What exactly separates the battle instincts of a beginner from a master?
Or one skilled from another unskilled?
Or a newbie from a veteran?
Many would confidently say it's strength.
Or ability.
Or even knowledge and understanding of the battlefield.
And they would all be wrong.
Because those are traits governed by normal, controllable logic—factors that can be trained, calculated, or measured.
Instinct, however, is different.
Instinct is raw.
It is something primal and unbidden, closer to an animal's pulse than a scholar's reason. It is the invisible hand of survival, carved into the soul by countless brushes with mortality—by skirting the very edge of oblivion again and again until the mind learns to see the unseen.
Instinct is like an unspoken contract with nature.
An inheritance from ancestors who knew, without understanding why, to flinch from the rustle in the tall grass.
Who knew, without needing to see teeth, that certain shadows carried death.
