

"Then we're on the same page."

"We are." Kieran grabbed his clipboard again, pen already moving. "No shortcuts. No easy roads. Just you, the iron, and whatever pain you can swallow before it swallows you."

"Perfect."

"Let's see what you're made of, kid."

The smartwatch on Phei's wrist beeped softly, starting its recording like a referee's whistle.

In the corner of his vision, the system hovered, silent, patient, waiting for the show to start.

The Dragon Rise Routine was about to begin.

And Phei was going to make it count.

Even if I did just turn down training with the hottest woman I've ever seen in my entire goddamn life.

Conviction over temptation.

Conviction over temptation.

…Fuck, though. She really is spectacular.

He shook his head hard enough to rattle the thoughts loose and followed Kieran toward the assessment area.

No more distractions.

Time to build a dragon.

****

The assessment wasn't a workout. It was a public execution of Phei's dignity, performed live in front of a mirror that refused to ever lie.

Kieran began with the basics, like a doctor who'd already decided the patient was terminal. Resting heart rate: elevated. Blood pressure: slightly high. Flexibility: nonexistent. Phei couldn't touch his toes without bending his knees like a man trying to tie his shoelaces with his elbows.

"Tight hamstrings," Kieran observed, scribbling on the clipboard with the enthusiasm of someone documenting a crime scene. "Tight hip flexors. Tight everything. When was the last time you stretched?"

"Define 'stretched.'"

Kieran's pen paused. "That answers that."

Then came the strength gauntlet.

Push-ups first. Kieran demonstrated perfect form—back flat, core locked, descent smooth as silk. "As many as you can. Stop when you can't."

Phei dropped to the mat. Lowered. Pushed.

One.

Arms already quivering like a leaf in a hurricane.

Two. Three. Four.

By five, his chest was on fire. By seven, his triceps were screaming for mercy. By nine, he face-planted into the mat with the elegance of a sack of wet cement.

"Nine," Kieran said, tone so neutral it could've been used as a paint swatch. "That's… a starting point."

A starting point. What a diplomatic term for "you're functionally a noodle."

Sit-ups were next. Phei managed fourteen before his abs declared mutiny, cramping so violently he folded into the fetal position and made noises that belonged in a nature documentary about dying animals.

Pull-ups were a comedy of errors. Kieran guided him to the bar. Phei grabbed it, hung there like a forgotten coat, face going purple, body refusing to budge upward no matter how much he willed it. Thirty seconds of pure, futile dangle.

"Zero," Kieran announced after the spectacle. "But you've got a solid grip. That's… progress."

Solid grip. Wonderful. I can cling to a bar while my dreams of masculinity evaporate.

Cardio was the final nail. Treadmill. "Simple endurance test," Kieran called it. "Run until you can't."

Phei ran. For four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Then his lungs ignited, his legs turned to jelly, and he clutched the handrails like a drowning man to save himself from being yeeted off the back of the machine like a human cannonball.

"Four twenty-three," Kieran noted. "Average untrained is about six minutes."

Below average at being average. That's a new personal low.

When it was over, Kieran pulled up the results on a tablet. Graphs and charts that looked like stock market crashes.

"Good news," Kieran said, "you're young. Your body will adapt fast once we start. Bad news: you're starting from a deficit so deep it has its own zip code. Your baseline is what most people have after years of sitting on a couch eating regret."

Ten years of scrubbing floors and carrying trays doesn't build biceps. Who knew.

"So, what's the plan?"

Kieran's smile returned—the one that promised pain, delivered with a side of professional glee.

"Today? We establish your pain threshold."

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