Morning on the fourth day on the road, Dain once again found himself running through a forest from Sahlir’s serpentine blade, ducking wide cleaves that would’ve split him from collarbone to hip. The blade tore into a few nearby trunks instead, leaving jagged scars that’d most definitely be misinterpreted as a beast sharpening their claws on the trees, because that was just how ferocious Sahlir’s swings were.

  ‘No wings. No relics. No tricks.’

  ‘Disarm me.’

  Sahlir had said that with the sincerity of a priest and the cruelty of a butcher, and Dain hated that the hawkkin had managed to make that sentence sound like a fair deal. He sprinted between two more trees, skidded slightly on frost-damp soil, and the serpentine blade carved through the hanging vines he rushed through like they were simple threads.

  Of course, Sahlir didn’t shout at him. Didn’t taunt him. The hawkkin weren’t known to do that sort of thing. Sahlir simply kept stepping after him, shoulders loose, wrist rotating and flicking in that smooth, wind-drawn pattern that was almost mesmerizing to look at. It was almost... beautiful.

  Almost.

  As Sahlir’s blade snapped toward his chest again, he twisted aside, scanning the forest for what he was looking for.

  … When Stonewraith was first brought to the town, her first thought was that the town would never see sunlight.

  The Ironshade Corps called the town ‘Cantalya’, just a few fields north of Braskir and nestled deep within the woods. It was small enough to hide its existence from the rest of Obric. The overhead canopy was thick enough to block off all sunlight. No roads reached here, a place of low roofs and quiet chimneys and an even quieter population of purely Ironshade Corps trainees. That was all twenty of them at this point in time.

  This morning, Stonewraith and Gargantyr fought in the lantern-lit town square, sweat on their throats, dirt on their knees, breaths fogging in the cold. Their hairs were bound up tight and their clothes form-fitting like never before, minimizing inefficiency in movements. They carried blades custom-forged for them, minimizing imbalance in offensive and defensive form. They’d eaten their first healthy breakfast in years, because they needed that—and everything else they’d been given—to not die in this very first training session of theirs.

  Across the square stood their master. Stonewraith didn’t know his real name. She didn’t know any trainee’s real name, for that matter, but their master even more so. He looked like a man who could be forgotten if she glanced away: average height, average coat, average boots, and an average iron mask with no holes for eyes. He called himself ‘Golu’, as was his codename, and in his hand was a metal sword with a dull sheen, held loose.

  “Again,” Golu said.

  The sisters charged. It wasn’t a sloppy one. It was beyond fast, beyond coordinated, and it was the kind of synchronized violence that would’ve killed any normal Auraline soldier. They came from opposite angles, blades up, teeth gritted—

  And Golu shifted one foot. He flicked the back of his blade at Gargantyr’s leg, and she went down with a cry, tumbling into a roll. Stonewraith grimaced and tried to adjust mid-lunge, angling for a quicker hit, but Golu side-stepped that easily—shoulders gliding as though he simply floated out of the way—and whacked her on the back of her head with the hilt of his blade.

  She hit the ground with a pained cry, and the two of them were down for the count once again.

  “You cannot rely on the strength of your relics alone,” Golu said, tilting his head and staring eerily down at the two of them as they struggled to crawl up. “When push comes to shove, and if both combatants have a weapon-type relic of similar strength, it will come down to how well you use it—and yourself.”

  Golu lifted his blade again, commanding them to get up.

  “Again.”

  The sisters spat blood. They pushed themselves up. They were furious, and they charged him again.

  “... The Seven Founding Swordstyles are the roots of all derivative Swordstyles across the world, having cemented themselves with techniques and philosophies that have withstood the tests of time,” he said, poising his blade before him calmly. “Those who shall fight as the Ironshade Corps must learn the basics of all seven, at the very least, before you worship one and drill its mastery into your bones. You must learn each style's strengths, weaknesses, and perhaps more importantly, their favorable and unfavorable matchups. Knowledge will decide whether you live or die.”

  As they neared him, Golu suddenly took a wide stance and steadied himself with bent, parted knees.

  “The Crownward Swordstyle. Measured, authoritative techniques designed for teamwork. Zone control. Guard dominance. Punish overcommitment. It is the oldest of the Seven Founding Swordstyles, first devised by the Templars of the Curator Church in Era Hurasi.”

  As Gargantyr tried to shoulder-bash him so Stonewraith could get a hit in with his defense lowered, Golu simply stood firm and slashed forward with both hands, a strike so strong and fierce he forced Gargantyr to block and retreat. Her blade cracked from the strike.

