My breath is soft, my heart is beating slowly—but louder than ever. Meanwhile my life is rushing past me, from my birth to all my adventures, my big fights, me playing with friends, my hard training—all of it. There aren’t many thoughts left in my head—only one, to be exact—to enjoy the experience. And so I controlled my breath, closed my eyes, and stayed seated. When I opened my eyes after the strange experience, I only saw white; all around me, it was white. At that moment, I realized that I was sitting in an undefined space. I could move all around; there was nothing like a bottom or top; there was nothing like a sense of time or space. So I started to go around and see the wonders of the place.

But after an eternity, nothing was to be seen; it was still the same white void around me as before. I started to feel lost, but I didn't panic, as the light kind of fascinated me and gave me the feeling of being protected.

I realized there was nothing to be afraid of here, and I was the only soul here, at least as far as I saw. So I began to seat myself in the void and think of a way out. While doing so, I fell into a state of meditation; my breath and heartbeat were slowed, and my mind was clearer than ever. After an undefined time I felt a punctual, warm sensation somewhere in my body, so I concentrated myself completely on the area. Even after more time passed, I still didn’t know what it was or even where it was. But at least the warm feeling got stronger and stronger.

After a seeming eternity of time passed, because this concept was lost in this place, I found the exact spot and reached out to it with my mind. Doing so, I felt the moment I was getting nearer—a burning sensation, but a good one. Then I felt, for a short moment, an unimaginable amount of energy before getting thrown out of my deep meditation.

At that moment, I awoke, drenched in my own sweat and but an exhausted expression on my face.

It was a weird dream; I could still feel my mind being blown away by the energy. The whole thing felt so damn real that it was hard for me to believe that it was just a dream without deeper meaning. I again tried to find the sensation, but I couldn’t feel anything, so I decided the dream had nothing to do with reality. Either way today was the day I had been waiting for so long. Today Nian and I will graduate, and we will have our last fight for a long, long while. I will go to the military, while Nian will study at the university in the capital of our country, where he will probably learn wizardry and to even fight better. While my training in the military will be focused on physical abilities, strategise and efficiency. I think we will see us again sometimes, but until then we both will be old.

Going to school today felt surreal; the time flew by like crazy. It feels like it was just yesterday that I walked this path with my parents for the first time. But now I, an all-grown-up boy, goes along here for the last time, with his parents at his sides–as they came to watch my graduation. This time, my younger siblings, who were also all part of the school, came along with them, as well as my old grandparents. My siblings were all talented, maybe not as much as I, but still a huge deal above average.

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Arriving at the school foreyard, I could see, like back then, a huge stage. Around it stood and seated many people. The headmaster stood upon the stage; next to him were the vice-principal and the class teachers of each graduating class. My class teacher stood at the side, being silent, while the other teacher spoke with each other. He reminded me a lot of Nian, with his way of being.

As I stepped on the school ground, I could already see my buddy Nian coming towards me. We greeted each other with a mocking look on our faces. As we shook hands, we both used a lot of force. Nian said, "It seems you got stronger” while smiling. I replied, “You too didn’t forgot your training." We then both laughed and went together to our seats.

Meanwhile, we had our little mock-battle. My parents went to the viewers seats and spoke with some of the people they knew. My younger siblings went over to the playground and kept themselves busy playing with the other kids.

The graduation began like planned at 9 o'clock; all the students arrived in time and no one was missing, which was a rare occasion as there were some dudes known for not attending important events.

The graduation went by as follows: firstly, there were speeches from all important persons, then the teachers would say name after name, and the guys who were called out entered one after another on the stage. There they would get their leaving certificate, with their score announced to all. For those who didn’t make it, they got no certificate and needed then to leave the stage. After all procedure was over, we students could challenge each other and fight on the stage. Then later on, there was a little party, only prepared for all who graduated successfully, where one could eat and drink as much as one wanted while enjoying music.

I was finally called on stage as one of the last people left, without their score. Nian had already gotten his score, which was really, really good—he had 92 points out of 100. Nervously, I stood before the little staircase leading up to the stage. Then I went up on the stage, as another student just came down, he looked kind of disappointed, even though he wasn’t half bad with a score of 74.

I stood before the headmaster; he looked intimidatingly at me while smiling and giving me the piece of paper. Then, before I dared to look, I heard my teacher announce my score: “90 points, congratulations." All the crowd applauded, then I went back to my parents and Nian, who stood beside them.

All my family was happy for me and congratulated me; they were all proud of me. At last, Nian got up to me, congratulated me, but then mocked me with his superior score, but I just replied, “We will see in a real fight who is better.” To this, he just said, “Yes, yes, we will see.”.

The results were all told, not long after I was on stage, as I was one of the last to come upon stage. Only half of the graduating class made it’s graduation, with an average of 70 points, so I was way better than most of them. This made me even happier, but the best part is that now that it is over I could fight Nian.

But before we got to fight, we both had some of our classmates challenging us. We couldn’t just decline them and fought them. So we warmed up on the challengers while defeating them one after another. There were many matches we weren't part of. Those were partly really interesting, as both partners were equal in strength, but sadly not every match was really good.