Seraphiel sits atop a wet log as rain drips for the first time over his head. Paird with his first real experience in the sun, he found it awfully pleasant.

  "Begin," Sol commands from behind.

  Seraphiel had spent a fair share of his time pleading to be trained. He refused to be a pawn in his own life. He was the only person rightfully involved in the elimination of this supplanter; everyone else was auxiliary. He wanted to stop being a passenger to his fate and grab it like a wild horse, wrestling it into submission.

  He thrusts his sword at the targets flying towards him in the air—miss, miss, miss—and the last target he grazes at the edge. He grits his teeth in frustration.

  "Calm down, it's your first time," Sol observes, then says, "You haven't been putting in much effort in anything up until now, have you? A sheltered royal, weaker than the straw under your feet."

  Seraphiel grips the blade and the training resumes. He tenses, launching his rapier towards the targets like a hornet. Miss, miss, miss, miss. Even worse.

  He is now enraged, red. Unintelligible grunts leave his mouth.

  Sol noticed that though he was in a rage, he wasn't giving up—he was just overly emotional.

  Training continued. Miss, miss, miss, miss.

  His hands are shaking, his eye red, his breath forced and painful.

  After about two hours of failure, with the first graze being the best performance, Sol was the one to stop the training. He seemed pleased despite the poor performance. He points at Seraphiel's forehead, pushing his finger against it like he intended to touch his brain.

  "You're enraged!" he laughed while poking some more.

  Seraphiel, apoplectic with rage, grabs Sol by his shirt, and Sol allows him to drag him closer.

  "Won't you just shut your damn mouth? I don't have a magic book with powers like you," he frothed.

  "And aren't you lucky," Sol replied, not sarcastically but in earnest. "This book and this power won't leave me. I didn't train for it—I was selected. It's worthless. You starting as terrible as you are makes the miraculous chance you become competent all the more meaningful."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Seraphiel stopped. Overlooking the insult, he grounded himself, realising the truth in Sol's words and how this temper tantrum was not going to help him gain agency. His legs were shaking from fatigue, but he calmly walked back inside.

  "I apologize," Seraphiel forced out. "That was a shameful display. To be overthrown by some targets means in real combat I'd be practically useless."

  Sol stabs a potato with a fork and continues eating in silence.

  "I don't believe you."

  He carries on eating.

  Seraphiel didn't expect this response, but it would be hypocritical to try and convince him with pleas, so he also remained silent.

  Sol gets up and leaves, taking his food with him.

  Seraphiel felt flushed with neurotic emotion and shame, his face red with it. Grabbing this man—who could dispatch him accidentally—and spitting rage in his face must have been the equivalent of a kitten attacking a guard dog.

  A few hours later, Sol is arriving at Rea. His existence was now known to them, but his face was not, so wandering as a tourist was his new strategy. He arrived at Yumi's chambers under the guise of a sick man who needed her divine powers of diagnosis. He arrives, sits opposite her without a word, looks around, and realises the excuse was pointless. She was aware of who he was as much as he was aware of her.

  "Why are you here?" Yumi asks.

  Seraphiel begins conditioning his body. He attributed his terrible accuracy to a weak body not used to labour, and he was correct. He kicked the table leg with his shin, practiced punching the walls, and did many other extreme things until he was physically exhausted. Naively, and naturally, he neglected the fact that he needed rest and took up the blade once more.

  He strikes the air, aiming just for form as opposed to accuracy. His muscles burn with fire, his bones ache as if they were about to snap, and every breath in the blistering heat hurt. He thrusts his blade and trips over his weakened legs. The blade falls towards his face like a missile.

  Before he could react, a hand appears next to his head through the floor, grabbing the blade and smacking the handle into his ear erratically, as if it couldn't quite see where he was.

  He took that as a sign to stop, and so he did.

  He lay in bed, breath bated, thinking about the old woman—more so than his old life. Seraphiel was never close to his father; he was close to no one. He was born to be an heir, not a son. His mother was one of his father's concubines, so she never really existed for him. He was fed by a wet nurse, a planned child, planned to serve a function—much like the appellations.

  He feared the worst for the woman. He feared she would be in a new solitary hovel, having failed again, and would take her own life. He feared it would be that severe. He would wait for Sol's return or arrange to return himself, but he would rather have done something all on his own.

  In a foreign land with no way of knowing where to go, he sets out. Before he even manages to leave the door, he is grabbed by the shirt again.

  "If you were to leave like this, in 592 seconds a man would recognise you as a citizen of Cairnreach and have killed you, for no other reason than that."

  Sol could see into the future—not too far, and not everything. Only things pertinent to the Log, or colloquially, the book with an ear. What it recorded by sound, he saw, while Yumi could interpret it best. The other appellations had other powers relating to the Log, but these were the most fundamental.