  “The Silverthread Swordstyle. Elegant fencing. Pinpoint thrusts. Graceful footwork and devastating precision. It was first devised by the Court Duelists in the Forums of Thalassene as a practice style for nobility. They failed to realize a Swordstyle is a Swordstyle nevertheless.”

  Stonewraith tried to get a hit in from behind anyways, ignoring her elder sister’s fall, but Golu pivoted, deflected her blade with a simple, elegant flick of his wrist, and stabbed the tip of her earlobe. Her breath hitched on a curse as she staggered back.

  “The Galewind Swordstyle. Flowing, circular slashes that ride momentum like a storm. The Storm Nomads of Rahka were great hunters of the sky. Without a Swordstyle that could match up to the sky beasts’ speed, they would have starved and died out centuries ago.”

  The sisters attempted a simultaneous pincer attack again. Left and right, blades scissoring, feet digging in, rage in their shoulders. Golu didn’t retreat. His sword moved like wind, the back of it hammered Gargantyr’s jaw in one swift motion, and then it smoothly pivoted to catch Stonewraith in the ribs. Both of them went down again… or so they wanted him to believe.

  As they both doubled over, they blind-charged him from opposite directions again, aiming for a grapple.

  “The Cindergrasp Swordstyle. Grappling. Extremely close-quarters. The Anfaq Milishia of the Akhemir Continent created it in collapsing tunnels and burning mine shafts. Where swords are too long and space is too tight, you can only rely on your body to save yourself.”

  He stabbed his blade into the ground, lowered his body, and grappled both of them at the same time.

  Stonewraith blinked. Gargantyr blinked. The man was impossible to budge.

  “The Phantomstep Swordstyle. Deception and misdirection. False steps. Mirrored movements. They say, quite surprisingly, that it was the Vanisharium Troupe that first devised this manner of combat. Far be it for literal clowns and jesters to fight better than trained assassins, but they do say, after all, that anything is possible in a circus.”

  And then Golu suddenly vanished between the two of them, making them charge into each other. They both hit their foreheads, making them wince and look around in a panic.

  But Golu was above them, falling, and by the time they looked up, he’d already snapped his metal blade into two daggers.

  “The Fangclaw Swordstyle. Favoring two weapons for hunting beasts. Rapid lunges, tearing blows. Nobody is quite sure who devised it or where it came from, but if I have to guess… a lowly insectkin from Huanchong, perhaps. No man is more ferocious than a man treated and stamped upon like a bug.”

  He slashed both daggers down in a cross, and it was like his slashes were so powerful they sent out wind blades ahead of them, cutting their forearms and drawing blood. They both backed away before he could take off the top of their heads, and he landed with four limbs on the ground.

  Then, to their surprise yet again, he dropped both of his daggers.

  “Finally, the Stonehorn Swordstyle. Sturdy, relentless charges and crushing head-on strikes. It was devised by the late King of Kamengrad during the First Demonic Incursion in Era Nakri. A pity that Kamengrad fell in the end. I would have liked to see how the King would have continued to develop his techniques.”

  Without ceremony, without fanfare, Golu dashed forward and launched a punch straight at Gargantyr’s face, cracking cheek and bone and sending her flying back.

  “Elder sister—” Stonewraith shouted, but she shouldn’t have. Golu slammed one foot into the ground to completely halt his forward momentum, then reversed it, dashing straight at her instead.

  She lifted both blade and arm to block, bracing for the inevitable hammer that was his punch, but his fist slipped around her guard and grabbed her collar instead, lifting her up violently.

  She choked, gasping for air as Golu looked up at them coldly.

  “I have dedicated my life to the Galewind Swordstyle, so that is the one I shall teach you both,” he said. “Think carefully, now. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Galewind Swordstyle, and how can you exploit them to stop me from killing you here?”

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  Sahlir’s serpentine blade came around again in a wide, hungry arc, the air screaming as it cut through.

  This time, Dain shifted back only a single step—barely an inch of mercy—and watched as the serpentine blade slammed sideways into the dense cluster of metal trees he’d stepped behind.

  For the first time, the serpentine blade was truly caught. It was wedged hard into six thick trunks at once, and Sahlir scowled, muscles flexing as he tried to wrench his blade free. It didn’t budge. Leaves rang like struck bells and the trees shuddered, yes, but the blade simply wouldn’t loosen.

  Right.

  The Galewind Swordstyle’s good at spinning arcs, seamless momentum, and controlling lots of space as an individual. It’s perfect for crowds of enemies, but…

  It’s vulnerable to getting caught on environmental obstacles. It’s no good in close quarters, and it’s certainly no good in a denser part of the forest like this.

