"There are lessons in simulation, and lessons you bleed for. Today, both were on display." He eyed the cohort, and Soren had the uncanny sense that the Swordmaster saw not just individuals, but the pattern underneath, all the error, repetition, and occasional, accidental grace.

He called out Aria for making a "tactical withdrawal" after injury. He cited Kale for "tactical improvisation," which everyone took as code for breaking things not meant to be broken. He named the twins "force multipliers," a turn of phrase that left them beaming at each other and then pretending they hadn't.

When he turned to Soren, he didn't state a critique, only let the silence pile up. Every eye in the room drifted to Soren, then away, then back, until it became obvious what was demanded.

"He advanced without signal, sir," Soren said, keeping his hands behind his back.

Dane's mouth twitched. "And your response?"

Soren didn't say it, didn't need to. The cut on his arm, still visibly bandaged, spoke louder than any answer.

Dane nodded, then shifted focus. "Next time, make your intention clear before you escalate. If you must escalate, end it so no one else can pay the price." For a moment, Soren heard nothing but the click and grind of the wall clock above, the sound measured and absolute.

The instructors filed out, leaving the cohort in the centrifugal quiet of the aftermath.

Kale touched Soren's shoulder, just once. "I'll buy you a drink when they allow us liquor. Or a decent sleep, if that comes first." He left without waiting for a reply. The twins giggled together, whispering a running recap of the fight; the transfer, Jannek, already wore a new bandage like it was a war medal.

Soren waited for the room to empty before approaching Seren, who stood by the window, watching the mist settle over the yard.

"I think you did well," she said, voice so dry it might have blown away in the wind if not for the conviction in it.

"You saw it," Soren said, nodding toward the field.

She shrugged, neat and economical. "We all saw it." She paused, then: "It's different than the theory. Out there, you either finish first, or the world finishes you."

He looked at her, tried to gauge if this was comfort or critique, but could not tell. Didn't matter. He had the echo of the fight still bouncing through his head. He pressed the bandage hard, felt the warmth bleed into the cold, and tried to decide which sensation to trust.

"Same time tomorrow?" Seren asked, not looking at him.

"Sure," Soren said.

He let the rhythm set in, the routine sharpening itself around the points of injury and near-misses.

He wondered, idly, what it would take for the instructors to stop calling it "training" and admit what it was.

That evening, he lay on his bunk, arm stretched out raw and gleaming in the lamplight. He let the weight of exhaustion push him flat, bones soaked in the dregs of adrenaline and a rising, gnawing need for stillness.

The corridor outside sang with muffled laughter, boots clapping, arguments already brewing over the retelling of the morning's battle. Through the half-closed window, the air smelled like night rain and wet stone.

He thought back over every movement: Cassian's lunge, the counter, the shock of metal on flesh, the sound of his own breath forced out through gritted teeth.

He remembered the empty look on Cassian's face at the end, and the strange charge of recognition that had passed between them in those seconds spent fighting for more than the scoreboard.

He should have felt pride, maybe. Instead, he felt a kind of vertigo: at how close the edge was, how thin the line between method and letting something older take the lead.

The hollow ache in his hand pulsed in time with the rhythm at his chest. The shard in his ribcage hummed, not a warning this time but a simple, ceaseless reminder.

"Keep it contained," he murmured to the ceiling, wondering if Valenna, or someone else, was listening.

From outside, the Spire's evening bells tolled the hour, slow and immense. Soren let the sound roll over him, one peal at a time, until sleep caught him up and drilled his memory through with the shape of fight, the shape of blade, and the shape of the person he was supposed to become.

The next three days wound up like a coil: more drills, more sparring, doubled runs through mist and mud until Soren's hands shredded and rebuilt new skin just in time to get cut again.

Cassian staged a comeback, of course, and Soren responded not by repelling but by absorbing, matching every escalation with containment, until it became sport for the others to guess who'd walk away the least maimed.

After each exercise, the instructors posted the new rankings. Each time, Soren's name locked at the top, Cassian's always directly beneath, the twins and Seren climbing incrementally. No mention of the cuts, the bruises, the cost.

One night, Soren found himself at the refectory just before close, the place empty except for the cleaner's cart and the clatter of saucepans in the kitchen.

–

At dawn, the courtyard stilled itself, every wall, window, and flagstone slab leaching the last night's rain into a uniform chill that had the effect of glassing over the world. Even the birds, for whom time was currency, only chirped in brief, uncertain snippets.

Soren stood in the third row from the front, boots slick and eyes dry, the pre-briefing cold clamped around his calves like a manacle. Each breath condensed and vanished before it could be admitted as evidence.

Dane stood in armor, top half only, hair left unbound so that in the dead gray of early light it made him look less like a Swordmaster and more like someone who'd woken from a worse dream than anyone else assembled.

He rapped a baton against the central pillar as if testing the soundness of its foundation, then let the stick hang at his side. The circle of instructors behind him, Verrin, Hest, and the woman who was either the new warden or the old strategist from two cycles back, were all in field dress, weathered and waterproofed, faces set against the wind.

"Two companies," Dane announced, not projecting his voice so much as letting it roll out and settle where it would. "Blue and Gray will conduct a timed field exercise. Objective: secure and defend the central nave at Edge Hollow. Breach, then hold. Real steel, dulled at the point. No armor but what you bring yourselves. Medical protocols in effect."

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