  That was why he’d lured Sahlir here to this deeper, thicker part of the forest—and it’d paid off.

  While Sahlir continued to struggle to pull his blade out, Dain lunged forward—ducking under the caught blade—and kicked his wrist sharply. The hawkkin hissed as his grip broke, forcing him to let go of the blade.

  “... We done here?” Dain gasped, panting for breath as he raised his fists. “I can… totally keep going… but I’d rather just go back for breakfast. What say you?”

  Sahlir stared at him. Then at the serpentine blade stuck on the trees. Then back at him.

  The hawkkin’s beak split into a sharp, satisfied grin.

  “You pass,” Sahlir said simply.

  Afternoon on the fourth day on the road, Drenn pulled the wagon off the road again so the rams could drink until their bellies sloshed. Lunch smells drifted over the river bank they were next to—something oily and sizzling and tasty that made Dain’s stomach complain—but he saw none of it up close.

  Instead, he was knee deep once again in the river, propping up the giant boulder Kargun had dumped on him.

  “Ten minutes,” Kargun rumbled, crossing his arms.

  Dain’s face twitched. “You love ten minutes.”

  “Aye. Ten’s a good number.”

  He tried to laugh. It came out as a strangled wheeze. His prosthetic whined faintly as its plates tensed, and his fleshy arm shook so badly he could see it without looking. Every breath was a tremendous struggle, but as he fixed his eyes on the rippling waters below, jaw clenched hard enough to ache, he recalled—for a moment—another one of Stonewraith’s memories.

  A small, squat well sat outside the western end of town, and from it, Golu fetched water with a bucket to fill up his gourd.

  Meanwhile, the sisters stood before the well with boulders over their heads, arms screaming, shoulders shaking.

  “Thirty minutes,” Golu said mildly, drinking from his gourd without taking off his mask. “This is standard dwarven training across the sea. Neither of you will ever meet a dwarf. Most dwarves would never deign to meet you. That changes nothing. The body is still a body, and the weight is still weight.”

  Gargantyr let out a choking sound. Stonewraith’s elbows quivered. Blood ran from a split lip she couldn’t wipe. She’d been carrying the boulder for what felt like hours now, but judging by the small watch dangling off Golu’s belt, it hadn’t even been three minutes.

  How could she endure this for twenty-seven more minutes?

  Putting his gourd onto his belt, Golu walked between them, hands behind his back.

  “You want to endure?” he whispered. “Stop thinking of strength as something you hold only in your arms. Imagine your body as a system of stone and earth that supports itself.” He tapped her boulder with his knuckles. “Feel your shoulders. Feel your waist. Your chest. Your hips. Your thighs. Your calves. Imagine the weight rippling down each part of you, one by one, and imagine it passing through you and entering the ground.”

  The sisters hissed through their teeth, near tears.

  “Repeat this visualization again and again and again,” Golu finished. “Your strength and resilience will not change, but the mind’s relationship with pain will, and what are human limitations but things to be broken by pure imagination?”

  Stonewraith glared at the watch on Golu’s belt again.

  Twenty-six more minutes.

  … Dain’s breath snagged. He wasn’t in that abandoned stone town. He was here at the creek, knees shaking, shoulders being crushed by something that should be impossible to hold for someone of his strength and resilience.

  But he visualized.

  He imagined.

  Arms.

  Shoulders.

  Chest.

  Waist.

  Hips.

  Thighs.

  Calves.

  Ankles.

  Ground.

  He imagined the weight not as a single murderous lump bearing down on him, but as a pressure that could be guided, distributed, and convinced to move out of his body. It didn’t mean it stopped hurting, and it didn’t mean it suddenly became lighter, but the pain stopped being a single screaming point and became… something he could push aside slightly better.

  He exhaled hard through his nose.

  Again.

  He repeated the visualization in his head, refusing to topple. Kargun’s brow rose just a fraction. Seconds dragged, minutes dragged, and at more than a few points, it felt like hours and days had passed. His eyes watered. His prosthetic whined louder. His breaths came in sharper, colder slices.

  … Then ten minutes passed, and he immediately growled, eviscerating the boulder with as much mana he could pour into his prosthetic’s windsphere.

  As stone shards rained down around him in a violent sphere and plopped into the river, he almost fell forward out of pure exhaustion—but he caught himself, drove his feet into the ground, and kept his balance.

  He glared up at Kargun, grinning from ear to ear.

  “How’s that for fortitude of mind?” he rasped.

  Kargun returned the grin.

  “Aye,” he said. “Ye pass.”

  Night on the fourth day of the road, Dain found himself lost in a reed field again.

  Of course he did.

  The reeds were much, much, much taller than him, black stalks clicking like thin bones and hissing like wisps as the night wind slid through. As usual, he could barely see his own hands in front of him, and yet Ilvaren’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once as if she could see everything clearly. Benefits of being a woodland elf, he supposed.

  “Still standing, human?” she said. “You’re harder to break than you look.”

  Dain rolled his shoulders carefully. Every bruise complained. Every muscle remembered the afternoon’s boulder and the morning’s chase and the last three nights of getting struck in the dark over and over again like he owed the reeds money, but…

  “I’m not standing,” he muttered. “I’m merely refusing to fall out of spite.”

  “Good,” she said. “Spite makes quick feet.”

  He closed his eye, because sight was useless here. All reeds, all shadows, all moving lies. Vision was a liability, so he opened his ears instead and… listened.

  Darkness. Real darkness. This was an enclosed room in town with no lanterns, no windows, and only the smell of cold stone and sweat.

  The two sisters stood in the dark, back to back, blades up and breathing hard. They couldn’t see a damned thing in here, but Golu moved like he could see anyways.

  The first blade strike cracked into Gargantyr’s ribs. The second clipped Stonewraith’s shoulder. They swung at empty air and got punished for it, over and over, until pain became their only map.

  “You are flailing,” Golu said from the left. Stonewraith growled and swiped in that direction, whiffing and hitting only air. “That is not fighting.”

  Stonewraith spat blood into the dark. Gargantyr wheezed, collapsing to one knee as another series of strikes sent both of them reeling.

  Finally, Golu’s hand hit the door latch. Dim light from the campfire outside spilled in as the door opened, and it was so bright it hurt Stonewraith’s eyes.

  The only reprieve from the light was Golu’s body casting a shadow on both of them.

  “The woodland elves across the sea call it ‘windbreath’, the ability to see without seeing,” he said, holding one palm out in front of him. “Imagine, if you will, a barrier of wind around you. This is your sacred cocoon. It is… a zone that must not be crossed. Anything that intrudes upon this zone is what you detect. Now, inhale and exhale.”

  He inhaled once, then exhaled slowly. The two of them mimicked the motion, though their lungs hurt with every breath drawn.

  “In and out. In and out,” he murmured. “Exhale and imagine your breath swirling around you. Exhale and imagine wind swirling around you. Grasp the wind tightly, and never let go.”

  Then he hooked the door shut with his heel, plunging the room into darkness again.

  “Again,” Golu said.

  Dain’s lungs tightened.

  He let his shoulders drop and forced a slow breath out through his nose, trying to picture what Golu had described in Stonewraith’s memory: wind as a boundary, not a thing to chase, but a loose veil around the body. A sacred ‘zone’.

  Nothing felt different at first. The world around him remained loud and confused, and Ilvaren proved it a heartbeat later by slamming the blunt end of her shortsword into his ribs from the left. The impact drove the air from his lungs, folding him slightly. Before he could even curse, she was already elsewhere—another hit cracked against his shoulder, then another clipped his thigh. Each strike came clean and cruel, timed perfectly between his breaths.

  He hissed, teeth clenched.

  This one’s tougher to get the hang of, huh?

  But Stonewraith had endured this same training. Not just once. Not just twice. Over and over, in that room without light, she’d stood up against a man who never tired, so he dragged that memory that thought up from the pit of his skull and leaned into it, drawing a deeper breath than ever before.

  And as he exhaled, everything softened for a flicker of a second. The reeds stopped sounding like enemies. The wind slid past his skin in a single, coherent motion. Then—there it was.

  A disturbance.

  A subtle shove in the air behind him, a whisper of motion cutting into that imagined boundary.

  He moved without thinking.

  Snapping his prosthetic arm around, he immediately closed his fingers around Ilvaren’s blade, and his other arm followed through with a punch that stopped just a finger’s width from her face.

  The reeds around him finally parted as if in deference, moonlight spilling through to frame her sharp grin and feral eyes.

  “... How about that?” he said, shallow in breath. “Come on, elf. Is that all you’ve—”

  Ilvaren released her blade immediately and drove her fist into his gut. The impact threw him onto his back, knocking a rough groan out of him, but Ilvaren’s grin was wide and unapologetic.

  “You pass,” she said. “What talent you have, human, to grasp the essence of windbreath in just a few short days.”

  Dain lay there for a moment—staring up at the stars through the swaying reeds—before turning his head eastwards to Karatash.

  He didn’t want to thank Stonewraith. He really didn’t. But lessons learned in blood were still lessons, and whether she liked it or not, her path was carving his.

  “... Nah,” he whispered. “I just made a deal with a devil.”